Microsoft takes second run at platform cloud Microsoft is taking a second run at platform-as-a-service clouds with a set of features to be included in Windows Server 2012 R2 that may give Redmond some credible tech to take on a field flush with rivals. When Windows Azure launched in 2009 many media and analyst reports (El Reg excluded) thought the future for platform-as- …
There are no licensing costs for anything in Azure that's IAAS based. It is all covered in the rental fees....
This article could have been so much more. There are loads of new features in 2012 R2 - Microsoft have further widened the capability gap over Linux (worlds fastest NFS 4.1 server is Windows!) - and are starting to overtake VMWare in a number of areas.....
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn250019.aspx is worth a read for anyone with even a vague interest in the latest Windows server capabilities....
MS seem to be faffing around with an awful lot these days.
Naturally trying to find out how much all this PaSS stuff is going to cost will be totally beyond even the most die-hard Microsoftie around. Don't even mention CALS....
You'd be better off just giving them an arm and two legs.
Or move to something that is a little less 'cobbled together...'?
"little less 'cobbled together'"
You clearly know zero about the subject to make such a comment. Microsoft's stack is way ahead of anyone else's in this space for integration.
Open Stack and similar are leading the 'cobbled together' model, and VMWare are desperately trying to catch up with Microsoft in Software Defined Networking - after belatedly realising that a solution that relied on proprietary Cisco hardware wasn't gaining any market penetration....and they are also having a great deal of trouble in competing with Hyper-V's 'the hypervisor is free' model.....Microsoft are taking a rapidly increasing market share....VMWare are likely to end up as a niche player.
We recently moved out datacentre from Xerox to Azure solutions cutting the bill from $1.8m to little under $600,000 so these services are nothing to be scoffed at, the ability to spin up servers in seconds or have additional servers automatically spin up and down under load is a god send. We had to take a hit on licensing losing what we owned in perpetual licenses (some $300,000) in exchange and server costs but that will be recouped in the first six month's and office 365 is working out great for us as well
"Microsoft would make a smooth transition into the heavens where it would rain Bezos's infrastructure-as-a-service Amazon Web Services cloud out of existence and, once again, Ballmer would be the king of software."
...........that there were many that expressed considerable sceptisism with regard to precisely those claims. That view can by no means be described as the consensus view at the time. Do try and avoid giving the impression that you guys are polishing your own halos when you post this kind of stuff.
Microsoft is flagging up a security hole in its Service Fabric technology when using containerized Linux workloads, and urged customers to upgrade their clusters to the most recent release.
The flaw is tracked as CVE-2022-30137, an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in Microsoft's Service Fabric. An attacker would need read/write access to the cluster as well as the ability to execute code within a Linux container granted access to the Service Fabric runtime in order to wreak havoc.
Through a compromised container, for instance, a miscreant could gain control of the resource's host Service Fabric node and potentially the entire cluster.
Days after the debut of doodle-recognizing Express Design on the Power Apps platform, Microsoft has updated its Azure sibling: Form Recognizer.
While Express Design is very much the new kid on the block, its ability to build a form from scribbles can be traced back to the Applied AI service, Form Recognizer.
Azure Form Recognizer, as its name suggests, pulls text and structure from documents using AI and OCR. The theory goes that users can automate data processing with the tech, which accepts PDFs, scanned images and handwritten forms (although, as with all handwriting recognition systems, scrawl barely readable by humans can equally stump the robots.)
Microsoft has added a certification to augment the tired eyes and haunted expressions of Exchange support engineers.
The "Microsoft 365 Certified: Exchange Online Support Engineer Specialty certification" was unveiled yesterday and requires you to pass the "MS-220: Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Online" exam.
Updated Two security vendors – Orca Security and Tenable – have accused Microsoft of unnecessarily putting customers' data and cloud environments at risk by taking far too long to fix critical vulnerabilities in Azure.
In a blog published today, Orca Security researcher Tzah Pahima claimed it took Microsoft several months to fully resolve a security flaw in Azure's Synapse Analytics that he discovered in January.
And in a separate blog published on Monday, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran called out Redmond for its lack of response to – and transparency around – two other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by anyone using Azure Synapse.
Updated Microsoft's latest set of Windows patches are causing problems for users.
Windows 10 and 11 are affected, with both experiencing similar issues (although the latter seems to be suffering a little more).
KB5014697, released on June 14 for Windows 11, addresses a number of issues, but the known issues list has also been growing. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail to open (if using Windows Communication Foundation or Windows Workflow component) and the Wi-Fi hotspot features appears broken.
Microsoft has indefinitely postponed the date on which its Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) will be required to sell software and services licences on new terms.
Those new terms are delivered under the banner of the New Commerce Experience (NCE). NCE is intended to make perpetual licences a thing of the past and prioritizes fixed-term subscriptions to cloudy products. Paying month-to-month is more expensive than signing up for longer-term deals under NCE, which also packs substantial price rises for many Microsoft products.
Channel-centric analyst firm Canalys unsurprisingly rates NCE as better for Microsoft than for customers or partners.
The US government is pushing federal agencies and private corporations to adopt the Modern Authentication method in Exchange Online before Microsoft starts shutting down Basic Authentication from the first day of October.
In an advisory [PDF] this week, Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) noted that while federal executive civilian branch (FCEB) agencies – which includes such organizations as the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and such departments as Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, and State – are required to make the change, all organizations should make the switch from Basic Authentication.
"Federal agencies should determine their use of Basic Auth and migrate users and applications to Modern Auth," CISA wrote. "After completing the migration to Modern Auth, agencies should block Basic Auth."
Updated Microsoft has warned users that Azure Active Directory isn't currently producing reliable sign-in logs.
"Customers using Azure Active Directory and other downstream impacted services may experience a significant delay in availability of logging data for resources," the Azure status page explains. Tools including Azure Portal, MSGraph, Log Analytics, PowerShell, and/or Application Insights are all impacted.
Azure AD and the other abovementioned tools are all working.
Microsoft has pledged to clamp down on access to AI tools designed to predict emotions, gender, and age from images, and will restrict the usage of its facial recognition and generative audio models in Azure.
The Windows giant made the promise on Tuesday while also sharing its so-called Responsible AI Standard, a document [PDF] in which the US corporation vowed to minimize any harm inflicted by its machine-learning software. This pledge included assurances that the biz will assess the impact of its technologies, document models' data and capabilities, and enforce stricter use guidelines.
This is needed because – and let's just check the notes here – there are apparently not enough laws yet regulating machine-learning technology use. Thus, in the absence of this legislation, Microsoft will just have to force itself to do the right thing.
Jeffrey Snover's lengthy and occasionally controversial term at Microsoft is to come to an end this week, as the PowerShell inventor sets off for pastures new after more than two decades at the Windows giant.
The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2022
