Microsoft launches Windows Azure, its "cloud OS"

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/10/microsoft_launc.php

by bdfh42 • 18 years ago

39 62 18 years ago

roughtype.com

dmose• 18 years ago

Whitepaper on it:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/4/3/e43bb484-3b52-4...

sriramk2• 18 years ago

[disclaimer - I work for the Windows Azure team].

The root website is www.azure.com - that should link to all the relevant docs, bits, sites. We're turning on all the switches as I write this so you may see a few 404s before noon PST.

DenisM3• 18 years ago

A bit of feedback:

I would be hesitant to start using this because there is no way to anticipate the pricing scheme whenever it shows up. Last thing I want is to commit to a platform andthen find out it's cost-prohibitve. Also, google promises to keep certain level of usage free which makes me more likely to try because I know I won't get suddenly hosed with high prices.

TweedHeads5• 18 years ago

I knew astroturfing was around the corner.

We got invaded, like digg, so long to an unbiased HN.

josefresco• 18 years ago

One question that comes to mind: How does this effect the market for private, dedicated (managed) servers? Or rather the platform providers for today's online apps?

andr• 18 years ago

Definitely interesting! From what I see at first glance, there's a queue/MQ-like service, a scalable database (is it SQL or key/value?), a workflow service, and the whole thing works whether you want to use .NET or not.

sriramk2• 18 years ago

You can find more docs on Windows Azure tables (distinct from the blobs service which you missed :-) ) at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=131257 . Sorry about the doc link. I'm sure there's a web version somewhere which I can't find right now thanks to the flaky connection I'm on

dcurtis3• 18 years ago

Microsoft has destroyed their brand so completely that I don't even consider this a viable product. I don't trust Microsoft.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

So true. I won't even buy a computer if it comes pre-installed with Vista. Linux and/or Mac please.

dejb• 18 years ago

When did you actually trust Microsoft with online computing? Before Vista? I don't see a huge relationship between Vista and their online efforts. Sounds like a bit of MS bashing propaganda from somebody who has never liked or trusted them.

axod10• 18 years ago

Microsoft has never "gotten" the internet. They still don't. I don't see any reason to suppose they have suddenly "gotten" it here.

mkn2• 18 years ago

Am I wrong in wondering if cloud computing might do for computing what hedge funds and CDSs did for finances? By this I mean that in both cases we're talking about attaining the last iota of efficiency by consolidating a resource in the hands of a few. What happens when the MS cloud goes down? (I know. Impossible.) We've seen the stories about people who have lost access to their gmail accounts. What if a large portion of the economy has their applications tied up in the cloud and there's an interruption in service. Or a natural disaster.

Analogously, should these cloud providers be required by law to maintain a (geographically distributed) computing reserve? A second (or third, even) clone of the current cloud?

I understand that the communication between the cloud and the world is distributed, but the actual cloud seems to be as distributed as a rock.

yters• 18 years ago

I like the google gears approach, where you can go offline with the data if necessary. Still not ideal, though.

bstadil• 18 years ago

Amazon currently have 3 separate data centers and additional S3 storage in Europe. This trend will continue as SLAs become more of a selling point for all Cloud purveyors.

Second why do people think that your own data center will be better? It is like putting your money under the bed rather than in the bank. So people do that but not a good idea.

Lastly we will see a common API emerge that will allow us to move with little impertinent. The emergence of Eucalyptus is an early indication of this.

mkn2• 18 years ago

Your reply seems to be a spot-on agreement with my post, except that you don't realize it. Your choice of analogy is particularly amusing in that, right now, if you'd had your money under your mattress, you'd be better off than if you'd invested in one of these highly-leveraged and over-exposed financial vehicles that I'd mentioned. Mattressing one's money may have been the best idea of them all for a large class of investors.

That aside, the proper way to make the analogy you're making is not to compare investing in a CDS against putting money in or under your mattress, but rather to compare it with putting it in a certificate of deposit in your locally-owned bank or loaning it to a locally-owned business. Either of these would very likely have less return and a higher risk for you. However, you would be less susceptible to a global default cascade like the one that is happening now.

The reason that ...your own data center [would] be better... isn't that it's less likely to go down, but rather that, if everybody has their own data center, the chances of a global blackout go down drastically. This is precisely the analogue I was pointing out. If banks had stayed non-optimum and local, then (arguably) we would not be facing a (potential) global economic meltdown.

You may argue (rightly) that if you pursue these localist strategies when everyone else is pursuing these more profitable consolidated strategies, which carry this systemic risk of catastrophic failure, that you'd succumb to competition from others. This is the point of asking for regulation in the market, and (possibly) the case for asking for it here. At some point, almost by definition, the cloud computing market will commoditize. When that happens, the only way to cut costs will be do do without redundancy, if that is a legally available option.

The underlying problem is that people discount the cost/benefit of events that happen in the distant future, and the global catastrophes in these two systems always seems distant.

Finally, one may object that if redundancy is such a good idea, then it will happen naturally and never be eroded by market forces. In this case, then, there can really be no objection to legislation on the matter, because everyone will naturally comply anyways.

mwerty• 18 years ago

I had the same thought when Sars struck in the sense that you lose the ability to avoid correlation with a globalized world.

Unconnected tribals will probably have the best shot at making it through something really crazy like that.

bigthboy• 18 years ago

I'm interested to see how well the service fairs when it launches and I'm just as interested in seeing the response from those developers who are being able to test the platform. I think that this could potentially be a "step in the right direction" for Microsoft to stay relevant in a world that's changing how and where data and processing is handled. However, unlike many speculators who talk about how someday the "Cloud will completely engulf the world," I don't think that will happen anytime soon. As available as the Internet is and the number of providers grow, there still is going to be a need for localized data processing and handling to a certain extent. This is one of the places that I agree with Microsoft in saying that it needs to be "Local + Cloud." The concept of it all strikes me as something best used to enhance local applications to have access to more information, seamlessly, and dynamically, and be able to tailor that information to meet the needs of the end-user.

amvp• 18 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something here, because nobody is mentioning it, but isn't this a major shift for MS? Microsoft is a software company basically (other than mice and zunes and 360s), but here they are offering essentially hardware-as-a-service. If, last week, I would have gone to Dell and bought a server with a windows license (Disclaimer: I'd never do such a thing!), I'd now just pay MS to run my app on Azure . Dell, HP, IBM and whoever else make windows servers have just been cut out of the equation, right?

grantc3• 18 years ago

H/w vendors are only cut out if MSFT invents a replacement for metal. Granted, utility computing in the cloud is about squeezing more utilization and value out of a given piece of h/w, so it's not without impact. You might perceive this as a change, but I'd say it's a change in the paradigm moreso than a change in MSFT.

Also, people tend to overlook this but cloud isn't really about infrastructure or hosting. Sure those are the current analogs--cloud is about what happens next, and I think it's more about shifting architectural tenets so that we do what works well with cloud scale and lifecycle. When you do those things, other interesting things start to become possible (e.g., in the cloud, it's hard to have misaligned test and prod envs, not the rule like it is most everywhere else).

cmars232• 18 years ago

I wonder if their Python support will run "real Django"...

grantc3• 18 years ago

Google can help your wonderment.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

Viper• 18 years ago

Is there a problem this solves better and cheaper than other available solutions?

If there is I can't see it. Did they even do a proper business case?

I can't see startups using it for a ton of reasons.

I can't see most businesses using it. They want their data in their data center.

The only use I can see would be a way for MS to sell software as a service to companies that want hosted Exchange, sharepoint, etc.

jwilliams• 18 years ago

Is it just me or is the Azure website having a lot of problems at the moment? http://www.microsoft.com/azure/

I'm getting a lot of "page not available" errors and broken image links.

anamax• 18 years ago

Vista only for the SDK is a problem.

TweedHeads5• 18 years ago

Their "cloud" is already down, looks like vapor to me.

Microsoft launches Windows Azure, its "cloud OS"

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