Slashdot Mirror
Windows Azure Offers Developers Iron-Clad Lock-in
snydeq writes "Microsoft's move to the cloud is certain to create a whole new kind of developer partner, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes. But as much as Microsoft ISVs will likely go along with the shift to Windows Azure to keep revenue streams going, the kind of lock-in they will experience will be worlds away from what they face today. Rather than being able to ignore the new version of a key framework, developers will have no other option than to update their code to suit Microsoft's latest platform. That kind of lock-in will leave customers in the lurch, subject to their vendors' bottom lines, as ISVs that can't afford to rework code to keep up with Microsoft's latest platform will begin dropping services, and customers will have little choice but to accept the new terms of service their vendors send along."
I still think that name looks way to close to Vuze/Azureus. Maybe its going to change post launch?
Constantly locked in to a upgrade path? No, way. No way will anyone go for this for anything real.
My blog
I don't believe the iPhone yet requires you to apply every latest patch to your phone in order to stay on the network, so it is different because users of your app have the choice to not patch if patching breaks your app. The main theme of the article is that it's not the users' choice whether the cloud gets updated, it will get updated if and when the cloud maintainer is ready to update it (though he doesn't ever mention things like deprecated methods that are frequently used to ensure backwards compatibility) and that maintainer is not you the cloud application developer nor your client the cloud application user.
The author says at the end that this same situation exists with every other cloud computing host though, and that's a part of the article that should have made it into the Slashdot summary
So why is there any reason to believe MS won't provide backward compatibility on their cloud stuff? That's what they do on the desktop....
No i didn't RTFA, its a tradition i didn't want to break with.
This is what Microsoft do. Its what they've done for decades, and it has made them hundreds of billions of dollars. The message they get from this is that customers don't mind their lock in, provided they get stuff that works. Therefore they don't see what they do as being wrong. If indeed it is wrong. I'm not so sure anymore.
Microsoft software works, and usually works pretty well (Not including that heap of poo that is Vista, oh gods I hate that). Bottom line? Most companies buy Microsoft solutions, and you would be amazed how many still don't even know what Open Source is.
They will continue to do so until Open Source software gets marketing as aggressive as that employed by Microsoft. It ain't about code/product quality boys and girls, its about your sales force. IBM learned this lesson early on. Microsoft learned it too, but Open Source is still laboring under the false impression that just having better code is enough.
It isn't, trust me on this.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
This sounds like a whole lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. developers are already subject to upgrading software as patches emerge. Business clients are likely to push out security and operability patches as they are released. They will demand the same level of service they receive now with Azure if the patches break their apps. Remember, new != scarry; new==different.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
One could look at this in one of two ways. The first way is the line taken by the summary writer, that it's doom, gloom and disaster. In practice, this is actually the most likely scenario, as the alternative I'm going to suggest has never been seriously adopted by software vendors yet.
And now for that alternative! Writing code correctly. (Ooooh, scary! Just right for Halloween.) Correct code does not mean "correct according to Microsoft's preferred style", it means "abstracted out, so you don't give a damn about the underlying architecture" with "vendor-specific and platform-specific details encapsulated and hidden by portability libraries and high-level languages". If you write code that will run just equally well on a Cray 2, PC compatible, Apple, SGI Indigo or a microprocessor-controlled toaster, you can afford to simply not care what Microsoft does. The portability library(s), which might be any combination of cross-platform Open Source or Commercial libraries for common stuff, provides almost total immunity from Microsoft API changes, gives you (next to) zero upgrade costs (the "actual" costs are distributed across all of the vendors tied to the library at the time AND in future) and minimizes the risks (the minimum amount of 3rd party code is changed per API change and the maximum number of arcs are tested because everyone linking into the code becomes a QA).
Since the only practical method of maintaining such a model at the pace at which Microsoft breaks^H^H^H^H^H^Hchanges things is Open Source, it will force an increase in the adoption of Open Source methods and Open Source tools. At which point, Microsoft becomes a rather expensive bit-player in the operation, in comparison to alternative clouds. Since portability libraries eliminate lock-in, as well as upgrade headaches, companies would start going with the cheaper option.
This isn't going to happen, of course. Although the tie-in with Microsoft is harming vendors, creating excess overhead and reducing reliability, PHBs won't see it that way. All they will see is that lock-in means you can Blame Somebody Else. You can't sue them, you almost certainly can't even get them to honour their service agreements or any other contracts, but so what? Having Someone Else To Blame is the cornerstone of office politics. Good decisions are not. It doesn't matter if the company sinks as a result, since the notion of "company loyalty" is seen as something "old-fashioned" and inconsequential in today's environment. You go in, you get your paycheck, you eventually move on. It's expected. So why should a manager, who has no interest beyond looking good to other managers, care about good decisions? It won't earn them any more money, it won't get them any more respect, it won't give them a promotion, and it leaves them vulnerable to back-stabbing from other managers.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This guy has just blown out a load of basless speculation and your all buying into it (any giving him page hits).
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Again, so-called "cloud" services are only cost-effective under certain conditions. A good sysadmin with cheap bandwidth can run circles around any hosted setup, and you get much more reliable throughput that way (if your sysadmin's any good).
Cloud computing being cheaper is a MYTH. It is billed in more granular fashion, which is great for attention-deficit developers who write the app-of-the-week, get their Digg and /. rush then fade away. Those people are not the driving force of the internet.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Unlimited broadband seems to be going away, bandwidth caps are coming in, traffic shaping is already here and Microsoft want to move the processing to remote data centres? I look forward to scanning a photograph, editing it with CloudPaint and printing it out on my local printer using the generous 9kbytes/second upstream 200kbytes downstream i get from Virgin Media. I don't think i will even bother looking at CloudVideoEditor.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.