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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."
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.
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?
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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.
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:
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.
>> 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.
Windows 7 is losing core applications and replacing them with an installer to download them...
Coming in Windows 8: repos.
Grab an EC2 server and image it to serve RDP. Similar concept, and probably won't cost you as much as this.