Speaking today at a keynote for the DLA Piper Tech Summit, Ray Ozzie tuned up his cloud computing mantra in preparation for next week’s PDC, by talking about the potential for the internet to speed up software usability.  In a question and answer session with Fortune magazine’s David Kilpatrick, Ozzie spoke about the changing nature of the internet::

Ozzie said that cloud computing has enormous potential to speed up data exchange, software development, collaboration, and ultimately, software usability. “The Internet was created during an era of 56k modems and dial-up connections. As a software [developer] you balance what's on the back end with what's on the front end.” Whether bandwith is large or small is a challenge of perspective and application.

 

Ozzie promised appliance-like features for devices soon:

Devices, he said, will be “appliance-like” in the near future. “You'll buy one, log in, and the data you need will be there.”

We should be hearing more about Ozzie’s vision very very soon, with major announcements about Microsoft’s live services platform expected at PDC.