Charles Fitzgerald doing “platformonics”

I just discovered that Charles Fitzgerald, General Manager of Platform Strategy at MS, has started a blog called Platformonics.  I know a lot of industry people will be interested – Charles has really been around the block at the highest level.  I think he learned more from “Hailstorm” than anyone else who I've spoken to.  Beyond that, he's a great business person, well-read and beautifully wry.  Here's a piece full of implications called There is no free lunch (especially in France):

The BBC reports the French security service has told French government officials not to use Blackberries because their data is stored in foreign countries and could be susceptible to prying eyes. Expect many more such awakenings going forward to the tradeoffs to putting data in the cloud.  Not just national security concerns, but trade secrets, privacy and compliance requirements will all require people to think more explicitly about the risks and tradeoffs of where you put your data and what can happen to it.  Today's all or nothing approach is a crummy way to do it. Three contenders for the most amazing part of this story:

1. They're just realizing this now?  Did they just figure it out or did some incident precipitate this decision?  There is probably a pretty good spy novel in if you combine this with almost any headlines from France in recent years.
2. French officials are “flouting the ban”.  I predict the upcoming ban on smoking in public places in France takes “flouting” to a whole new level.
3. RIM insists the US National Security Agency can't read content on their service.  Disciples of Taleb might call that epistemological arrogance.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  Charles has been a great supporter of the Laws of Identity – ribbing me by somehow learning to recite the title with reverb.  He was also one of the first to see the potential of Information Cards.