OK, so, since this is a family newsletter, we're not going to make a reference to "that" Saturday Night Live skit when we talk about Microsoft's cloud in a box. But, yeah, we thought of it too.
Despite the notable absence of Justin Timberlake, Microsoft is talking boxes these days, at the same time that it's saying that it's "all in" for the cloud. How does that work, exactly? Well, Microsoft plans to put the cloud in a box (there's that phrase again -- but we're resisting temptation) with the forthcoming Windows Azure Platform Appliance.
The technology is fairly complex, but the idea is pretty simple. Microsoft compares WAPA (our name, not Microsoft's, but we find it catchy) to a cable or satellite box, except (hopefully) without a bunch of niggling little fees tacked on and with a better product to offer. Essentially, a customer would have WAPA on-premises, but Microsoft would host and maintain the device -- again, kind of like a set-top TV box.
This could be the device that finally bridges the cost advantages and convenience of the cloud with the reassurance about security and reliability that on-premises deployments offer. Or, it could be a thing that looks like a gigantic window-unit air conditioner and goes the way of Windows Vista. We're betting on the former, though, so partners should know how they can take advantage of this work in progress.
And they can find out...by reading the cover story in September's RCP magazine. Jeff Schwartz wraps everything up nicely and well in advance of the holiday season. Read up on Microsoft's cloud in a box and send your thoughts on it to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/30/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments
Right after Microsoft said that it couldn't patch a problem in Windows involving DLL load hijacking, guess what happened? Attacks involving DLL load hijacking popped up all over the place.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/26/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments
Red Hat has a cloud platform. It has a target competitor for that platform: Microsoft Azure. And it has a huge challenge ahead.
The darling of the open source world revealed this week that it has developed a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS, of course -- but not that Paas, or even this one) offering, primarily aimed at companies looking to create "hybrid" clouds, or mixed Internet-service and on-premises IT environments.
In revealing its new platform, Red Hat did perhaps more than it realized to validate Microsoft's competitive offer. Quoth the news story linked above:
"Paul Cormier, executive vice-president and president of Red Hat's products and technologies unit, said that Red Hat and Microsoft are the only two companies that can offer the entire stack necessary to run a hybrid cloud-enabled IT environment. He added that some virtualization vendors lack the operating system and a 'credible middleware offering' to make this claim."
First of all, mee-ow! Take that, VMware! Of course, Cormier is probably right, but he might not realize how such a statement plays into Microsoft's hands. A pure-cloud environment, in which everything runs on an Internet-based platform hosted in a vendor's data center and is delivered to a company on a subscription basis, levels the playing field somewhat for companies trying to compete against Microsoft.
After all, if a company really is going to just chuck its whole IT infrastructure into the cloud, there's no reason for it not to consider a fresh start with a brand-new vendor. But nobody's doing that -- and Red Hat gets that (as does Microsoft). Companies are going to farm some functionality out to the cloud but continue to house some of it -- probably most of it -- within their own walls.
And that's where Microsoft should have the same old advantage it has had over Red Hat and other vendors for years: its massive installed base. It's the old pitch extended to a new model: Why mess around with multiple vendors when you can get everything from Redmond, both what you have in-house and what you need in a hosted model?
OK, so maybe the pitch isn't quite that simple, but it's not far off. And it is one big point in Microsoft's favor as the company begins in earnest to compete in the cloud with rivals such as Amazon, Google and now Red Hat. Plus ca change, as the French would say...The more things change, the more things stay the same.
What's your take on Microsoft competing with Red Hat in the cloud? How compelling does Red Hat's PaaS offer look at first blush compared to Azure? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/26/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments
Windows turns 25 this year, and we'll be celebrating the operating system's big birthday in Redmond and RCP, online and in print. We'd like to get your memories of the first Windows launch, stories about the early days of the OS or even thought on where Windows is going. Send your thoughts to [email protected]. As always, we won't publish anything in the magazines without notifying you first.
Thanks,
Lee
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/25/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments
If anything is going to derail the cloud-computing train, it'll be cloud computing itself.
Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite -- the cloud versions of Exchange, SharePoint and other tools that Microsoft itself hosts -- went out for a couple of hours on Monday. A couple of hours might not sound like a big deal, but it's a pretty long time to be without e-mail or SharePoint access. And, more to the point, two hours would be a virtual eternity if a truly critical system -- something like an ERP application or suite -- were involved.
Of course, this shouldn't be that big of a deal because this stuff happens all the time. But that's precisely the problem: This stuff happens all the time. Data-center outages, some lasting hours, are still common enough that many companies are hesitant to move anything to the cloud except some extraneous or non-critical applications. As long as that's the case, the cloud won't reach its full potential as a revolutionary model for IT.
We know, too, that on-premises systems go down all the time as well. But in that case, a big enough company can get a partner or an internal IT department started on fixing it. When cloud apps go down, all companies can do is sit on their hands (or scream into the phone) and wait for their providers to make everything OK again.
Many Microsoft partners' role in cloud computing is still up in the air (ahem, so to speak). But Microsoft has pledged many times to be "all in" for the cloud, so it's coming to (and from) Redmond whether partners are prepared for it or not. These outages, though, remain the proverbial elephant in the room for partners looking to sell the cloud to their customers. And there's not much that partners who don't host applications themselves can do about them.
In that sense, many partners are a lot like customers when it comes to cloud computing -- when something goes wrong, they have to wait around for somebody else to fix it just as the customer does. Frustrating? Sure. Discouraging to potential clients? Undoubtedly. Avoidable? Apparently not. So, what's a partner to do when the system goes down and somebody else has to fix it? Wait, we suppose, and wonder whether cloud computing will ever become reliable enough to erase doubts about it.
What's your take on reliability in the cloud? Do you trust cloud-based applications? Do you have any horror stories about the cloud? Tell them at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/25/2010 at 1:23 PM2 comments
Actually, there are two tablets coming: one running WebOS, and a likely more expensive (and enterprise-focused) version running Windows 7.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/23/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments
It's really pretty amazing that despite the presence of plenty of cheap (or free) alternatives, expensive and bloated Microsoft Office still rules the desktop -- but it does. There's a lot to be said for familiarity, we suppose.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/23/2010 at 1:23 PM1 comments
Oh, if only Tiger Woods could have delayed the public outing of his indiscretions, we'd be able to make quite a few golf-related jokes here. But with Tiger as stale as a July 4 cake (you have one every year, don't you?), we'll just have to settle for writing about some company called 3Par without making any silly golf references.
After all, we don't know much about golf here at RCPU. We didn't know much about 3Par, either, until today, when news broke that HP and Dell were in a billion-dollar battle to buy the company. Apparently, HP has won the war with a $1.6 billion bid, meaning somebody at 3Par headquarters is swilling champagne right about now.
So, $1.6 billion for a company that does...what, exactly? Well, 3Par makes network-management and storage-virtualization applications, which apparently can play a pretty big role in optimizing cloud-computing environments, particularly cloud storage.
OK, well, that makes sense. Anything that makes cloud computing easier and more cost effective is going to have value for companies like Dell and HP. But this acquisition also makes us wonder: Who else is out there doing this kind of stuff, flying under the radar and waiting for a big-name suitor to come along and finance a few rounds of golf (there it is) for some innovative entrepreneur?
We want to hear from you. Which companies are quietly building themselves up to become the next big players in cloud computing, or the next big buyout targets? Obscure names only please to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/23/2010 at 1:23 PM0 comments