Microsoft re-writes the cloud service playbook

Microsoft has extended the time it will support some of Azure's early cloud storage APIs. Explained here by Azure principal program manager Dinesh Murthy, Redmond seems to have a couple of motivations for the changes. One is to give users more time to switch to newer APIs, suggesting users feel they're being rushed. But some …

[Ken Moorhouse]

About moving goalposts and holes in my bucket, dear Liza

I vaguely remember being called out to a client whose Compuserve account had ceased to work (shows how long ago this was). Seems that Compuserve had changed their password strength rules and he could no longer login to his account because of this. Ok, let's change the password. Old Password? Agh, I think we need to speak to them. In those days they had this thing called a telephone, but now it seems if you want to contact support you need to login to your account...

[Buzzword]

Budgets

"Or perhaps they've made the mistake of building apps with tight coupling to particular services. Again."

Yeah, because every API upgrade can be made painless just by wrapping your code in an interface layer.

The more obvious reason is corporate budgets. This year's budget for Project Z has been spent; in order to upgrade the APIs they have to submit a new request for project funding, get the request approved, schedule a resource, etc. In some places you're looking at an 18-month lead time; even longer for government bodies.