Azure Components !!

I found this really cool image in the latest Azure SDK that does a good job of explaining key azure pieces in one line each.



Windows Azure Overview

  I think the Microsoft messaging is definitely improving, and will go a long way in making users understand the long term vision. Above positioning of various Azure pieces is much better than the initial days when everyone was having a hard time understanding various roles and where it fits into the long term roadmap. Good job Microsoft!!

Now you only need to make sure that product can support the message. For example; the SQL Azure positioninig above may be right for structured data, but I am not sure about the support for unstructred data in the current version. :)
    

Cloud Computing and Security - Is it about trust ?

Attended an Azure briefing at Microsoft last week. One of the most interesting moment was the discussion (more like debate) around security in cloud. It's was a rare occasion when attendees were non hesitant to show their passion :) about the topic. Someone had a great perspective on the topic that I couldn't forget about, and decided to blog my take on it.

The gentleman truly seemed to believe that secuirty concerns related to cloud will dicipate faster if it was an offering brought forth by non-technology companies. People and organizations have hard time trusting companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon because they do trust technology as a whole. Majority of people (technical as well as non-technical) see technology as something that's not very stable and goes through significant changes.

 For example; my grafather may not care how banks and credit card companies are storing (and processing) his money. Reason being the trust and perception that these organizations have built over last many many years. If my grandfather was to know that his money is being stored as 0s and 1s on distant servers that keep crashing and are susceptible to viruses, he may not be as inclined to trust a bank with his life long savings. The regulations and oversight that governemnt has over these financial institutions is also a key factor in building this trust.

  On the other hand, companies like Microsoft, IBM and Google have spent thier lifetime trying to sell licenses, and have created a perception of being always in an evolutionary mode. For cloud to be successful, these vendors will have to solve the credibility problem more than the technology problem.
Maybe the relative early success of  Amazon over other cloud vendors is a pointer to prove my hypothesis as people have more trust in Amazon because of it's successful eCommerce business.

Food for thought!!

Visual Studio 2010 Release - Impact on Azure Development

I have been playing with Azure for some time now, and also got few opportunities to put together few POCs. I was using VS 2008 for some of the initial attempts, then moved onto VS 2010 RC. Azure was also in flux and went through several changes.

  Now that Azure is a released product, and VS 2010 is also out; I would strongly recommend everyone doing Azure development to get the latest versions of both. VS 2010 has amazing support for Azure when it comes to development as well as deployment to the cloud. Being able to generate a visual UML model from code is icing on the cake (for Azure as well as non-Azure projects).

  I also didn;t come across any significant roadblocks in migrating some of the older code to new SDK and VS 2010. But again, none of my solutions were overly complicated.

  Overall, the transition has been a positive experience. Thank You Microsoft!! There are many other cool new features in VS 2010 that I look forward to talking about in future posts.

  Cheers!!      

Microsoft Azure Vs Amazon Vs Google Vs Others

Oen question I am frequently asked is to compare various cloud offerings in the market. Although I am just starting to play with Azure, I have been using Amazon EC2 for some time now. There doesn't seem to be much overlap between the approach of the three key vendors.

Here is my current understanding (which may change as I dive deeper into Azure). There is also a good chance that Microsoft has unveiled only a small subset of the long term product roadmap, and may release new features in future to compete directly with Amazon EC2 or google apps.

Amaozn EC2:
               Not too different from existing hosters like "Network Solutions" and "Go Daddy", except privides the unlimited elasticity of the resources coupled with "pay as you go" model.

    Simply speaking:
               a. You can rent as many servers as you want (scale up and down)
               b. You can pretty much install anything on those servers (Windows, LAMP, etc)
               c. You pay only for the resources that you use (instead of a fixed monthly fee)
               d. You take care of installing load balancer and such based on how you want to manage session state acorss various servers.

Microsoft Azure: 
             It's more of a platform (or a set of APIs). As long as your code follows the standards defined by the underlying API, Azure takes care of the rest. That rest includes things like:
            a. Setting up of servers
            b. Load balancing      
            c. Scale up (and) down based on your user load and subscription level.

    Essentially, you are not renting just a bunch of hardware and dealing with headache of installing software on it, but building your solution based on some specification and leaving the hardware-software headcahe to Microsoft. Thus, being able to focus more on your business logic as opposed to dealing with software versioning and compatibilities issues.

Google Apps:
        I do not have much experience with Google Apps, but it seems more of a SaaS (Software as a service) play. You essentially subscribe to softwares like Gmail, Google Docs,etc; and  you get certain premium services like backups, restore, custom domain names, dedicated account managers,etc  based on your subscription level. 
    This is similar to SaaS offerings by other vendors like SalesForce.com. Even Microsoft offering live Live Services will fall into this category.

Conclusion:
If I were to put the three vendors into boxes, this is what the boxes would be labeled (based on their respective offerings):

   Amazon : Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
   Microsoft : Platform as a Service (PaaS)
   Google : Software as a Service (SaaS)

It would be interesting to see the traction/direction that each of these get over next few months/years to come. I, for multiple reasons (including my Microsoft background), am liking Azure more than the rest, and cannot wait for it to evolve into something magnificient.

Cheers!!

Windows Azure Get Started!!

I just got started on Windows Azure and decided to start this blog to help others ramp up on the same.. Here are few key links to get you started.

Overview: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx
Registration: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/register.mspx
Azure Services: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/services.mspx
FAQ: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/faq.mspx
Community, Events, Webcasts: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/community.mspx
Resources : http://www.microsoft.com/azure/resources.mspx

Lets learn together !! Enjoy!!