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Microsoft and Cloud
Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters. Windows Azure is a flexible platform that supports multiple languages and integrates with your existing on-premises environment.
The Windows Azure website provides some good information on their platform and its applications. There are number of different products under the Windows Azure umbrella which work together to provide the user a holistic cloud experience. This is similar to Amazon‘s offerings to support their EC2 environment. Besides the Azure Compute, Storage, Virtual Network and CDN products, Microsoft’s AppFabric provides a comprehensive cloud middleware platform for developing, deploying and managing applications on the Windows Azure Platform. It delivers additional developer productivity adding in higher-level Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities on top of the familiar Windows Azure application model.
Besides the Windows Azure platform, Microsoft’s SQL Azure which is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. It is a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Microsoft also provides data sync and reporting services to support the SQL Azure database.
Microsoft can distinguish itself in the PaaS field of cloud offerings since it already has a strong user base with its operating system and large developer community that wants to work with Microsoft products on the Windows platform. Microsoft can take advantage of its already successful products such as SQL Server and Microsoft Visual Studio. Though, Microsoft has been a late entrant in the cloud computing race, but its immensely popular and familiar products and comprehensive windows based cloud solutions might just make it the forerunner.
Cloud Players
There are many big and small players in the cloud computing arena. Since the emergence of cloud technology, many cloud service providers have differentiated themselves by offering strengths in different areas such as PaaS, SaaS and IaaS. I will discuss each of these providers in detail in subsequent posts. For now, here is a look at who is part of the cloud race.
The top five major players are:
Amazon: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has number of products such as EC2, CloudFront, SimpleDB, SQS, S3 and more. Amazon has been the leader in cloud technology and at the forefront, definitely getting the first-mover advantage.
Google: Google Apps has been around for a while and we have all used Google’s various services such as Gmail, Docs, Calendar and so on. Google Apps also provides enhanced services for business users and is now stepping more formally into the cloud arena.
Microsoft: Azure is Microsoft’s latest offering with windows platform based cloud system and offering developer services. Microsoft is going after the top player to become the cloud computing leader.
IBM: Blue Cloud is IBM’s computing platform designed to enhance software development and delivery capabilities, particularly in large enterprises. IBM also provides one of the largest private clouds and is certainly trying to make its mark.
Salesforce.com: Salesforce’s CRM platform has been around for a long time providing software as a service and has been a leader in that area. Its new Force.com platform geared towards businesses provides more than just software aiming for collaboration and development platform along with cloud infrastructure.
Some of the other smaller but definitely powerful and growing players in this field are:
Cloud Notions 