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Apple's iCloud Runs On Microsoft Azure
Front page first-timer ge7 writes "Apple's recently announced cloud storage and cloud service platform, iCloud, runs on their main competitor Microsoft's Azure platform and Amazon services. According to The Reg's sources, 'Microsoft insiders see the iCloud deal as a validation of Azure. iCloud puts Azure into a different league, given the brand love for Apple and the Apple management's fanatical attitude to perfection. It is a "huge consumer brand, a great opportunity to get Azure under a very visible workload." ... Apple has had a recent unpleasant experience in providing online services: in a famous memo, Steve Jobs admitted his company had "more to learn about internet services" following the outages and failures of his precursor to iCloud for email, contacts, calendar, photos and other files on MobileMe.'"
If I should laugh, cry or just be indifferent to this news.
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
I'm surprised that Microsoft and Amazon apparently agreed not to publicize this. While I don't really care what Apple is using behind the scenes in iCloud - it's not like Apple's a serious player in server space, after all - I wouldn't think they'd have the leverage to dictate these sorts of terms with either company. Seriously, what are they going to do, walk away from the negotiating table? Who else could do it?
#DeleteChrome
Heh, not surprising really. Apple will do what they have to do. If it requires using Micro$oft services they'll bite the bullet and do it. You can bet somewhere they've got a team working on an alternative that gives them total control. Apple is all about control. This is just a compromise they were forced to so they can provide the kind of service they need until their own solution is ready.
Still surprising, given that they are about control, that they went with Azure rather than, say, Linux on Amazon EC2, or something like that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Remember Steve's quote about MS being trucks? So why not use them as a big truck. Back end. Where they belong. It's a giant public slap in the face to Microsot that know one else gets! Be our server slaves, stay in the closet, and let us (Apple) take care of the rest.
But isn't that the whole idea behind Azure? Microsoft wants to be the big truck people rely on behind the scenes.
I'm not a Microsoft fan - I've tried to remove their products from my life as much as possible - but I see this as a big win for them.
#DeleteChrome
This is weird. I feel weird. I need an adult.
Wow! That is huge fanboyism to suggest that by Apple choosing to use a Microsoft product that this would somehow be a slap in the face for Microsoft. Ha ha Microsoft, you lose because we chose to use your services.
Was their ever a chance that Apple would have considered using anything other than a back-end product from Microsoft? Did you expect that Apple would ever consider choosing Windows on the next Mac or Windows Phone to run their next iPhone or something?
Oh, or maybe a slap in the face is like a poke in Facebook. Does it mean to pay someone lots of money in a business transaction? I tell you, I just can't keep up with the modern business vernacular!
Not to worry: iOS devices have come in just "black" and "white" for some time.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
They discontinued the xServe, and os X has always seemed to not perform well in the server space. Good to hear that all is not what is seems.
...certainly used to be Microsoft, but if you look at the recent deluge of lawsuits I think one could argue that the title for "main Apple competitor" now lies somewhere between Samsung and Android.
Microsoft and Amazon platforms are incompatible, so to "stripe" anything between them, everything has to be done twice, for no reason whatsoever.
Someone is spewing bullshit, most likely The Register's "sources".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why would Apple build a brand new multimillion-dollar data facility, only to farm out their biggest and most high-profile internet services to external parties?
Only Linux is more reliable, but it's nowhere near as easy to manage, as I've learned repeatedly in 15 years in the industry.
15 years and still incompetent. Nice.
-- Linux user #369862
Lest you forget, MS kept Apple alive with a huge cash infusion when they were about to go under. They need each other. They're best frenemies.
MS may not quite have expected Apple to rebound as much as they did, but they need Apple to kick them in the ass, and Apple customers aren't really MS customers so they're not losing much. Apple needs Microsoft so their customers can keep pretending they're superior outsiders and not just too simple to figure out Windows's obtuse designed by engineers UI. And so they can keep painting Microsoft as Big Brother even when their own policies are far more totalitarian.
Apple can afford to go teehee at MS's pathetic attempts to stay relevant in the mobile phone sector, so no problem there, and Amazon is only a competitor as far as providing ebooks goes. Vexing, but not fatal.
Sorry, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/16/icloud-mystery-is-apple-using-azure-amazon/
This news is OLD
yep, a bit like when they got motorola to build phones for them. They let motorola take the risk while they learnt the about risks involved.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I guess you've never heard of a little side-project of Apple's called the "iTunes Store"?
It's daily transaction volumes are in the same neighborhood as Amazon's, and it is has been highly available and reliable.
I bet they're using only bare bones, like blob storage and possibly CDN, and then only temporarily until they roll their own. Apple is all about _control_ first and foremost.
And if I were Microsoft, I'd keep this one secret until _after_ they succeed, because it's not only a great opportunity to succeed. They could also fail quite spectacularly, too.
Heh, looking at the way things go the "HP" stuff might keep running for longer than HP does ;)
They wanted to get it out there in time and it was probably faster to throw something together on Azure instead of setting up their own servers. I'm sure iCloud is what Apple had in mind when they started building the huge data centers in North Carolina and I'm willing to bet Azure is only a temporary solution and eventually everything will be transferred to their new data center. They probably didn't want to risk another Mobile Me type release. Still, it's a tip of the hat to MS.
I'd rather call it closed vs open. Or at least those that push open source and openness vs those who don't.
It will be interesting who'll win.
Personally, I hope no one does, competition is best for consumers.
Baboons are cute.
Amazon, Microsoft products run on Apple products
Yep. Hey guy, you suck so here's some money! Oh and we're depending on you to make this work, but hah! Sucks to be you!
What platform does iTunes run on? I'm genuinely curious, but wouldn't be surprised if it's not, in fact, XServes.
You understood it, so that's what matters.
Besides, if you want to be pedantic then get rid of the parenthesis around the entire post.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
...are Microsoft and Apple "main" competitors?
Surely you're not serious...?
In THIS world...
Try perhaps learning your history before spouting off something that puts your foot in your mouth.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Evidently you haven't heard the news that Enterprise is their core focus, now.
So it's either HP keeps their HP servers and HPUX operating system afloat, or they go under.
With the amount of money rolling through Enterprise, I doubt they'll sink.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
You realize Linux is an operating system and you just named off hardware vendors, right?
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Heck, they were still using those CE point of sale things as late as last year.
That's like saying I hope that police will never eradicate mafia, because competition is the best...
Wikipedia says Azure was available commercially in February of 2010. So it's been on the market for a little over a year and a half.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
It's not in their interest to build an entire Cloud infrastructure. They're in business to sell Macs, iPads and iPhones - the stuff they bundle along with that is the gravy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Under Wikipedia for Azure: Microsoft has stated that, per the Patriot Act, the USA government can have access to the data even if the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA.[20]
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
1. Intentionally have "issues" with iCloud running on Azure and Amazon, discrediting the competition
2. BIG Announcement of the switch to new uber Apple infrastructure
3. ???
4. Profit!
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
Which endeavours? 50% of their endeavours have utterly failed and been cancelled, another 25% are doomed, 20% are losing money.
Leaving a 5% success rate (count those endeavours on one hand).
I'm not saying the "let many flowers bloom" approach is wrong, but please don't tell me they're all or even majoritorially successful.
...with an iPad, there sure would be hell to pay! _ o _
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The only one where that's true on your list is Keynote:
Some people have been using Microsoft's tools for the wrong things, that's why there are so many complaints about their usability. But their target markets as the companies see them is different.
"Microsoft Word is a professional text processor (like LaTeX)."
LMFAO
Use Microsoft Azure - for large scale applications with flexible demands, it makes as much sense as not using Linux... oh wait...
Seriously. On the hardware front, they killed the X-serve and have nothing else that remotely is a workable solution for real high end, high density servers. Mac Minis are fine for small offices or homes that are messing with tiny servers, they aren't what you need for a cloud infrastructure.
On the software front their OS leaves something to be desired in the server arena but more importantly they have no real virtualization solution. You can only virtualize OS-X on OS-X so any of the bare metal solutions like vSphere are out, and the software for MacOS is decidedly consumer oriented like Fusion and Parallels.
So Apple's own technology, at present, is not at all suited for a cloud type system. For that you need a bunch of high power, high density servers that you can run VMs on so you can provision things as needed at a high speed.
Remember the big thing that separates a "cloud" from just a bunch of servers is the flexibility and provisioning. You go to a normal server host like, say, Pair networks and they can get you a server in fairly short order, a day or less probably. However if you want a bunch that'll take time as they'd have to order the hardware. You also pay per month regardless of usage because the hardware is there powers on using resources. With Amazon EC2 you can get not just a server in minutes, but thousands. You also can pay more based on usage, because idle servers don't have to take up resources. This is possible only because it is all virtual, and an extremely competent virtual setup.
Now maybe they fix that, or maybe they build a data centre with someone else's technology (their was a time they liked AIX, maybe they do that again). However that takes time and if they need shit now, well Amazon and Microsoft are two of the big ones that can deliver it.
At any rate right now, Apple isn't really in a good position to run their own cloud service.
Ok, maybe I should have used "tries to be" instead of "is" ;)
Based on job postings over the years, it's more than likely a combination of various Unixes and Linux. It's definitely NOT Windows (or OS X for that matter).
Speaking of, if you search their job listings for the word "iCloud", almost every hit explicitly mentions Linux or UNIX, and most of the rest mention Perl, Ruby, Python, and other UNIXy applications. I didn't look at every single one of them, but the only one I saw that mentioned Windows at all was for testing the sync to iCloud functionally on Windows. I don't think I'm buying this story.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
To be fair, MobileMe would have been better if they hadn't tried to run it from a huge Hypercard stack.
But when you're dedicated to using only your own technology, your choices are somewhat limited.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is what it looks like to be in the end stages of being an Apple fanboy. You actually believe it's a "slap in the face" to Microsoft for Apple to run a portion of their business on an MS product. No awareness at all that Apple has to pay Microsoft for the privilege. No awareness that by Apple choosing a Microsoft product, they are saying tacitly that the Microsoft product is the best in its category.
Unless you are willing to take the next step and say that Apple is purposely running a portion of their business on an inferior product just so that they can say "Look! We have shamed Microsoft by giving them money for their obviously inferior product! How ignoble they are!"
Being Apple they would almost certainly add, "Now someone bugger me, with dispatch!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
ITunes store is an entirely different type of service. There is no customer storage to speak of.
It's pretty much an e-commerce store with a native client.
Which endeavours? 50% of their endeavours have utterly failed and been cancelled, another 25% are doomed, 20% are losing money.
Leaving a 5% success rate (count those endeavours on one hand).
I'm not saying the "let many flowers bloom" approach is wrong, but please don't tell me they're all or even majoritorially successful.
labs are not endeavours ...they are experiments.
God makes them, then they find each other...
With the amount of money rolling through Enterprise, I doubt they'll sink.
Don't underestimate the sinking power of CEOs ;).
Just because the other US based cloud providers aren't advertising that fact it doesn't mean they wouldn't give the US government the same access.
Apple (a hardware company) and Microsoft (organised crime^W^W uh, a "software company") are not really in competition.
you had me at #!
*YOU* can't virtualize OS X on vSphere, but they can. Because they own they software, they can do whatever they want with it.
I don't think anyone is surprised that they aren't running it on Mac OS X Server; they are surprised that they are (allegedly) running it on a MS product. It is well known that Apple hosts it's own services on Sun, Oracle, and (maybe) HP products. There long-existing web products (eg. the iTunes store) don't run on racks and racks of Xserves, if that's what you think.
Why wouldn't they be in a good position to run their own cloud service? Again, you need to throw out your assumption that their cloud service might be run on OS X and Mac hardware.
Is it possible this is just for people using other platforms? Pushing customers using Windows off to Windows land while the rest use the iTunes cloud makes sense to me.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I'd argue Microsoft hasn't been Apple's main competitor for 4+ years now.
rooooar
You are Apple. What would it cost you to get as good a server internally? How can you leverage your iCloud threat-to-make in order to negotiate purchase price of the Buy? You are MS. What price do you set for a competitor with high volume and a possibly inferior product, who may decide to invest in making their product competitive with yours?
Gently reply
TFA is short on sources, but mentions:
One way to avoid managing different code bases and ensuring the best levels of performance could be for iCloud to also run on Windows on AWS.
So we don't really know whether they're using Windows on both, which would again be a surprising choice. There are, after all, multiple services right now which will give you a Linux-based cloud.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That's like saying I hope that police will never eradicate mafia, because competition is the best...
Hardly.
Satisfying the implied morals of your comment would require the abolishment of free trade.
Baboons are cute.
Apple has a service. The stuff they were doing wasn't working. So, they use something that works until they can properly perfect their own. Depending how that goes, maybe they won't even finish. Nothing to see here, move along
"BSD is about people pissing each other.." (Moid Vallat)
I am surprised this pure FUD got modded up. The Patriot Act affects every US based company and Apple would have to turn the data over even if they hosted it themselves.
"Any data which is housed, stored or processed by a company, which is a U.S. based company or is wholly owned by a U.S. parent company, is vulnerable to interception and inspection by U.S. authorities."
*YOU* can't virtualize OS X on vSphere,
Completely false.
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/08/when-can-i-run-apple-osx-on-vsphere-5.html
With the release of vSphere 5, you now can run OSX 10.7 (Lion), 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.5 (Leopard) as a supported guestOS in ESXi 5.
The caveat is that in allowing VMware to run OSX as a virtual machine on vSphere 5, the physical hardware that ESXi 5 is running on MUST be Apple hardware and specifically the XServe 3.1. For those of you who do not follow Apple's hardware closely, the XServe line was recently EOL as of January 31, 2011.
(there are also methods to run os X on commodity x86 hardware, but that goes against Apple's eula if you care about such things)
What does it matter? Why shouldn't Apple use Azure for iCloud, assuming this old rumor is even true? Apple isn't offering a cloud computing platform for third parties (just a data service for consumers), so it's not like this is in competition with one of their own products. Apple just wants to sell hardware.
So far, I don't actually see any Apple "fanboys" complaining. As the premiere Microsoft-bashing website, you're the ones who actually care about this.
All this was discussed last time (yep, this is an old rumor). Assuming it's an even true, Apple is free to use Azure and EC2 to get iCloud up and running and then move it to their own data centers later on. Or, maybe they'll just keep using what they're using now. It doesn't matter except to sites like this that treat companies as warring tribes to aid in battle. Apple doesn't give a shit what they're using as long as it helps them sell more Apple hardware. That's the point of iCloud in the first place.
The iTunes Store is very different from a data syncing service. You download your files once, and you're done. You may as well also cite Software Update.
Way to completely miss the point. Apple can run OS X virtualized on any hardware at all, because Apple owns OS X and can do whatever they want with it.
Agreed. Not sure why Apple would be embarrassed to use one of the leading back end products in their back end.
Not like they have a competing product they would be admitting is not up to it.
Troll? Troll? You goddamn stupid Apple fanboys. Everyone who doesn't agree with you is not a troll. I meant every single thing I said there.
They also don't have a phone they direct-sell either. Don't know why you felt like taking the opportunity to blast WP7 but not Windows Tablet Edition, despite them both being essentially the same thing...
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
> Microsoft Word is a professional text processor (like LaTeX).
Someone needs to track you down and slap you upside the head with all 4 volumes of The Art of Computer Programming.
Remember Steve's quote about MS being trucks
This is a good point. MS is doing the truck software. The stuff that brings food out to the supermarkets, goods into the stores. You know, the important stuff that keeps society running. Apple is the Mazda Miata. A fun toy for sure, but not something one would miss terribly if it disappeared. Shut down the truck service and entire cities and communities would crumble and fall. Remove the Miata from the world and a number of gay guys without the income to buy a Jaguar XKR will feel miserable for at least a week.
I didn't want to imply that they're performing equally well, just that they're trying to do the same thing (with a different approach though).