Microsoft Makes It Harder To Avoid Azure 164
itwbennett writes "Earlier this week, Microsoft rolled out a handful of hybrid cloud services that make it easy for businesses to start using Azure in a small way. What struck blogger Nancy Gohring about the announcement was 'how deeply Microsoft is integrating Azure into other products,' with the intention of moving long-time customers onto Azure in ways that are hardly perceptible to them."
Re:Options are good but... (Score:2, Informative)
We have four racks of Windows and Linux systems running for years with only minimal maintenance. If you don't buy complete crap shit just runs.
It's certainly possible to run a data center like a well-oiled machine. You do need to make the right investments, and also invest in the right people to run it.
On the other hand, a lot of companies want to concentrate on their actual business and leave the running of the data center to the people that are experts at it -- especially if it can be done on the cheap. Some companies start small on a single idea and are unprepared for how popular their idea or service might be and unable to scale to match demand. These are very legit reasons to turn to Azure (and competitors).
Who in their right mind would throw down that kind of recurring cash for Azure?
Actually on the cost front is where Azure (and other cloud competitors) beat the pants off running your own DC. Remember those machines actually cost money, which is amortized and shows up on the balance sheet. You need to spec for your max traffic -- you can't load-balance capacity spikes at will like you can in the cloud. You need to pay staff to run the data center. So you see, recurring costs are common to both cloud and on-premise solutions.
Control of your own data, and lock-in to a single solution is a different matter. That's where some companies are either avoiding the cloud or going for hybrid approaches. But that's a whole other conversation. On the cost front your comment misses the mark completely.
Re:What is old is new (Score:4, Informative)
Does iCloud let you provision a Linux VM server in minutes?
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/Windows-Live-Writer/550abded8a10_CEC4/image_17.png [hanselman.com]
Perhaps you're thinking of Skydrive.
Re:What is old is new (Score:2, Informative)
Welcome to Vendor Lock.
Enjoy your stay.
Re:Trainwreck waiting to happen (Score:4, Informative)
Don't kid yourself, TradElect was a poster child for Microsoft's server and tools strategy. The project was swarming with Microsoft engineers. But you don't have to believe me, the financial industry rightly perceived Accenture as Microsoft's sock puppet. [thefinanser.co.uk]
Actually, this was an all too rare case of the industry dumping the blame where it belonged: squarely in Microsoft's lap. Not that Accenture deserves any praise mind you.
What makes this whole story especially sweet is the way Microsoft crowed about its LSE win [zdnet.com]. Not surprisingly, Microsoft pulled down http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/facts/default.mspx [microsoft.com] long ago, but the net remembers it.
Since that fiasco, Microsoft's presence in financial platforms immediately dropped to zero. We can be thankful for that, and it demonstrates clearly where the industry thinks the blame lies.