Baseline highlights the most influential people in IT today, while Microsoft looks to extend its influence to the clouds.

Baseline Names Top 50 Most Influential People in IT
The editors of Baseline have come together to identify the people that carry the most amount of intellectual weight across five different categories. Naturally, any one of them would probably be qualified to assume the mantle of a national CIO or CTO in any new administration that among other things needs to deal with passports and electronic voting. And if you're not sure why we need one, click here.

Microsoft Heads for the Clouds
As expected, Microsoft announced its formal entrance into the cloud computing space with a new Azure offering while also surprising some folks with a new implementation of Office for the Web. The implications of Microsoft's moves are many, but the most interesting might be the rapid rate at which cloud computing services will become a commodity. In fact, many of Microsoft's existing partners are already looking over their shoulders and developers will have to rethink their relationship with Microsoft. Here's an overall round up at other events that transpired at Microsoft's developer conference. But if you want know more about the new leader of Microsoft's cloud computing effort, you can check out what she has to say here.

Windows 7 Passes Muster
First looks at the new Windows 7 offering from Microsoft sound promising now that Microsoft has made available a pre-beta version of the much discussed follow-on to Vista. As for Vista, there are lots of folk already saying that Vista doesn't matter anymore even as Microsoft rolls out Service Pack 2. For a good analysis of many of the issues that have plagued Vista and what to expect from Windows 7, click here.

Linux Market Size Estimated at $10.9 Billion
Microsoft may still be bigger than most of its Linux rivals, but Linus Torvald made some recently pointed comments about the value of passion when it comes to developing software. Elsewhere, it looks like open source database adoption is on the rise.

Sun Outlines Vision for the Future of Java
With the release of version six of the standard edition of Java, Sun is finally starting to put a lot more emphasis on rich clients. Of course, on the hardware side Sun is trying to figure out what to do without Andy Bechtolsheim while also rolling out new hardware.

McAfee Partners with Hewlett-Packard, Intel and VMware on Virtualization Security
As virtualization security becomes a bigger issue, vendors such as McAfee are starting to take on the challenge. Elsewhere, McAfee also refined its approach to network access control and application whitelisting.

Dell Rolls Out New Power-Saving PCs and Thin Clients
Responding to the economic pressures facing customers, Dell is giving customers the option of using PCs or thin clients in a strategy that mirrors recent moves by Hewlett-Packard.

State of Texas Calls IBM to Task over Data Center Consolidation Project
It looks like IBM is messing with Texas in a way that many would consider inadvisable.