Entries tagged with cloud - Channel 10

Microsoft's Cloud, Part 2: Windows Azure

sarahintampa — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:45:00 GMT

At this morning’s PDC keynote, Microsoft introduced a platform of the future: Windows Azure. While the implications of what this means may be somewhat lost on non-technical consumers, I.T. folks and developers just felt the ground shift beneath their feet. This is the future of the cloud.

What’s Azure?

Windows Azure is actually the cloud OS that serves as the "development, run-time, and control environment" for the Azure Services Platform. The platform enables developers to build, host, scale, and deploy web applications in the cloud. These can be consumer-level web apps (like Bluehoo, which was demonstrated today) or they can be enterprise applications.

Azure isn’t simply Microsoft’s answer to either Amazon’s EC2 nor Google App Engine - it’s a step up from both of those. Ray Ozzie acknowledged Amazon’s contributions in his keynote address, saying “all of us are going to be standing on their shoulders.” That's a great way of describing Azure, because it's really more than just a Microsoft-flavored version of EC2. Windows Azure is both a true cloud OS (a datacenter OS) and a platform which is more like the PaaS competitor to App Engine or Bungee Connect.

What’s Azure Made Of?

The key components of the Azure Services Platform include the following:

•    Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
•    Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
•    Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
•    Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
•    Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud

For Developers:

The difference between Azure’s platform and something like Google’s App Engine is that it lets developers leverage their existing Microsoft skills, if they so desire. In other words, if you know Visual Studio, congratulations – you can now build in Azure, too. You don’t need to learn a new skill set to build apps for the cloud.

In addition, Azure’s open platform supports other standards like SOAP, REST, and XML so it can support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. It’s the best of both worlds.

For I.T. Admins:

For I.T. admins wanting to extend existing internal services to the cloud, Azure also mirrors skills they know and understand too. For example, if an Azure-powered enterprise app needs to use an identity service for authentication, it can, via Active Directory. I.T. admins can use Active Directory behind the firewall as usual, but by integrating it with Azure’s Windows Services Connector, that data can also be utilized on the other side of the firewall, too…in an Azure-powered cloud application.

However, Azure goes much further than just extending identity and authentication to the cloud – that’s just a small example of its power. Azure can also integrate with existing software applications an I.T. department may run internally for their end users and extend those to the cloud. Using the industry standard protocols like SOAP, REST, and XML, an internal app can be cloud-enabled even if it used to only run on a PC or server within an organization. So imagine, your internal app running now on Windows Server 2008 can now run on the cloud on the cloud OS, Windows Azure.

Azure can also transform a web application a company uses and open it up to additional functionality. Via Live Services integration, Azure can delver your web app to over 460 million Live users, for example. Azure’s integration with .NET services allow for workflow, access control, or service bus functionality and integration with SQL Services let Azure access a cloud database.

Azure Makes I.T. Dynamic

Enterprises already running internal systems like Exchange and SharePoint, can use Azure in addition to their existing servers. Through Microsoft Online Services, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting can be used to complement the services already used in-house.

A smaller shop might just choose to deploy Online Services only, instead of using internal systems. And as the smaller company grows, scaling is dynamic and no longer has to involve painstaking hours of building and deploying server after server, thanks to Azure. Instead, the business can focus on the applications and initiatives specific to their environment, not the day-to-day complexities of I.T....I.T. simply becomes a commodity.

Microsoft’s Cloud, Part 1: Defining The Cloud

sarahintampa — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:16:00 GMT

On the eve of Microsoft’s PDC event, the Developers Conference where many of the company’s close-held secrets are finally unveiled, a number of internet industry pundits have chimed in on the subject of Cloud Computing, the subject of PDC’s first keynote. First Tim O’Reilly (yes, he who gave “Web 2.0” its name) made the bold claim: “Everything is moving into the cloud, in whole or in part. The utility layer of cloud computing will be just that, a utility…”

What Is Cloud Computing?

Nicholas Carr follows up O’Reilly’s article arguing the finer points of “Network Effects” in cloud computing – that is, whether or not this move to the cloud will in fact be reliant on something called the network effect – a founding characteristic of Web 2.0 which describes the design of systems that get better the more people use them. You can see network effects in nearly every Web 2.0 property today. Take for example, Facebook: this social network wouldn’t have the value it does today if no one used it. That, in short, is the network effect.

But what’s got lost during their theoretical argument about the underlying principles of cloud computing is just defining what cloud computing is to begin with. What is cloud computing? Have we all agreed on a definition yet?

We’ve been checking our webmail online for years on end, but is it now, in 2008, that we finally get to rebrand this activity as cloud computing?

For some, webmail fits under this moniker because it’s an interaction with an online service where data is stored, accessed, and manipulated outside of the hard drive of your personal computer, where traditionally computing took place. For others, though, only the move of new applications, like word processing or application development, get to be considered “cloud computing.”

Web-based End-User Applications

According to the O’Reilly article, webmail is indeed a part of the cloud computing movement. He says, “any web application is a cloud application in the sense that it resides in the cloud. Google, Amazon, Facebook, twitter, flickr, and virtually every other Web 2.0 application is a cloud application in this sense.” However, he notes that people tend to see things as cloud-based if they were once desktop-only applications.

By his definition, you can add the entire set of Windows Live applications under this broad category of “cloud-based end-user apps” as they allow for accessing data like your email and calendar from any computer, anywhere on the net.

Utility Computing & PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)

In addition to end user apps, O’Reilly states that there are other categories of cloud computing, too. Utility computing, for example, describes the service that Amazon provides, something that mainly appeals to developers. Here, devs can rent out either Linux or Microsoft-flavored virtual machine instances, storage, and computation at pay-as-you-go utility pricing.

Another category for the cloud is the Platform-as-a-Service. Here, O’Reilly invokes the example of Salesforce’s force.com platform. Paas goes beyond just allowing for computing storage space and raw power and delivers everything needed to design, develop, test, deploy, and host an application in the cloud.

Where Does Microsoft Fit In?

What’s missing from both O’Reilly’s and Carr’s report on cloud computing is where Microsoft fits in. Is Microsoft, a software company whose business relies on writing applications for computers have a place in the cloud? The answer, as we have just heard at PDC, is YES.

So now, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s Cloud Platform in more detail…

Millions of Servers Coming to the Cloud

sarahintampa — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:13:00 GMT

At the TechEd Conference, Bill Gates gave his last speech as a Microsoft full-time employee and one of the topics he discussed was Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing. (Full transcript is here.) In the speech, Gates spoke of Microsoft’s plan to have “many millions” of servers in the cloud, running all the services that traditional I.T. shops run today like Exchange, SQL Server, BizTalk, and more. These Microsoft cloud services will come in three different options – free, ad-supported, and commercial (fee-based), he said. One has to wonder how this will position the I.T. guys in the future – it looks like their role will be changing. Whereas before, I.T. needed to know how to set up, install, manage, and support the servers in their organization, it seems like the new I.T. guy will be more a facilitator, helping a company pick out the best cloud services for the business and handling the administrative aspects of setting them up. This work will be less “geeky” than before, but still just as critical to a business’s success. It should be really interesting to watch as these things change the way the business world runs.

(img courtesy of News from Microsoft Ireland)

More on Mesh: Running the Cloud

sarahintampa — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:14:00 GMT

Now that I'm learning more about Mesh, I'm surprised at what a big undertaking it is. For example, this recent post on the Live Mesh blog talks about how they run the cloud services, which offers some interesting insights into how Mesh's "services" part of their "Software + Services" works.

In Mesh, writes Alex Mallet, a dev lead on the Live Mesh team, cloud services can be grouped into four areas:

Feed & Data Sync
Authentication & Authorization
Maintaining & Fanning out the Transient State
Connectivity Services for Sync and Remote Desktop Access

Mesh's front-end services are accessible only via HTTPS. Back-end services use HTTPS and custom protocols layered on TCP. Most services are written in C# and all services sit on top of a common runtime library.

What's really interesting though (and funny!) is when Mallet describes building the full-scale datacenter deployment and management system: he says they "chose the lazy smart route" to do so. The Mesh team used the the Autopilot framework, which is currently used by the Windows Live Search team to manage tens of thousands of datacenter machines. Mesh isn't there yet, but hopes to be!

If learning more about the services part of Mesh is the sort of thing that interests you, go ask your question in the comments section of his post.