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Microsoft is in a really special place for me right now from the perspective of both technology owner and investor. Azure growth was inevitable based upon my (

Microsoft is in a really special place for me right now from the perspective of both technology owner and investor. Azure growth was inevitable based upon my (positive) experience over the last 3 months splitting an org into multiple tenants. Enterprise applications + app proxies are an amazing way to get your employees off legacy VPN crap and working with a simple org-wide SAML/MFA/SSO flow. And, this stuff actually works. It doesn't require invoking a bunch of arcane APIs to get the job done. I haven't seen anything short of a few Cloudflare offerings that gets anywhere close. My most recent shit-test for Azure was building a FreePBX instance (i.e. non-windows) from install. It took me less than 1 hour to go from downloaded ISO to booting VM in Azure. The reason I made it from scratch is because I wasted an entire day trying to get AWS to export the old EC2 copy. I got something out but it definitely wasn't planning to boot up for me. I am at a point where an "all-in" Microsoft stack is a super compelling idea. Today, when I go and look at Azure Active Directory, I have a level of confidence that simply does not exist anywhere else. Everything can be made to suffer our policies and procedures from top-down. Even other clouds. I've got AWS running as a sidecar to our AAD using SAML & SCIM to sync+auth identities. The only things keeping us from chopping AWS completely are Route53 (just domain registration) and S3 (because we are too lazy to learn something new at the moment). We currently have no direct exposure to Google products or services. I would like to add one extra "FU" that I perceived throughout the Azure vs AWS experience: Microsoft has a browser plugin that will automatically run through the AWS control panel on your behalf in order to configure certain SAML/SCIM integrations. Clearly, at some point someone at Microsoft thought "this AWS UX is way too confusing for our customers" and actually cared about it enough to do something. None of this even touches on Office, .NET, GitHub, Visual Studio, Xbox, etc. Each of these on their own would be a compelling reason to invest.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Going on a tangent and maybe it's just coincidence, but the lack of Windows in your list of compelling reasons is kind of telling.
- bob1029 4y ago
  I omitted windows with intent. There are things to like (i.e. centralization & control for business cases), but also many, many things to dislike. If I had a chance to make one argument to the board of Microsoft, I would plead with them to create a separate "hacker" edition of windows that is true price and ships with absolutely zero crapware. Some argue with me that Windows Server is effectively this, but brand image won't improve much with that narrative. Adjusted for inflation, Windows 95 cost over $400 on launch day. I don't mind paying big bucks for an OS if it's done properly. This is precisely the same issue we run into with TVs. You'll find HN complaining about it approximately every 30 days or so. Price gets subsidized into a shitty experience every time. At least in the case of physical goods you have some realistic arguments for not differentiating the product line, but when it's a goddamn piece of software that already has a bunch of editions I don't see why not.
- huijzer 4y ago
  Satya Nadella has said in interviews that Google makes more money from an average Windows system than Microsoft does, which probably explains their lack of focus on improving Windows. They probably figured that it’s better to spend effort in improving Azure.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
In a way, I think it was inevitable. Microsoft strength was always their ability to understand and talk to their business customer. Microsoft always makes the effort to speak your language and bridge the gap between what you are looking for and what they offer. Curious to see if they are going to end up eating AWS lunch or not.
rektide 4y ago
Personally the appeal isn't high for me myself, but I tend towards more DIY. And I generally feel like a little nit doing an ec2 copy is a poor indicator, and that platforms tend more towards being at parity than differentiating. My tiny little Azure Cloud nit on a rare-for-me encounters with Azure Cloud was the dev tools requiring two totally separate login types for seemingly no real reason other than a lack of updating a legacy system, and that made me forever think Azure Cloud was kind of dialing it in. It made working with them more complex than anything else I'd worked with. One thing I think we agree a lot on is the value of good directory services: > Today, when I go and look at Azure Active Directory, I have a level of confidence that simply does not exist anywhere else. Everything can be made to suffer our policies and procedures from top-down. With my interest in DIY, self-hosting, I have long & increasingly felt like the weakest link is Directory Services. Tons of great great ways to run operate & maintain systems. But man, keeping track of employees (and ideally users too, albeit in a separate Directory) is hard! Roles are hard! Red Hat's FreeIPA is good stuff (albeit on the somewhat off base/lower development 389ds Directory Server), a huge collection of tools to help setup infra. But it's been fairly inaccessible until semi-recently & it definitely requires significant growing in & expertise. And it's one of the only high-integration options out there. There's tons of great tools that complement each other well to build amazing directory service systems, but FreeIPA is one of the only already well integrated options. And it's still only semi Cloud integrated. Trying to setup Kubernetes to use this all is still a huge second feat. I think, with the native cloud world, the directory service concerns are rapidly becoming the biggest gate, the worst hurdle, for those trying to set themselves up as capable computer operators. We seemingly both share appreciation for this task.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Dalewyn 4y ago

Going on a tangent and maybe it's just coincidence, but the lack of Windows in your list of compelling reasons is kind of telling.

bob1029 4y ago
I omitted windows with intent. There are things to like (i.e. centralization & control for business cases), but also many, many things to dislike. If I had a chance to make one argument to the board of Microsoft, I would plead with them to create a separate "hacker" edition of windows that is true price and ships with absolutely zero crapware. Some argue with me that Windows Server is effectively this, but brand image won't improve much with that narrative. Adjusted for inflation, Windows 95 cost over $400 on launch day. I don't mind paying big bucks for an OS if it's done properly. This is precisely the same issue we run into with TVs. You'll find HN complaining about it approximately every 30 days or so. Price gets subsidized into a shitty experience every time. At least in the case of physical goods you have some realistic arguments for not differentiating the product line, but when it's a goddamn piece of software that already has a bunch of editions I don't see why not.
huijzer 4y ago
Satya Nadella has said in interviews that Google makes more money from an average Windows system than Microsoft does, which probably explains their lack of focus on improving Windows. They probably figured that it’s better to spend effort in improving Azure.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

In a way, I think it was inevitable. Microsoft strength was always their ability to understand and talk to their business customer. Microsoft always makes the effort to speak your language and bridge the gap between what you are looking for and what they offer. Curious to see if they are going to end up eating AWS lunch or not.

rektide 4y ago

Personally the appeal isn't high for me myself, but I tend towards more DIY. And I generally feel like a little nit doing an ec2 copy is a poor indicator, and that platforms tend more towards being at parity than differentiating. My tiny little Azure Cloud nit on a rare-for-me encounters with Azure Cloud was the dev tools requiring two totally separate login types for seemingly no real reason other than a lack of updating a legacy system, and that made me forever think Azure Cloud was kind of dialing it in. It made working with them more complex than anything else I'd worked with. One thing I think we agree a lot on is the value of good directory services: > Today, when I go and look at Azure Active Directory, I have a level of confidence that simply does not exist anywhere else. Everything can be made to suffer our policies and procedures from top-down. With my interest in DIY, self-hosting, I have long & increasingly felt like the weakest link is Directory Services. Tons of great great ways to run operate & maintain systems. But man, keeping track of employees (and ideally users too, albeit in a separate Directory) is hard! Roles are hard! Red Hat's FreeIPA is good stuff (albeit on the somewhat off base/lower development 389ds Directory Server), a huge collection of tools to help setup infra. But it's been fairly inaccessible until semi-recently & it definitely requires significant growing in & expertise. And it's one of the only high-integration options out there. There's tons of great tools that complement each other well to build amazing directory service systems, but FreeIPA is one of the only already well integrated options. And it's still only semi Cloud integrated. Trying to setup Kubernetes to use this all is still a huge second feat. I think, with the native cloud world, the directory service concerns are rapidly becoming the biggest gate, the worst hurdle, for those trying to set themselves up as capable computer operators. We seemingly both share appreciation for this task.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]