Re-defining the Windows Azure cloud computing message

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Mark Eisenberg.

What’s wrong with Windows Azure? In a word: marketing. From the beginning, Microsoft’s efforts to explain Windows Azure to the world fell under the assumption that potential customers understood cloud computing. After all, if they know what a nail is used for, then you only need to explain the features and benefits of a hammer.

First, consider how cloud computing looked three years ago. It was generally accepted that everyone had their own definition of cloud. When Windows Azure entered the market, vendors and customers were free to define the cloud to suit their needs or, more often, their desires. The architects of Windows Azure created a Platform as a Service (PaaS) implementation that closely matched NIST’s definition of cloud computing. Microsoft went with it — it didn’t have to create and defend its own definition; a generally respected standards organization had already done the legwork…

Second, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had been in the market for roughly three years when Windows Azure previewed in late 2008. Much like Windows Azure was a near-perfect implementation of PaaS, AWS was a near-perfect implementation of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). And while Amazon had plenty of technical guidance available as to how its cloud offering should be used, it was also possible to use it in a very traditional manner, where it behaved like a legacy hosting service. This appealed to customers looking for a new technology that could be adopted with minimal changes to implementation approaches…

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