4 ms·

Love this quote: “The biggest advantage I have with Microsoft is I don’t have to go to any other vendor for any solution -- I can go to one partner for all of

Love this quote: “The biggest advantage I have with Microsoft is I don’t have to go to any other vendor for any solution -- I can go to one partner for all of my operating systems, all of my development environment and all of my infrastructure tools,” he said. “Why would I waste time looking at another third-party solution?” ... "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". "I'm a lazy C-level exec." "I love having all my eggs in one basket." "I just write a check, and all my problems are solved." "Money buys happiness."

bostonpete 14y ago
I see your points but I think your characterization of this attitude as lazy or stupid are overly hostile. I'm not going to defend the mindset but I can see some appeal in having one company to deal with. Anyone who's ever faced a problem where multiple vendors are blaming each other for your ongoing woes knows how frustrating that can be.
- iamleppert 14y ago
  And that's what a CIO/CTO's job is. Be technically competent to understand the technology he is using, or (at least) have someone on his team that is. It isn't rocket science to figure out where the problem is (be it CPU, network I/O, some software run wild), etc. If you're involved in IT, especially if you're developing software, you should be able to do some rudimentary analysis of the software you're actually buying.
  - rubinelli 14y ago
    That's a very simplistic view. As many AWS, GAE, and Heroku clients will tell you, when your app is up there in the cloud, there are times when all the instrumentation in the world won't help you fix a problem.
MichaelGG 14y ago
The flip side is that you end up in a scenario where two or three vendors can blame each other for problems. With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, and can't blame any other vendors, driver, hardware, or network issues. Edit: Also, really? You don't think there's any benefit to integration? That's like Microsoft's whole deal - make their stuff work well with their other stuff. Sure, it creates lock-in, but it's also a feature users want. I want my various programs to easily work with each other in obvious ways, and not have to worry about compatibility issues.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, Not really. Vendor lock in still applies.
  - nivla 14y ago
    >Not really. Mind explaining a bit more? If I buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 and the lock screen wouldn't let me in because of a bug in Android, Samsung is still responsible. >Vendor lock in still applies. Again, how exactly would that be, if I am say using Ubuntu and Mysql+PHP on a Azure?
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      And how much effort is Microsoft willing to dedicate to fix your Ubuntu/MySQL/PHP stack? It's only a single vendor solution until you introduce a second one.
      - nivla 14y ago
        >And how much effort is Microsoft willing to dedicate to fix your Ubuntu/MySQL/PHP stack? Isn't that the same as asking how much Google is willing to fix Linux for the Android stack?? > It's only a single vendor solution until you introduce a second one. And your solution is to tell everyone to get a VM and install and maintain everything from scratch? Yeah that will definetly work, which is why the internet is secure with up-to-date Ubuntu stacks from all the daily "sudo apt-get update" keystrokes. /s
      - outside1234 14y ago
        A lot actually - the node.js solution on Windows Azure is super solid and they have a core developer on the node.js project to make it so.
mynameishere 14y ago
That's an odd quote, especially when most competitors provide windows virtual machines, and azure provides linux. Also, I doubt msft cancels your account if you use mysql instead of sql server. ...but I honestly agree with the sentiment. I will pay money to not deal with sysadmin headaches, which is something you get a lot of using a hodgepodge of technologies.
sampsonjs 14y ago
C#, .Net ASP, Visual Studio, and Azure are all very good development products. I know, because I tried them myself. Or ask the Stack Overflow guys. It's called thinking for yourself. As for your appeal to the recieved wisdom that everything MS does must suck because Graham said so, let me point out that their monopoly gives them very little advantage when it comes to catering to developers. No one has to use their servers, languages, DBs, etc. So they have to do a good job.
jmspring 14y ago
There are a lot of people building on top of MSFT platforms. ASP.NET, C#, etc. may not be sexy, but a lot of people use these languages/platforms regularly. Probably more than any particular web-based language. Being able to your desktop skills and move them to the "cloud" with tight integration in Visual Studio helps leverage a large existing developer ecosystem.

bostonpete 14y ago

I see your points but I think your characterization of this attitude as lazy or stupid are overly hostile. I'm not going to defend the mindset but I can see some appeal in having one company to deal with. Anyone who's ever faced a problem where multiple vendors are blaming each other for your ongoing woes knows how frustrating that can be.

iamleppert 14y ago
And that's what a CIO/CTO's job is. Be technically competent to understand the technology he is using, or (at least) have someone on his team that is. It isn't rocket science to figure out where the problem is (be it CPU, network I/O, some software run wild), etc. If you're involved in IT, especially if you're developing software, you should be able to do some rudimentary analysis of the software you're actually buying.
- rubinelli 14y ago
  That's a very simplistic view. As many AWS, GAE, and Heroku clients will tell you, when your app is up there in the cloud, there are times when all the instrumentation in the world won't help you fix a problem.

MichaelGG 14y ago

The flip side is that you end up in a scenario where two or three vendors can blame each other for problems. With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, and can't blame any other vendors, driver, hardware, or network issues. Edit: Also, really? You don't think there's any benefit to integration? That's like Microsoft's whole deal - make their stuff work well with their other stuff. Sure, it creates lock-in, but it's also a feature users want. I want my various programs to easily work with each other in obvious ways, and not have to worry about compatibility issues.

rbanffy 14y ago
> With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, Not really. Vendor lock in still applies.
- nivla 14y ago
  >Not really. Mind explaining a bit more? If I buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 and the lock screen wouldn't let me in because of a bug in Android, Samsung is still responsible. >Vendor lock in still applies. Again, how exactly would that be, if I am say using Ubuntu and Mysql+PHP on a Azure?
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    And how much effort is Microsoft willing to dedicate to fix your Ubuntu/MySQL/PHP stack? It's only a single vendor solution until you introduce a second one.
    - nivla 14y ago
      >And how much effort is Microsoft willing to dedicate to fix your Ubuntu/MySQL/PHP stack? Isn't that the same as asking how much Google is willing to fix Linux for the Android stack?? > It's only a single vendor solution until you introduce a second one. And your solution is to tell everyone to get a VM and install and maintain everything from scratch? Yeah that will definetly work, which is why the internet is secure with up-to-date Ubuntu stacks from all the daily "sudo apt-get update" keystrokes. /s
    - outside1234 14y ago
      A lot actually - the node.js solution on Windows Azure is super solid and they have a core developer on the node.js project to make it so.

mynameishere 14y ago

That's an odd quote, especially when most competitors provide windows virtual machines, and azure provides linux. Also, I doubt msft cancels your account if you use mysql instead of sql server. ...but I honestly agree with the sentiment. I will pay money to not deal with sysadmin headaches, which is something you get a lot of using a hodgepodge of technologies.

sampsonjs 14y ago

C#, .Net ASP, Visual Studio, and Azure are all very good development products. I know, because I tried them myself. Or ask the Stack Overflow guys. It's called thinking for yourself. As for your appeal to the recieved wisdom that everything MS does must suck because Graham said so, let me point out that their monopoly gives them very little advantage when it comes to catering to developers. No one has to use their servers, languages, DBs, etc. So they have to do a good job.

jmspring 14y ago

There are a lot of people building on top of MSFT platforms. ASP.NET, C#, etc. may not be sexy, but a lot of people use these languages/platforms regularly. Probably more than any particular web-based language. Being able to your desktop skills and move them to the "cloud" with tight integration in Visual Studio helps leverage a large existing developer ecosystem.