Services have been migrating to the Internet with the Web 2.0 explosion. Companies have come (albeit cautiously) to depend on hosted services for certain applications- most notably CRM data. Salesforce has been particularly successful at offering an application which has replaced custom Access database systems or equivalent islands of office customer and sales data with a browser accessible replacement. Originally adopted by small and/or venture-based companies, the maturation of Salesforce (and its developer tools) has led to adoption by much larger companies.
So while the term cloud is a relatively hot term over the past year or so- personal and corporate data has been trusted to hosted environments for years. This trust will only grow in the future and the promotion of in-house hosted applications to the cloud is inevitable. Hosting services and data in the cloud makes sense for the following reasons:
- Opportunity to reduced infrastructure/management costs. While a business’s infrastructure cannot be eliminated entirely, the cash outlay of purchasing servers and the time to manage them by staff can be reduced.
- Pay what you use. Cloud computing vendors offer pricing strategies based on processor demand, storage, etc. A careful analysis is necessary to determine your particular savings, but generally for new or small businesses, the cost may be easily calculated and the savings compelling.
- Scale for demand. Perhaps the reason that stands without much argument is the potential for properly designed cloud hosted applications to scale with demand. Your outlay of capital is preserved because you only pay extra for those times where there is overwhelming demand for computing resources. (perhaps during the end-of-year holiday rush, or tax season)
For each one of these reasons to consider the cloud there is a counterpoint or equally convincing reason not to… that will be covered in a separate post.
Why Azure?
The term ‘cloud computing’ has been around for a while and Amazon has been offering its Elastic Cloud for the past two years. Microsoft was bound to jump into the fray sooner or later and it wouldn’t be a recent Microsoft offering if it wasn’t somehow wrapped up in .NET. Leveraging .NET is in Microsoft’s best interest, and in the interest of developers who’ve spent the time mastering the supported languages and framework. Simply put…
“Windows Azure is a platform for running Windows applications and storing data in the cloud.”
Azure’s API is REST based and thus is available to developers who choose not to embrace the .NET lifestyle.
What kind of solutions is Windows Azure appropriate to host?
- Business-oriented solutions (services and/or applications) which target businesses. (SaaS Software as a Service)
- Consumer targeted software solutions. Azure’s scalability is especially well suited for burst conditions, such as holiday seasons or single day events.
- Line-Of-Business or other enterprise-level applications.
Furthermore, Microsoft intends to build its own SaaS (Software as a Service) applications on the Windows Azure platform.
Azure’s Engine
Powering Azure are Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. Microsoft’s GFS is not spoken about often, but it is supplies the substrate on which Microsoft’s service strategy is based. This platform is responsible for hosting hundreds of Microsoft’s own applications and underpins the Azure services as well. The new GFS data centers are based around ‘containerized’ servers. Each container (think cargo shipping container) holds a standard configuration of approximately 2,300 servers. This provides up to a ten-fold increase in computing density over traditionally outfitted data centers. Furthermore, additional computing capability can be brought online, by adding additional containers as demand permits. While this strategy isn’t unique to Microsoft, it is the sheer scope of the build-out that places the capabilities of this platform in a position to dominate the space. Each data center is designed to house approximately 225 containers. Microsoft will bring over a half million servers to the cloud with each data center it operates.
