Microsoft Announces Windows Azure, Cloud-Based OS

snydeq writes "Microsoft today introduced Windows Azure, its operating system for the cloud. The OS serves as the underlying foundation of the Azure Services Platform to help developers build apps that span from the cloud to the datacenter, to PCs, the Web, and phones. Cloud-based developer capabilities are combined with storage, computational, and network infrastructure services, which are hosted on servers within Microsoft's global data center network."

Comments

Microsoft can't make a decent API

[CuteSteveJobs]

I've been writing Windows apps since 3.1. Microsoft couldn't write a decent API if their lives depended on it. They manage to take simple concept, and bury under layer upon layer of useless complexity. Too often their documentation doesn't give examples, and the only way to find out what something does is it sit around and experiment with it. Take the absurd DirectX: you *have* to use it, but even today it takes pages to get a window on the screen and the documentation is useless. Remember Microsoft OLE? Such a simple thing made so hard. I want to code in as few a lines as possible. I don't want to write pages of COM declarations. Worse of all is their DirectShow - put a video on the screen. It's a mess of pins and connectors. Ugh!

Although I'm a Windows programmer by training, I've been spreading my wings and it's nice to use APIs that are simpler and more elegant. I can write code to do what I want to do, instead of wasting days with my nose buried in absurdly thick reference books trying to understand what they were trying to do. It's like the people at Microsoft who spend their time writing APIs never have to actually use one.

So Microsoft Cloud? No, thanks. Cloud may turn out to be another flash-in-the-pan fad, but even so I'd rather use a cleaner API by someone else. Microsoft have a lousy track record. Thanks, but no thanks.

Re:Microsoft can't make a decent API

[Unoti]

Agreed. While OLE and the original Windows SDK sucked, that's ancient history. Focus on stuff from the last decade. The .NET API is excellent by and large.

Re:Microsoft can't make a decent API

[blake182]

So Microsoft Cloud? No, thanks. Cloud may turn out to be another flash-in-the-pan fad, but even so I'd rather use a cleaner API by someone else. Microsoft have a lousy track record. Thanks, but no thanks.

You're implying that there's an invariant API they're using to get this done, and presuming that it's going to follow the design of everything before it. They're not stupid -- they see the number of platforms currently in use, and they've made it a point to explicitly say that supporting rails, Python and PHP is on the roadmap. So as much as you might bitch about the prior desktop APIs (I'm with you there), I'm not sure that a completely new service will necessarily take a wrong turn, especially if compatibility with the popular web application environments is a stated goal.

I look at it from the standpoint of "how hard is it to roll my own EC2 instances and scale up and down based on load?" and "OK, so let's presume that Google actually ends up shipping App Engine, does it meet my needs?" and I think that Azure could be a fit.

Of course they might not end up delivering everything they said (or I could have made it up). But I wouldn't trivially reject the service just because they're made some painful APIs in the past.

Re:Microsoft can't make a decent API

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's just the thin-client model being sold under yet another name.

That or timesharing. Or clustering. Or all of the above.

I'm getting a bit tired of people just throwing a buzzword of last week to try to explain the buzzword of this week...

It's a bit like claiming texting is just email being sold under yet another name. I've been known to do this, to make a point about the price -- but even when the analogy fits, the circumstances are different, and that does matter.

In this case, the thin-client model is often bandwidth-heavy and requires special client software. These "cloud" services (yuck) are actually pretty bandwidth-efficient, and require nothing more than a decent web browser.

If you think about it for a second, they are bandwidth-efficient because they are NOT a thin-client model. The browser is a limited client, but you can still run Javascript, which is now fast enough to rival most other scripting languages.

Combine it with the timesharing/cluster model, and it's going to be more reliable, too.

Security boundary?

[argent]

What's the security boundary between customers based on? Virtual machines?

Re:Security boundary?

[Wesley Felter]

It looks like Azure uses the .NET sandbox and Hyper-V.

Re:Does anyone use this?

[truthsearch]

Hopefully this means proper standards for IE8 and JS3 support?

If Microsoft owns the desktop, browser, server, and data center, what's going to motivate them to follow standards?

Re:Does anyone use this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. MS moved into the web, and broke all the standards. MS moved into the data center, and made sure they were incompatible with everything else.

How is this good again?

They've got the concept wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO cloud computing should be based on personal clouds... as in all the software, files, and stuff on a small device like a portable hard drive or USB flash drive, that you can plug into a console which contains just the hardware, or switches off or disconects its own boot/storage media in favor of booting your cloud... while using your "cloud" the internal storage device on the console/computer/terminal should not be active(security reasons protecting the console from you and you from the console) this would allow you to take your OS, settings, programs, files and other stuff anywhere as long as theres a compatible console available.

Re:The Advantages?

[PapayaSF]

You forgot: 5. No piracy. (You can't pirate apps or an OS hosted in the cloud, can you?)

Of course, that's not a benefit for you, but I'm sure Microsoft sees it as a benefit.

Bypass.

[geckipede]

I may have missed the point of this, but it really looks to me like an attempt to give windows a package manager without ever having to admit that any other package managers were a good idea.

Re:Does anyone use this?

[MightyYar]

I, personally, would be THRILLED, if I could sit down at any broadband-connected PC in the world and get the same desktop and files that I have at home. I've played with Ulteo, and it is close - but clearly needs some time and manpower thrown at it. If there was a mature, polished version of Ulteo that could do what other OSs can do, I'd probably be willing to give up my Macs as well as my Windows/Ubuntu machine.

Can MS pull it off? I doubt it, but I'm glad that they are trying.

Does anyone Google this?

[Ostracus]

Are we still claiming that MS owns the browser? Let alone the server and data center market?

"what's going to motivate them to follow standards?"

Being left behind.

Urban Dictionary: Azure

[Marrow]

The term to indicate a room is under some form of electronic surveillance, especially used by British intelligence services

Actually, I think they got that from "Edge of Darkness" mini-series.

Re:down with the cloud

[lysergic.acid]

but cloud storage done right would provide more redundancy/reliability/uptime than most small businesses could manage on their own. that's because multitenancy and centralization of data storage allows small businesses to share a large resource pool that none of them could afford on their own. this includes:

• higher level of reliability through multiple redundant sites
• higher peak load capacity
• massive scalability
• increased efficiency & better utilization of resources (like distributed computing)

having your data stored locally doesn't guarantee reliability or prevent things from going wrong. why do you think most small businesses go with shared hosting rather than running their own web server? if you're a large corporation and can afford to pour money into server/network maintenance then maybe it'd be better to have direct control over your data. but Google, Amazon, and perhaps even Microsoft can guaranty better uptime and reliability than the average small to medium sized business.

after all, how often have you needed to access your Gmail or Yahoo! mail account and couldn't because their server was down? and how many times were you unable to access your webmail account because of a local network/computer problem? at least with cloud computing if you have business partners or affiliates that need shared access to your data and your office network goes down, or your internet connection craps out, they would still have access to the data and be able to continue operations.

local data storage isn't a magic bullet against natural disasters, human error, or hardware failure. at least cloud architecture is designed to account for these contingencies.

Here's a reason why

[melted]

>> They manage to take simple concept, and bury under
>> layer upon layer of useless complexity

This is a very astute observation. As a MSFT veteran, I can tell you why this happens. Microsoft as a company does not value simplicity. Simplicity in design is perceived as a lack of technical skill and therefore considered a weakness. It has to be uber-super-insane architecture starting right from V1, and it has to be so complex that it'll only be useful by V3, and even then only by people who already know a lot of the other equally grotesque Windows APIs. Otherwise people won't get promoted.

The most recent and most dramatic example of gross overengineering so far is Avalon, AKA WPF. I bet the same is true of Azure, knowing that it comes from Windows and there are a bunch of very senior people in the org. Which is why I predict that it will be an epic fail.

Re:Thanks for the place holder. Windows 7 plans.

[Tubal-Cain]

Windows 7 is losing core applications and replacing them with an installer to download them...

Coming in Windows 8: repos.

Re:down with the cloud

[Deanalator]

Um, if the cloud is inside your corporate network, you have significantly lower risk of data loss if things like laptops are stolen.

Also, it seems that the stricter control on software deployment would greatly reduce the risk of viral outbreaks etc.

If Microsoft does it right, they could make a much safer environment for enterprise workstation deployments. Google offers their services as internal appliances for enterprise customers, so what makes you think that Microsoft wouldn't do the same?

Re:Not going anywhere

[jeevesbond]

I mostly agree with your excellent reply. However:

Phase 5: the whole thing becomes common practise, FOSS starts to develop and lags 5 years behind on everything

I already have a FOSS 'cloud based' OS. It's a Debian server, with no X or desktop environment, accessible over the Web. The applications hosted on it have HTML/Javascript/CSS front ends and use PHP/Python/Perl/MySQL on the back end.

Cloud computing may or may not be a bubble, but whichever way you turn and twist it someone has to start. It'll take baby-steps and corrections along the way, but so far this is the first real attempt at it.

I don't believe you are correct here. Microsoft are producing a me too alternative to to the flexible, FOSS-based, cloud computing from Amazon (note: it's also possible to get Windows from Amazon, at a higher price).

FOSS is in the same place, if not slightly ahead, of Microsoft here.

Re:Ok

[glwtta]

Anytime MS does something good, the story gets tagged itsatrap.

Well, how long is it supposed to take to work through the bad faith accumulated over several decades of them raping the industry? That's even assuming they are actually at the point where things are improving, rather than still contributing to the problem.

So yeah, if you behave like a jackass, people won't trust you, even if you didn't behave like a jackass today.

Marketing, not tech

[technomom]

This looks to me like more of a marketing announcement where they take a bunch of previously available product and put it under one particular brand. Yeah, there's a few more things in there but mostly that's glue.

-- Windows Azure, for service hosting and management and low-level scalable storage, computation, and networking.
-- Microsoft SQL Services, for database services and reporting.
-- Microsoft .Net Services, which are service-based implementations of .Net Framework concepts such as workflow. .Net Services previously was called BizTalk Services. "The services themselves, we found, were actually more identifiable to the .Net community than BizTalk," said Steve Martin, Microsoft senior product management director in the companyâ(TM)s Connected Systems Division.
-- Live Services, for sharing, storing, and synchronizing documents, photos, and files across PCs, phones, PC applications, and Web sites.
-- Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration, and solution development in the cloud

So, they're taking BizTalk, Sharepoint, Live, a bunch of point features in SQL Server and a few other warmed over things and calling them "Azure". Whoopee. They've invented a brand. Wake me up when they have something new.

Re:Does anyone use this?

[Chaos Incarnate]

My understanding was that, at least in the US, it was okay as long as you weren't in the same line of business. For example, you couldn't go start a delivery truck business whose branding was based around the color brown, but you could use it for your plumbing business without worrying about infringement.

IANAL, of course.

Re:Not going anywhere

[ROBOKATZ]

Seriously, check out EC2. You can use their API to dynamically bring on line as many nodes as you need and since they are your own Linux or Windows images, with any software or platform you need. Back-end bandwidth is free so you are free to use MPI or whatever distributed computing platform "for free".

Re:Does anyone use this?

[debatem1]

Grab an EC2 server and image it to serve RDP. Similar concept, and probably won't cost you as much as this.

Re:Ooh, a new color!

[Alioth]

The irony is that they called their cloud computing initiative after something without clouds. An azure sky is a cloudless one!