Azure Starts To Get Interesting -- Sort Of

Never a dull moment in our business.

Today, Microsoft offered up a "statement of intent" to provide pre-configured infrastructure running Microsoft' Azure environment.  For examples of the coverage, take a look here and here.

Not surprisingly, this contrasts sharply with the efforts I've been working on, primarly around VCE and Vblocks.

Rather than degrade into a typical competitive rant, I think there are some very interesting themes in play here -- especially from a service provider perspective.

The Basics

The first wave of Azure (version 1.0?) I saw as pitched as a Microsoft service offered from a Microsoft data center.  Shades of IBM :-)

The story was simple: write your applications using the Azure environment, and Microsoft will run that environment on your behalf.

Well, to say it wasn't overly popular would be an understatement.  The idea of rewriting applications to yet-another-set-of-vendor-specific-APIs isn't broadly attractive.  And the prospect of running said unique application in one place and one place only (e.g. Microsoft's own data centers) was equally unappealing to most. 

That's basically how most enterprise customers saw it -- a non-starter for the most part.

From a service provider perspective, Azure 1.0 wasn't really relevant to them -- after all, there were few customers showing interest, and absolutely no clear way for SPs to play -- other than, perhaps, to resell Microsoft's own service.

Over time, though, the API models appear to have started to converge -- albeit slowly -- towards creating a relatively standard environment between the Microsoft ecosystem that everyone uses in their data centers, and the Microsoft ecosystem that they proposed for the cloud.

Frankly speaking, I haven't been able to keep up as to exactly where this discussion is today, and -- more importantly -- when the cloud version will offer the exact same set of services (or more) that are available in the data center -- maybe someone can enlighten me?

Today's Announcement

At the surface, it seems that Microsoft has recruited several server partners (HP, Dell and Fujitsu are mentioned) to offer up pre-packaged infrastructure to service providers (and perhaps enterprises) who want to deliver Azure as a service.

According to the blogs, Microsoft does the care and feeding of the software environment -- patches, configuration.  What's interesting is that it looks like Microsoft will also be responsible for operations, monitoring, provisioning,etc. -- although that's not entirely clear at this point.  Presumably, the hardware vendors look out for the hardware bits.

We'll have to wait a while for final details -- we're told "by the end of the year", so we'll all have to reserve judgment until we see the first deliverables.

The Good News

I like the fact that Microsoft is starting to get a better grip on this whole cloud thing, and understands the growing importance of service providers -- that's good.

And, certainly, no one should dismiss Microsoft when they get focused on something big, and -- by all accounts -- Microsoft considers cloud something big.

Finally, there's nothing wrong with providing pre-configured and pre-qualified infrastructure behind any cloud software infrastructure offering -- if, in fact, that is what this will result in -- and some sort of streamlined support model behind it.

The Open Questions

The last thing a service provider wants to bet their business on is a "me too" offering.  Commodity clouds will become commodities themselves over time.  If an SP has a highly differentiated offering, I can see perhaps complementing it with Azure-in-a-box, but it doesn't look like the offer has been constructed in such a way to enable SPs to differentiate substantially.

That's not good for SPs, if you think about it.

It's also not clear how much effort will be spent to drive potential customers to Azure-provided-by-SP vs. Microsoft products consumed using existing licensing agreements.  There's a whole lot of Microsoft software that people have already signed up for -- can these customers use these licenses using an SP-delivered service? 

My head hurts just thinking about it.  Remember, just about everyone is loaded up already on Microsoft software products that they've paid for.

I still can't figure out whether this technology stack will be offered directly to large enterprise customers in addition to service providers.  Some posts say yes, some say no.  Regardless, no one is saying the Azure is 100% compatible with the more traditional Windows tools being offered to enterprise IT organizations today.

Compare this with the VMware-based approach and private clouds: run the workloads internally, run them externally, or any combination.  Lessen the friction associated with moving workloads and functions to a service provider by not forcing big decisions.  So far, this is working well in the marketplace -- putting the Azure approach at somewhat of a disadvantage in my book.

Finally, if we're talking about anything other than small-scale IT (generically called SMB), it is completely unclear on how the Azure model will put tenants in control for IT functions: provisioning, monitoring, resource consumption, security, compliance, data protection, etc. etc.

Most IT organizations are willing to give up owning the resources.  Almost none are willing to give up control and accountability.

The Bottom Line

I see this as another step along the journey for Microsoft.  They're getting better, but I don't think they've achieved critical mass yet -- more needs to done, IMHO.

Ideally, they'd offer a platform for differentiation by SPs -- hardware, software, services -- vs. an environment that looks pretty much the same no matter who delivers it. 

It'd be great if this environment was largely compatible with the environments that enterprise IT organizations were using -- no need to re-cast applications, for example. 

And, finally, it'd be great if Microsoft realized that enterprise tenants want the option to be in control of their IT resources -- and not Microsoft.

Sort of what VCE, Vblocks and related technologies are putting on the table today :-)