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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
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.
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!
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."
No, Apple was not about to go under. The $150 million was a token gesture of solidarity and it purchased non-voting shares. Apple had BILLIONS of dollars in the bank at the time. Apple was rudderless, which is what led to Jobs returning and reforging the sword that was broken, but Apple didn't need Microsoft's cash--they needed Office to be supported.
'which is what led to Jobs returning and reforging the sword that was broken'
Well okay then.
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.
What you have described is a system that not only uses two providers but uses each of them for distinct function, each of them critical. So if either has performance problems, the whole system has performance problems, and if either of them fails, the whole system fails.
Apple does a lot of stupid things, but they are not THAT stupid. "Striping" would be a better option than that.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Okay, that's it, I'm holding this thread open till someone seriously explains how the Bildberg group conspired to make sure it just LOOKED like Apple took any help from Microsoft because otherwise you'd just DIE of shame omigaw.
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 was going to say, what idiot believes Microsoft is Apple's main competitor now? Microsoft and Apple have been buddy buddy for some years now, both teaming up against Google, which is a shame, because both of them are individually bigger than Google, so could just compete on their merits if they were so inclined.
Apple and Microsoft have long been working together on things like IP strategy and keeping down competitors, it's not suprising to see cooperation in other areas too really.
That's like saying I hope that police will never eradicate mafia, because competition is the best...
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.
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.
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
*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.
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."
After all these years, most people still don't know what the reasons were for the buying of non-voting stock. First of all, Apple wasn't "about to go under." Everyone makes the same mistake in repeating this myth that Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Second, the reason Microsoft bought the stock and continued Office was part of an agreement over the theft of Quicktime source code and its use in Video For Windows.