Apple's iCloud runs on Microsoft and Amazon services Apple has selected Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS to jointly host its iCloud service, The Reg has learned. We understand that Apple has barred Microsoft and Amazon from discussing what would otherwise be a high-profile deal, especially for Microsoft's fledgling Azure cloud service. But Reg sources close to Microsoft this …
Sue if one supplier ups their price, Apple could move exclusively to the other or just expand on the other. One happens when the other supplier raises their rates as well? Sometime having one supplier for a longterm deal is far cheaper than playing one off the other as long as the contract is well defined in terms of the SLA and what it means if the SLA is not met.
The rivalry between Apple and Microsft is at one level very real, but at another level much less than many fanbois suppose (not suggesting you are by virtue of that statement, a fanboy). As Steve Jobs once said when being interviewed together with Bill Gates, competing with Microsoft isn't some kind of zero sum game where for one to win the other has to lose.
Two of my friends bear the title "Microsoft Datanceter Specialist," and have intimate knowledge of how their datacenters work. The Chicago datacenter has over 100,000 servers and is managed by just three full-time individuals using the System Center Suite (Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, and Opalis--their datacenter automation platform). Eat their own dog food, they do.
Just another reason for me to stay the hell out of Apple brand for my next computer. It became impossible to take them serious and I am one of the rare ones who could easily suggest xserve back in days it was G4. Why waste money for Apple computers? Let them come Windows 8 preinstalled too! The owner of xgrid and a UNIX 03 certifiable operating system going MS Azure really makes me drop my jaw. Do they even understand what cloud in its real meaning is?
So, you only buy products/services from companies who only use their own products? You must must not buy a lot of products or services. Hell, even the mighty Microsoft used to use Macromedia/Adobe Director to design and test their User Interfaces, not to mention the fact that their is a staggering amount of Flash movies on their sites, considering they offer their own, quite capable, alternative (Silverlight).
Why should Apple spend time and money developing their own cloud software and/or tweaking OSX to run on cloud servers when there are perfectly serviceable solutions already out there?
Besides user interface design and DTP, can you show a single example where Microsoft uses another operating system or solution?
IBM, which is a true services company doesn't count anymore but they sure use AIX in their own systems of this scale.
Apple is a UNIX operating system vendor and also owner of several large scale technologies.
I am a true Apple customer, I use Apple since they switched to OS X and I sure know what is possible with Darwin.
The problem is that Apple took their server system out and shot it earlier in the year. They may still allow people to install the server software, but it's only really competing with the likes of SBS these days. They don't have a hardware platform to run their server software on and can't really run it on other platforms because that would really piss off their customers who want to run it on other platforms, but aren't allowed. They have no choice, in other words.
"I am a true Apple customer, I use Apple since they switched to OS X and I sure know what is possible with Darwin." Whatever. Doesn't make you any less wrong.
FTR there are many here (including me), and elsewhere in the world that have been using Apple kit since the 1970's, doesn't make their (or my) opinions any more or less valid. There are also many here that have used Microsoft products since the 1970's too and the same applies to them.
People switched to Apple via iPhone or iPad doesn't really know/care the massively powerful operating system Apple hides from them in a good way.
I know Darwin and besides couple of stupid changes (like giving up UFS instead of enhancing) and cosmetically forced virtualisation issues, it would have no problem to scale this big.
Once upon a time, SJobs was also talking about the xserve and how huge it can scale,even with HFS+ based systems. Anyway, one more thumbs down for me I guess.
"I am a true Apple customer, I use Apple since they switched to OS X and I sure know what is possible with Darwin"
OK.. Well.. I've been using Apple on and off since they released System 7. Not as experienced as some guys on here, admittedly.
I personally love OSX and will always recommend it if I can. However, the problem is that it is not and OS that has been widely proved to be reliable in data centres. Microsoft, for all their faults, has done a *lot* of work on running OSes in the kind of large scale deployments needed for datacentres.
BTW, you may know what's possible with Darwin, but have you ever run Darwin on the number of computers needed to run iCloud?
It's too bad that Apple couldn't apply its knowledge & experience gained from iTunes to iCloud. Such a pity. That must also mean that their N C data center with all of its computers & expensive stuff, which Steve Jobs highlighted during his iCloud presentation is just going to turn to rust. Hmmm…
Whenever they advertise iCloud, some 100 fps scroller should pass in 3 secs:
"Alltough it carries Apple branding, it is actually Microsoft who provides the service with their famous stance on quality and reliability. We own a UNIX OS but we fired everyone who knows enterprise for hiring app store censoring interns so we can't eat our own dogfood."
The iTunes Store/AppStore/iBookStore combo has been working very well for a long time, serving 100 million downloads per day now, handily outcompeting similar stores run by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. So I don't think this is an issue of Apple failing at server technology as several have suggested. This seems to be purely about scale. And who says that Apple never used data center partners like Akamai before?
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