Rational Survivability

It’s very interesting to see that now that infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) players like Amazon Web Services are clawing their way “up the stack” and adding more platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities, that Microsoft is going “down stack” and providing IaaS capabilities by way of adding RDP and VM capabilities to Azure.

From Carl Brooks’ (@eekygeeky) article today:

Microsoft is expected to add support for Remote Desktops and virtual machines (VMs) to Windows Azure by the end of March, and the company also says that prices for Azure, now a baseline $0.12 per hour, will be subject to change every so often.

Prashant Ketkar, marketing director for Azure, said that the service would be adding Remote Desktop capabilities as soon as possible, as well as the ability to load and run virtual machine images directly on the platform. Ketkar did not give a date for the new features, but said they were the two most requested items.
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This move begins a definite trend away from the original concept for Azure in design and execution. It was originally thought of as a programming platform only: developers would write code directly into Azure, creating applications without even being aware of the underlying operating system or virtual instances. It will now become much closer in spirit to Amazon Web Services, where users control their machines directly. Microsoft still expects Azure customers to code for the platform and not always want hands on control, but it is bowing to pressure to cede control to users at deeper and deeper levels.

One major reason for the shift is that there are vast arrays of legacy Windows applications users expect to be able to run on a Windows platform, and Microsoft doesn’t want to lose potential customers because they can’t run applications they’ve already invested in on Azure. While some users will want to start fresh, most see cloud as a way to extend what they have, not discard it.

This sets the path to allow those enterprise customers running HyperV internally to take those VMs and run them on (or in conjunction with) Azure.

Besides the obvious competition with AWS in the public cloud space, there’s also a private cloud element. As it stands now, one of the primary differentiators for VMware from the private-to-public cloud migration/portability/interoperability perspective is the concept that if you run vSphere in your enterprise, you can take the same VMs without modification and move them to a service provider who runs vCloud (based on vSphere.)

This is a very interesting and smart move by Microsoft.

/Hoff

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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:

Don’t underestimate Microsoft and the potential disruption Azure will deliver.*

You might not get Microsoft’s strategy for Azure. Heck, much of Microsoft may not get Microsoft’s strategy for Azure, but one thing is for sure: Azure will be THE platform for products, solutions and services across all mediums from Redmond moving forward. Ray Ozzie said it best at PDC:

The vision of Azure, said Ozzie, is “three screens and a cloud,” meaning internet-based data and software that plays equally well on PCs, mobile devices, and TVs.

I think the underlying message here is that while we often think of Cloud from the perspective of interacting with “data,” we should not overlook how mobility, voice and video factor into the equation…

According to Ozzie, Azure will become production live on January 1st and “six data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia will come online.” (I wonder when Amazon will announce APAC support…)

Azure will be disruptive, especially for Windows-heavy development shops and the notion of secure data access/integration between public/private clouds is not lost on them, either:

Microsoft also announced another of its city-based code names. Sydney is a security mechanism that lets businesses exchange data between their servers and the Azure cloud. Entering testing next year, Sydney should allow a local application to talk to a cloud application. It will help businesses that want to run most of an application in Microsoft’s data center, but that want to keep some sensitive parts running on their own servers.

It will be interesting to see how “Sydney” manifests itself as compared to AWS’s Virtual Private Cloud.

Competitors know the Azure is no joke, either, which is why we see a certain IaaS provider adding .NET framework support as well as Cloud Brokers (bridges) such as RightScale announcing support for Azure. Heck, even GoGrid demo’d “interoperability” with Azure. Many others are announcing support, including the Federal Government via Vivek Kundra who joined Ozzie to announce that the 2009 Pathfinder Innovation Challenge will be hosted on Azure.

Stir in the fact that Microsoft is also extending its ecosystem of supported development frameworks and languages, at PDC Matt Mullenwegg from WordPress (Automattic to be specific) is developing on Azure. This shows how Azure will support things like PHP, MySQL as well as .NET (now called AppFabric Access Control.)

Should be fun.

Hey, I wonder (*wink*) if Microsoft will be interested in participating in the A6 Working Group to provide transparency and visibility that some of their IaaS/PaaS competitors (*cough* Amazon *cough*) who are clawing their way up the stack do not…

/Hoff

*To be fair a year ago when Azure was announced, I don’t think any of us got Azure and I simply ignored it for the most part. Not the case any longer; it makes a ton of sense if they can execute.