5 ms·

What Ray Ozzie Didn't Tell You About Microsoft Azure

29 points by twampss 18y ago

kleneway 18y ago
"Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from? 1. A company whose main business is books 2. A company whose main business is text advertisements 3. A company whose main business is business software" This is a really, really important observation. First time I've seen it spelled out so clearly.
- twampss 18y ago
  I agree completely. Especially if you're at Big Corp X that already has some sort of service agreement with Microsoft. Working with an existing vendor and getting a new service is more cost efficient than signing on with a new vendor for a similar service (in terms of writing up request for proposal, man hours, etc).
- Angostura 18y ago
  It's also a very clever framing the question in a leading way. Let's try framing it in another way: Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from? 1. A company who built its entire business on the high availability of its international network of online transaction engines, 2. A company which has built its business on indexing, and processing one of the biggest data stores in the world, and which has also built and run the world's most popular Internet-based productivity tools. 3. A company whose business relies om shipping a PC operating systems and which also supplies a word processor. " I'm not saying that my framing is any less biased, just that there is more than one way to view these things.
- ken 18y ago
  I've worked at a true bigco (you've used their products) that ran acres of Microsoft desktops. Angostura is correct. Just because bigco mgmt found Windows to be the most suitable desktop for them, doesn't mean they'll use Microsoft products anywhere else. We used several databases, but none from Microsoft. We used several programming languages, but none from Microsoft. Suggesting either would get you laughed out of the room even quicker than suggesting a free software solution (and in fact, we did use free software for several things like this, which mgmt saw as its fortes). Managers at bigco want to minimize risk. (We used Windows 2000 until about 2006, i.e., it took a while to trust Microsoft at the one thing we thought they were good at.) When (not if) something goes wrong, they don't want the finger pointed at them. They're risk-averse to an extreme (which drives us programmers nuts), but they're not that stupid -- they know a PC OS is vastly different from a cloud platform. A brand new service from a company not known for this type of service is not minimizing risk. If they got the itch to try cloud computing, they probably would have started by calling up Oracle.
andr 18y ago
Ok, so the whole article is just a regurgitation of what is already known about Windows Azure + ranting. Dziuba has obviously not used the service. If you think about it, .NET Live Services' service bus = SQS but better. SQL Services = Bigtable. Azure = AppEngine (you give it the code and it makes it run). It's not really that hard to get, different, or superfluous. It's just so easy to use that your average enterprise VB window pusher can use it. And yes, the marketing sucks. It took me a good hour to see what's going on.
kirubakaran 18y ago
When their cloud goes down, it will be called 'The Blue Sky Of Death'.
Hoff 18y ago
This is the same Microsoft business model and strategy that's been in use since the Windows product first got traction. New and up-rated buzz phrases, same and repackaged and renamed and updated products and services. If you watch, most of the Microsofties will use the same gestures and techniques in the presentations, too. The languages listed as "soon" would appear to be a freeze-the-market component of the classic competitive strategy, as are the barbs tossed at the competitors. Almost certainly more technical and operations and licensing complexity and cross-version complexity, though the C-level usually discovers these costs after the deal is done. If at all. Will it work? Sure. But you'll (still) be using Windows and Windows Networking, with all that entails. But hey, they got you to look at Windows. Again.

29 points by twampss 18y ago

"Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from? 1. A company whose main business is books 2. A company whose main business is text advertisements 3. A company whose main business is business software" This is a really, really important observation. First time I've seen it spelled out so clearly.

twampss 18y ago
I agree completely. Especially if you're at Big Corp X that already has some sort of service agreement with Microsoft. Working with an existing vendor and getting a new service is more cost efficient than signing on with a new vendor for a similar service (in terms of writing up request for proposal, man hours, etc).
Angostura 18y ago
It's also a very clever framing the question in a leading way. Let's try framing it in another way: Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from? 1. A company who built its entire business on the high availability of its international network of online transaction engines, 2. A company which has built its business on indexing, and processing one of the biggest data stores in the world, and which has also built and run the world's most popular Internet-based productivity tools. 3. A company whose business relies om shipping a PC operating systems and which also supplies a word processor. " I'm not saying that my framing is any less biased, just that there is more than one way to view these things.
ken 18y ago
I've worked at a true bigco (you've used their products) that ran acres of Microsoft desktops. Angostura is correct. Just because bigco mgmt found Windows to be the most suitable desktop for them, doesn't mean they'll use Microsoft products anywhere else. We used several databases, but none from Microsoft. We used several programming languages, but none from Microsoft. Suggesting either would get you laughed out of the room even quicker than suggesting a free software solution (and in fact, we did use free software for several things like this, which mgmt saw as its fortes). Managers at bigco want to minimize risk. (We used Windows 2000 until about 2006, i.e., it took a while to trust Microsoft at the one thing we thought they were good at.) When (not if) something goes wrong, they don't want the finger pointed at them. They're risk-averse to an extreme (which drives us programmers nuts), but they're not that stupid -- they know a PC OS is vastly different from a cloud platform. A brand new service from a company not known for this type of service is not minimizing risk. If they got the itch to try cloud computing, they probably would have started by calling up Oracle.

andr 18y ago

Ok, so the whole article is just a regurgitation of what is already known about Windows Azure + ranting. Dziuba has obviously not used the service. If you think about it, .NET Live Services' service bus = SQS but better. SQL Services = Bigtable. Azure = AppEngine (you give it the code and it makes it run). It's not really that hard to get, different, or superfluous. It's just so easy to use that your average enterprise VB window pusher can use it. And yes, the marketing sucks. It took me a good hour to see what's going on.

kirubakaran 18y ago

When their cloud goes down, it will be called 'The Blue Sky Of Death'.

Hoff 18y ago

This is the same Microsoft business model and strategy that's been in use since the Windows product first got traction. New and up-rated buzz phrases, same and repackaged and renamed and updated products and services. If you watch, most of the Microsofties will use the same gestures and techniques in the presentations, too. The languages listed as "soon" would appear to be a freeze-the-market component of the classic competitive strategy, as are the barbs tossed at the competitors. Almost certainly more technical and operations and licensing complexity and cross-version complexity, though the C-level usually discovers these costs after the deal is done. If at all. Will it work? Sure. But you'll (still) be using Windows and Windows Networking, with all that entails. But hey, they got you to look at Windows. Again.