"As a set of cloud services it takes the customer out of needing to manage it; that is one of Microsoft's great propositions. They provide the services; you can concentrate on your business.

"Microsoft is putting major investment into the marketing side of this already; they are spending billions of dollars on datacentres and infrastructure to make it so."

However, there is still "work to be done on making the customer ready" for the cloud, he says.

"Those using SharePoint as an application will have an easier time getting there; those using it as a development platform won't find it addresses all their needs. On-premise [use] will continue to be important," he claims

Does the product-set simply have too much power for the typical user?