Ballmer in the clouds: 'Microsoft redefines, Amazon repackages'

Asked if Microsoft is truly innovating in the race towards so-called cloud computing - not just reacting to what companies like Amazon and Google have done - Redmond chief Steve Ballmer pointed to Windows Azure, the company's sky-high development platform. "I think Azure is very different than anything else on the market. I …

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no big deal

MS is "redefining the programming model," is no big deal really.

All it means is that an emerging technology will have an MS flavoured version and that MS tools lending themselves to that technology will be made available and these will conform to MS business model.

One can't really expect MS to provide linux tools, Mac OS tools, ... think of the hubbub that would generate.

So, yes, it has to redefine in order to provide a MS product that works in the cloud.

S'easy

Tseetch

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer

Ballmer doesn't care shit what the nerds are doing lately. $Competitor does it wrong, and I'll fucking kill them, and Microsoft does it right, and I fucking love this company is all he cares about.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

"I think Azure is very different than anything else on the market."

Certainly Ballmer's grammar is very different to anything else on the market.

[Chris Miller]

US/British English

"Different than" is encountered quite often across the pond - Americans haven't quite got the hang of this preposition thingy, yet. BTW, since we're in pedant mode, standard British English speakers should use "different from" (and "similar to").

[Mikel]

It's full of magic glue

And it won't in any way tie you to everything else that Microsoft does. Because that's just not how they operate. It will seamlessly integrate with everybody else's cloud, cloud tools, and client software using completely transparent and reasonable interfaces. It will differentiate itself not by tying itself to everything that Microsoft touches and stifling all opposition, but by being an outstanding package in the field that draws an eager developer base by its excellence!

It's completely lead-free, the ultimate in green and made of 70% recycled products.

Even in the first version the code is robust, resilient and secure - these are things Microsoft is famous for. The best is yet to come though: Every iterative version will be completely compatible with the last, though offerring greater power, flexibility and usibility with an ever-improving user experience. And of course each revision will be more secure than the previous.

Now if only it came with free candy.

[Jim in Hayward]

So sad. Only 4 comments as of 9:10pm PST.

Just shows how little MS news interests folks. MS is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

let ms look after critical data?

"It will be many years before many governments will grow comfortable with their data or their citizen data living outside the jurisdiction," Ballmer said.

Sounds like a great idea - give america/microsoft all our government and citizen data. They're always very respectful of everyone's privacy as we saw last week in their spy guide.

oh wait

[Anonymous Coward]

no alternative if the thing breaks down...

I agree. It's nice that they let you own your program in the azure cloud, but it's build on something you do don't own, understand or have an alternative to. So if windows is any indication of the way Microsoft thinks about security, than you are running your government app on... well you don't really know now do you?

In the Amazone cloud, it's your (linux) configuration running. So in the unlikely case that Amazon has a bad day, you can very rapidly switch to another datacenter or similar cloud to run the government app. In any case, your company or government will at least be going about their normal business, while suing the cloud provider for not living up to their SLA.

You won't have that option with Azure. Since Microsoft et al. alone will own and run the Azure infrastructure, this means you will have to wait (hours/days/?) for Microsoft et al. to get their cloud up in the air again. You cannot transport your app to another cloud. And since every Azure cloud (also the ones from third party resellers) is the same, it forms a single point of failure. Any (small) mistake on the part of Microsoft or their ecosystem can lead to a total cloud failure and thus a failure in the continuity of your business.

But the value proposition of Microsoft appears pretty cleaver. You can own your software, that would be a big step forward for governments. Although probably third party vendors will make proprietary software running on the Azure cloud stack/platform. Proprietary applications, which you are probably not allowed to move to another Azure cloud, even in the case of a Azure failure. So that makes governments even more dependent and worse off than they are today.

The other value proposition: governments don't have to manage servers, creates the illusion of reduced costs. Although based on history I think : ($ to manage own servers == $ for a azure license) in the end.

For governments the question becomes simple: when Azure gets cracked or fails (and it will), is what the Azure companies will pay governments in damages on the basis of the SLA, enough to repair what the leak/outage has caused? Including lost of trust by the people, reputation damage, lost negotiations, privacy violations, locations of nuclear submarines, malfunction of the management software for the energy grid, communication problems in an active theater of war etc.

If not what's the point of switching and paying a lot of money for the Azure cloud? With your own setup you at least you had a fighting chance to prevent data loss or computing outage...

[Gabriele Bozzi]

Azure is inter-op!!

I do not agree with comments.

Azure introduces a level of abstraction and has a preferred environment (.Net) that exploits its fiull capabilities, that's fine and it does not differ from any other Cloud/PaaS vendor (look at Goolge, Gigaspace, SalesForce, IBM)

However Azure is much more open to foreign technologies that one might know.. There is a lot of FUD around Azure and this is because is a truly innovating tool.

Examples?

- We run Lucene and Java on Azure and use their Message Bus to distribute content on premise.

- A friend of mine is organizing a conference today, in Belgium, at Microsoft BE on PHP on Azure.

So?..I am not aware of Microsoft having a product based on PHP or Java, I have to assume that Azure is open thus.

And Azure is solid. To date it performed very well albeit in Beta.

Hey, I am not an MS fan-boy, not at all, but we need to give credit where credit is due.

[Anonymous Coward]

premise?

"It's not going to be perfectly symmetrical because there are some things that you want to do in the cloud that you won't do on premise - and vice versa"

What kind of gibberish is this? Perhaps he means premises?

Which reminds me of the story of Johnson and Boswell observing two women arguing from their windows in houses facing each other (in old London town, so only a few feet apart). "They will never agree", said Johnson, "for they argue from different premises" .