IHS Global Insight Perspective | |
Significance | Microsoft is upping its game for cloud computing with the Azure platform appliance. |
Implications | The appliance will facilitate delivery of Azure services through managed, hosted and premises-based channels. |
Outlook | Several major partners have been signed up to deliver the hardware, increase channels to market, and support operations. With the option of flexibility with premises-based storage and services, Microsoft is looking to remove all barriers to entry. |
Microsoft has announced the launch of the new Windows Azure platform appliance, a turnkey cloud services platform for deployment into Microsoft partners in customer services and service provider data centres. Steve Ballmer, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, noted, "We are at an inflection point in technology history … For customers, cloud computing creates tremendous value, which translates to massive opportunity for Microsoft and its partners. As in past technology transitions, Microsoft will help partners embrace the industry’s transformation to realise their opportunity and continue to be economic drivers for their local community.”
Bob Muglia, the president of Server and Tools Business, highlighted the flexibility of the comprehensive and integrated service and server platform. The Windows Azure platform offers a standardised service platform while the customisable Windows Server platform lets customers and partners build public and private clouds that leverage existing investments with maximum flexibility. Services can be deployed directly by Microsoft, a service provider or in the customer's own data centre.
The Windows Azure platform appliance combines Microsoft-specified hardware with Windows Azure—a cloud services operating system supporting development, service hosting and a service management environment—and Microsoft SQL Azure, a cloud-based relational database server. Large enterprises and service providers can maintain physical control of location, regulatory compliance, and data with the benefits of Microsoft cloud services.
Muglia also noted that Microsoft will offer access to third-party information services, with premium data sets and access to web services under a project codenamed "Dallas". Customers and partners are also gaining new tools and enhancements to build cloud solutions. These include Release Candidate of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal 2.0; the Microsoft Management and Virtualization Solution Incentive; and the Private Cloud Deployment Kit, offering both financial incentives and guidance to partners building virtualisation and private cloud solutions. The beta release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, which enhance the deployment and management of virtualised desktop infrastructure, were also announced.
Partnerships
Microsoft announced several partnership for the cloud-based solutions, including eBay as a significant first customer, and several hardware and deployment partners. A worldwide agreement with Fujitsu will see it deploy the Azure platform in Fujitsu data centres around the world, beginning in Japan by the end of 2010. Fujitsu will provide system integration, cloud migration, and managed services to customers and independent software vendors. Fujitsu will also run its own applications on the Windows Azure platform, supporting infrastructure as a service, applications as a service, and activity as a service. The latter is a new term and defined as allowing customers to subscribe to "business services, specified in business rather than technology terms". This reflects the vision described by Kazuo Ishida, the corporate senior executive vice-president responsible for ICT Services Business at Fujitsu, of a "humancentric, intelligent, networked society". They will also jointly develop a Fujitsu-branded Windows Azure appliance using Fujitsu Hardware and Microsoft software. Fujitsu will also be a key support partner by training 5,000 consultants and developers to work with customers and ISVs.
In an extension of the US$250-million Infrastructure-to-Application initiative announced in January 2010, HP will also work together to deliver complete hardware, software, services, and sourcing solutions. Customers can use either HP data-centre hosting services or on-premises HP Converged infrastructure, which converges server, storage and networks with facilities managed through a common management platform, including HP networking and Proliant Servers. HP and Microsoft will release what is described as a "limited production" Windows Azure platform appliance for deployment in HP data centres by the end of the year.
Dell will also use the Windows Azure platform appliance for the Dell Services Cloud and develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise data centres. Dell Services will provide advisory services, application migration, and integration and implementation services.
A number of other partnerships with communications service providers were also announced for Microsoft Online Services products with Bell Canada, BT, PGi, TDC, and Telenor Group. They were described as "finding strong synergies with our Business Productivity Online Standard Suite". This is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft including Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online. These have already launched through Vodafone, Orange, Telecom New Zealand, and Telstra over the last year. Vodafone is noted to have gained 1,000 customers for the solution since launching in April 2010.
Outlook and Implications
Microsoft has mounted a major push into the cloud-computing market by partnering with several major hardware vendors for the Azure products. Microsoft gains increased penetration of the data centres running their hardware, entry into the data centres operated by them, and access to the sales and support operations that they operate around the world. Microsoft has opened large data centres around the world to support its own online service provision, but many enterprises prefer—or are bound by local data regulations—to keep their data closer to home. Partnering with Fujitsu in particular will help Microsoft to penetrate the Japanese market and the Japan-based global multinationals.
Use of cloud computing—with the benefits of low entry costs and predictable ongoing costs, scalability, simple, maintenance-free operation, and managed security and system management—is set to increase rapidly. Massive amounts of infrastructure are being built out around the world to support this growth, although there is still some reticence in many organisations as fears of relying on networks and losing control of application delivery and data storage are hard to quell. Microsoft's solution is largely intended to help resolve this stumbling block by providing an appliance that can be located on customer premises.