This was entirely reactionary. Microsoft looked at what AWS was doing and realized they were getting left in the dust and they are still playing catch up, albe

This was entirely reactionary. Microsoft looked at what AWS was doing and realized they were getting left in the dust and they are still playing catch up, albeit in very good shape. Nadella discusses having to catch up to AWS in his book. Ballmer's major contribution was finally allowing the company to follow Amazon's playbook.