Something interesting always comes out of Microsoft’s PDC events…
Microsoft’s annual Professional Developer Conference has been the place where almost every significant ‘Windows ecosystem’ revision or advancement is introduced. PDC 2008 is going on now in Los Angeles, and the big buzz this year is around two significant product updates: Windows 7 and Office 14.
While I discount Windows 7 as being more about marketing innovation than product innovation, Office 14 is significant – it’s Microsoft’s first Office Suite that can run across the web in a browser. (They clearly hear Google’s footsteps behind them)
However, the announcement that hasn’t gotten a lot of press – and the one that is probably the most significant to come out of the even, is the announcement of Microsoft’s AZURE. Here’s Ray Ozzie’s introduction:
What Ray Ozzie’s describing isn’t new. Both Amazon and Google have offered cloud computing platforms for quite a while. What makes this significant is that Microsoft is looking to leverage many of the development tools and frameworks already in place for Windows as the foundation for development on Azure.
And that gives them some unique leverage…
The pool of Windows developers is huge. This approach would allow commercial developers and enterprises to leverage those existing assets – and potentially some of their existing code base – in developing services for Azure. That could give Microsoft a big leg up in adoption.
But in the end, Azure’s success will be based on two things.
Execution and Cost…
Microsoft needs to deliver on the promise – something they failed at miserably with the development and launch of Vista. The development tools really need to work as advertised, and the back-end really needs to scale transparently. Getting people to switch to a cloud based model in part requires them to trust you. Microsoft won’t get a second chance in this department.
Microsoft also needs to price it correctly. If they price it with an eye to preserving revenue from existing traditional product sets, it will be D.O.A. regardless of what else it can do. They need to price it in a way that gets people to take the risk and make the move to the cloud. With the world economy depressed, most organizations are looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce cost – essentially they need to do more with less. That is one of the key valuable propositions behind the shift to cloud computing. Microsoft needs to grab on to this and make the adoption decision as painless as possible.
Azure is Microsoft’s chance at redemption…
FOOTNOTE:
If you want to get a more in depth introduction to Azure, this video from Microsoft’s Manuvir Das is worth watching:
Manuvir Das: Introducing Windows Azure
