Pixar using Azure to render movies would be like Microsoft building Azure on top of Amazon EC2. Pixar and Microsoft probably could do these things, and argument

Pixar using Azure to render movies would be like Microsoft building Azure on top of Amazon EC2. Pixar and Microsoft probably could do these things, and arguments could be made for the economic advantages, but they'd be giving up opportunities for competitive advantages, and letting outsiders get them by the short and curlies in the context of crucial aspects of their businesses. I could see Pixar working with Microsoft to make Azure-hosted Renderman available for other groups doing rendered projects. For a small film project, I'd think that could be really useful. Then again, Photorealistic Renderman was in NeXTSTEP 3.0, and you could split a rendering job among local NeXT machines as easily as choosing render hosts from a GUI list. That didn't mean Pixar was rendering their Listerine commercials on 25Mhz 68040 boxes.