Microsoft clears the path for Azure

Microsoft is poised to deliver its Windows Azure Web services platform this year, the company has confirmed, and has begun conditioning its customers to understand the challenges and benefits of cloud computing.
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"We are hardening the surface areas of the core Azure operating system and getting ready for commercial availability," said Steven Martin, senior director of developer platform product management at Microsoft.

Azure's platform technology will evolve more rapidly than Microsoft's traditional operating system release schedule, Martin said. It will be more like a Web construct than a series of Windows milestones, he explained. The Azure operating system is a modified version of Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft is also plugging away at Azure's building bock services, including Dynamics CRM, .NET services, SharePoint, SQL and Windows Live services. It has begun to cycle extra resources to SQL Data Services based on developer feedback, Martin said.

SQL Data Services, which analysts have compared with Amazon's SimpleDB, is being given a much broader focus than it had at its introduction and is being given more relational database functionality.

"There will be a significant expansion of what it looks like today," Martin noted. Details will be disclosed later this month at the company's MIX09 conference.

"Microsoft is making a good attempt at cloud computing, but it appears there is a lot left to deliver, so the jury is going to be out for a while," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal analyst of Beagle Research Group. He posited that Microsoft was rushing Azure to market to counter the growing success of Salesforce.com, not because it was totally ready.

Ahead of MIX09, Microsoft has begun pitching its customers with cloud computing scenarios. Martin cited an example where a company with applications that have high, short-term workloads could use capacity on demand to lower maintenance costs when those applications are not running.

While it is introducing cloud-based scenarios, the company offers little guidance through developer-focused reference applications. Martin said that Microsoft's Live Meeting Web conferencing service was using components of Azure services, and that more of Microsoft's Web-based offerings would use Azure as their infrastructure as time goes on.

"The reference applications are essential apps that developers use to learn how to leverage or build other deployable types of apps," said Bonnie McCracken, spokesperson for Microsoft. "Think of them as educational tools. We don't have anything specific to share at this time, but we will in the coming months."

When asked which Microsoft customers were developing applications for Azure, Martin cited Epicor, Micro Focus and S3Edge as examples—the same examples that it previously offered in the fall.

Epicor is creating an ERP system on Azure. Micro Focus has created a service that executes COBOL applications in the cloud. S3Edge is building an RFID-based inventory recall system.

To assist more customers onto the Azure platform, the company's patterns and practices group will deliver recommended best practices on cloud utilization and data storage concepts later this year, according to Martin.

Likewise, enterprise governance is also on the radar. Microsoft has begun talking to customers about how application portability will affect compliance with regulation and privacy policies, said Martin. Visual Studio will let developers decide whether to deploy applications on premises, in the cloud or as a combination of the two.

The company is consulting with its customers and will disclose what service-level agreements it will be offering closer to the end of the year. Its offerings may be based on the demands of an application, Martin said. "We might have tiers of SLAs. When we drill into it, customers just want a high degree of availability, replications, distribution and fault tolerance drafted into a system."

SLAs may be of importance to developers because Azure components can comprise composite applications. Azure will be interoperable with other cloud services through Internet standards, and developers may choose to use services on an a la carte basis, said Microsoft's corporate vice president Robert Wahbe in October.

A metadata model will help SOA governance vendors create supplementary products for managing Azure services, said Martin. "Tracking metadata will be associated with a service from the point of origin; developers that consume a service as part of an application will have a high level of visibility."

"The company is making most of the right sounds around the platform," said Beagle Research Group's Pombriant. "However, at the moment it looks like Microsoft will be the odd person out.

“Salesforce.com, Amazon, Google, Facebook and others have all been careful to enable integration across their platforms. I'm not sure Microsoft will do the same as many of these companies are direct competitors in one or more areas of the business."

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BY David Worthington
Source：SDTimes

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