We pushed to clarify--when does that hockey stick growth take off? We're not there yet, right? "I don't know. It sure feels like we're there today to me," Ballmer said.

He added, however, that most lines of business software--industry-specific applications or transaction systems, for example--aren't going to the cloud en masse yet. Platform as a service offerings, like Microsoft's Azure, haven't taken off. But with what he calls "information worker infrastructure" -- think Exchange, SharePoint, and Office software -- CIOs are ready to move quickly to the cloud.

"Look, I don't want to oversell or undersell, but the truth of the matter is there is not an enterprise customer I visit today where this is not an issue -- just not," Ballmer said. Any CIO considering an upgrade to the company's e-mail or other collaboration platforms has to at least consider going to a cloud-based infrastructure. "Everybody is saying, look, next time I touch anything, I'm going. If I'm not touching anything, maybe I don't go," Ballmer said. "But if I'm really going to touch something, I'm going to have this [cloud] discussion."

 For original article by Chris Murphy click here