Microsoft: Azure isn't ready for biz-critical apps … yet Microsoft's Service Deployment and Operations (SDO) team has detailed its scheme to modernise the company's own data centres and says that the result will be lots of – but not all – workloads in the cloud. The easy-to-understand graph below tells the story of Redmond's future plans. Microsoft's data centre strategy …
This is no different from migrating from Oracle 8->9 or 9->10 or 10->11 (you get the idea), only start-ups can migrate without detailed recovery/contingency plans, but there is a grain of truth.
Azure, just like AWS and others was designed for "web-scale" load balanced web-services where network load-balancing, failover and geographically distribution are more important than keeping a single node up.
"Business Critical" is not the same as "Safety Critical": satisfying auditors, compliance & regulators sometimes means sticking to primitive technology because that is what they understand.
"Satisfying auditors... primitive technology...what they understand"
ROFLMAO. I'd guess about 90% wouldn't understand even a command prompt if you threw it at them. The rest will grasp that cloud is just a different name for a familiar concept.
Perhaps you mean that Business Critical is essential for the business and MS cannot afford to screw up for their OWN sakes (not regulators, auditors etc)... in which case Mark does have a point.
Does this fascinating event, being pushed a mere 5 days ago right here on El Reg, make clear how unfit for purpose their "me too" comedy cloud offering is?
I cannot speak for the whole of London, but I can say that I wrote a prototype for a time-criticial application for TfL, and my company took away the business from MS as we could show we were able to handle critical stuff MS couldn't. My impression is that MS cloud is for low bandwidth customers only. So I must admit that MS is at least clever enough to know this.
/Zane
> My impression is that MS cloud is for low bandwidth customers only.
I agree with this. Yes, for high-bandwidth customers, Azure is not ready. However, to state that nothing MS have ever released has ever been ready is just the kind of "I'm so superior" boasting that has become all-too-familiar on these forums.
From a quick review of the comments, one would suspect linux had approximately 70% of all commercial markets, OSX and other *BSDs took 25 and Windows languished, used only by fools, with a market share of less than 5%. This is a) inaccurate and b) in most cases, complete deliberate falsehood. Am I suggesting that we have Windows users on here claiming to use linux just because of peer pressure and ignorance? You better believe I am. I'll go further -I bet most of those use Win8 while claiming that they'd never do so under torture.
All this "I am far too clever to use that shit" is horseshit and jake is especially guilty of it. Stop lying to yourselves.
one would suspect linux had approximately 70% of all commercial markets, OSX and other *BSDs took 25 and Windows languished, used only by fools
That is the general consensus among the professionals of this industry.
Not office workers (admin/management), not machinists, home users, or any other non-technical user/consumer.
That is why there are plenty of Linux elitists on a forum of a news site for (apparently) IT professionals.
The IT industry vs everyone else ratio isn't even, you know? If you think so, then you need to get out more.
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If that is the case then they are 0wn3d by new dehli.
If you think your home pc is safe now that the backdoor keys were given to a third world country, think again. They have "always on access" now...
Redmond should be broken up due to the National Security issue they created and gave away for monetary gain.
The safety and security of our country and children is at major risk.
All government computers should be wiped clean of any hostile Windows applications.
All government personnel assets will need to be quarantined.
USA computers have been hijacked by India a closer ally to its neighbor (China),
like America is with Canada.
Windows PC computers regardless if they are owned by a government agency or civilian are now controlled (daily) by them.
The backdoor was very real in the 1990's, with over ten years of improvement to this part of the code, you have a more advanced version that is always on...
Take back your country.
America the nukes are worthless.
I think you may have forgotten this.
(Wow, looks like amanfromMars1 has a competing nutter).
The cloud is ready to handle every workload, for every customer, and it's cheaper for every size of business. There's an Anonymous Coward in here ever day who keep telling me so. Are you tell me that this fellow - and Microsoft's own marketing department - would lie to me?
I am deeply concerned.
> Microsoft marketing would give you Bill G's grandmother if it involved you buying services from M$
That actually sounds like something we can expect from Microsoft marketing.
"Win 8 - now with free Mrs Gates the First Venture Capital Action Figure. But sign up for Azure, and get your own strictly limited edition Steve Ballmer Signature Office Chair. Also available - genuine Sinofsky Skateboards with Real Dented Credibility Finish, and Official Nadella Strategy Synthesizing Stuffed Shirts, with Dynamic CEO Fistpump Action and Genuine Deep Visionary Shoegaze[tm]"
That would probably be all of the servers that they are currently running, as most companies depreciate capital assets including IT over a period of 3-5 years.
And that's just the financial side. At the current rate of change, they would be technically obsolete before then.
BTW. My home IT infrastructure is built on obsolete or discarded systems, so if anybody wants to get rid of their working 5 year old Xeon or Core Quad system, I would be quite happy to discuss giving it a home (running Linux, of course).
. . is that Microsoft is treating a cloud migration like it should : with care, paying attention to all the variables, weighing the pros and cons and evaluating the risks and cost of mitigation.
The cloud is like any other project and must be managed properly. Add to that the fact that Microsoft cannot fail this migration : the reputational cost would be prohibitive. So no, Microsoft is not just gleefully jumping into the cloud feet first, like the cloudy fanboi (wisps ?) would want you to. It is doing so in a reasoned, measured fashion and it is doing it like that because if it fails, it might as well shut down Azure entirely.
Failure is not an option. Proceed with caution.
To me this demonstrates something I have never been able to explain well enough to cloud advocates for them to understand.
This whole episode to me is a demonstration that Microsoft is at least smart enough to be able to make the distinction between a system and its embodiment or deployment. The cloud is not your system, folks. It is the embodiment, chosen after you have a properly specified and designed system, and after you have assessed all alternative deployments for its economic or technical advantage.
The explanation given by Microsoft suggests that they do indeed understand the distinction, and do indeed understand the need to make that assessment.
The long and short of it is that the deployment to the cloud is an optimization of a more-or-less well-designed system. You choose to implement some component of your system or all components of your system after having done the engineering to decide what would be best for your needs. You choose to deploy to the cloud as some organizing principle, but as a means to achieving the greatest advantage for the business's needs and circumstances, and according to the circumstances in which the deployed system must operate. Any other way is just wishful thinking.
“... applications or workloads that Microsoft IT considered high business impact, such as financial information, protected corporate information, or personal information, should be among the last to be migrated. This would allow Microsoft Azure to be effectively assessed and prepared to host this highly sensitive information.”
If Microsoft aren't in the position to trust their own cloud services with their own information this is a telling indicator that neither should anybody else. So every cloud sales-rat attempting to foist cloud services for such information and services has now been demonstrated to be lying through their shiny white-than-white teeth? Again. Maybe their previous careers in selling glazing or used cars didn't work out for some reason...
Everything as a Service: In another 10 years we'll all be back to a computing model that any IBM customer of the 1960s would recognise. Dumb terminals on the desks, al the work happening in a data center that you have little control over, and all paid for by an ongoing subscription.
Interesting to think that by the time I retire IT will be back to where it was when I came in!
"If Microsoft aren't in the position to trust their own cloud services with their own information this is a telling indicator that neither should anybody else"
It doesnt say that at all. It simply says that they will leave the most critical services to last. Which would be a common sense approach to any such migration.
Because Azure is already that big that it can resource all that without having to grow, i.e. cost something? Is a large bit of it sitting idle at the moment? Take money out of left pocket and stick it in the right one.
Why people even bother working out how much you 'save' when you get the new thing is a mystery to me. Lets be honest, we want the new thing because it is shiny and it will probably end up costing more than the old thing, but we get this new functionality maybe.... That is how it has always worked.
The quote stated the following:
“... applications or workloads that Microsoft IT considered high business impact, such as financial information, protected corporate information, or personal information, should be among the last to be migrated. This would allow Microsoft Azure to be effectively assessed and prepared to host this highly sensitive information.”
Shouldn't every business do this? What does this have to do with Azure's ability to host business critical applications? You just don't throw this stuff into the next data center or application container. Also this is not Microsoft's private data center it is a public service. Wouldn't you want them to go thru all the due diligence to do the following, "assessed and prepared to host this highly sensitive information"?
Really? 1/2 the comments here have nothing to do with facts, the headline has nothing to do with the content of the article. It is a far stretch to say Azure isn't ready... HBI at Microsoft is more about the data classification, than it is about how important, or scalable the workload is or is not.
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