What's Next? ‘CLOUD’ OS - Azure
Deccan Chronicle, Los Angeles, October 30, 2008
Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft said this week that late next year it would begin offering a new "cloud" operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web, where data and services are becoming increasingly centralised.
The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a single style of desktop computer, but by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.
More of those devices use programmes that reside on a remote servers rather than on the device itself. The servers, in the so-called cloud, deliver what are called Web services, which can be anything from customer relationship software or a Facebook game.
Microsoft is a late entrant into a market that is crowded by a range of players offering every flavour of cloud computing, including Sun Microsystems and IBM as well as Amazon and Google.
The new Microsoft "cloud OS" — called Azure — gives Microsoft an opening into the market.
But many of the giant software company’s competitors believe it is unlikely that Microsoft will be able to maintain its advantage either in terms of market share or profitability in the future.
"Today’s announcement of Azure is the same Microsoft, keeping developers locked into their proprietary solutions, and failing to grasp the true power of cloud computing," said Mark Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that helped pioneer the commercial Web services market. "Microsoft continues to struggle with what to do about cloud computing because the cloud’s new technology and business models cuts into the heart of their software monopoly."
Nevertheless, Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, declared a third era of operating systems in the hope that it will be able to repeat the success it had with its DOS and Windows operating systems of the 1980s and 1990s.
Azure was designed during the last three years by Ray Ozzie, a software designer whose company, Groove Networks, was acquired by Microsoft in 2005.
Ozzie began taking the reins from Bill Gates as the company’s principal software architect in 2006.
Before an audience of 6,500 software developers this week, Ozzie tried to make the case that programmers who miss a shift to a new Microsoft operating platform are taking a huge risk.
Although Microsoft will not release a commercial version of Azure for a year or more, O’Kelly said that components of the system like Live Services were already being used by millions of PC users.
Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft said this week that late next year it would begin offering a new "cloud" operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web, where data and services are becoming increasingly centralised.
The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a single style of desktop computer, but by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.
More of those devices use programmes that reside on a remote servers rather than on the device itself. The servers, in the so-called cloud, deliver what are called Web services, which can be anything from customer relationship software or a Facebook game.
Microsoft is a late entrant into a market that is crowded by a range of players offering every flavour of cloud computing, including Sun Microsystems and IBM as well as Amazon and Google.
The new Microsoft "cloud OS" — called Azure — gives Microsoft an opening into the market.
But many of the giant software company’s competitors believe it is unlikely that Microsoft will be able to maintain its advantage either in terms of market share or profitability in the future.
"Today’s announcement of Azure is the same Microsoft, keeping developers locked into their proprietary solutions, and failing to grasp the true power of cloud computing," said Mark Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that helped pioneer the commercial Web services market. "Microsoft continues to struggle with what to do about cloud computing because the cloud’s new technology and business models cuts into the heart of their software monopoly."
Nevertheless, Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, declared a third era of operating systems in the hope that it will be able to repeat the success it had with its DOS and Windows operating systems of the 1980s and 1990s.
Azure was designed during the last three years by Ray Ozzie, a software designer whose company, Groove Networks, was acquired by Microsoft in 2005.
Ozzie began taking the reins from Bill Gates as the company’s principal software architect in 2006.
Before an audience of 6,500 software developers this week, Ozzie tried to make the case that programmers who miss a shift to a new Microsoft operating platform are taking a huge risk.
Although Microsoft will not release a commercial version of Azure for a year or more, O’Kelly said that components of the system like Live Services were already being used by millions of PC users.
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