Windows Azure SWOT!

[John Shaw]

Hi Guys,

 

I would like to discuss Microsoft’s new cloud computing offering ‘Windows Azure’ and how this compares to other cloud computing platforms.  I particularly would be interested in how this affects Microsoft’s partner ecosystem and the threats and opportunities in this space.

 

 

The discussion should cover:

Strengths

What are the strengths of Windows Azure compared to other Cloud Offerings?

Weakness

What is the weakness of Windows Azure compared to other Cloud Offerings?

Opportunities

The list of service offering from Windows Azure - such as storage, workflow in the cloud, MS Online, Migration to the cloud, cloud strategic planning for businesses, etc

Threats

What are the affect of MS Online on the Partner reseller space, MS Exchange, Sharepoint, MS Office online, etc. How can these be mitigated?

 

 

 

 

Thanks

 

John Shaw

  Innovative Blended Shore Solutions

 

Email	:	John...@SphereGen.com
Tel	:	+44 (0) 20 8144 4951
Mob	:	+44 (0) 77 8862 0152
Web	:	www.SphereGen.com

 

To order copies of my book on ADO.NET Data Services  -

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[John Ravella]

I recently attended a one hour class presented by a MSFT Azure engineer and it was clear Azure is being released a bit early. For instance, you can only set up one virtual profile equivalent to a single CPU server w/(I think) 2 Gigs memory. Storage is also functionally limited. The lecture consisted of using Visual Studio to setup a cloud session so I'd say the creation and deployment is straightforward.

John

On Nov 17, 2008, at 12:23 PM, John Shaw wrote:

Hi Guys,

 

I would like to discuss Microsoft’s new cloud computing offering ‘Windows Azure’ and how this compares to other cloud computing platforms.  I particularly would be interested in how this affects Microsoft’s partner ecosystem and the threats and opportunities in this space.

 

 

The discussion should cover: 

Strengths

What are the strengths of Windows Azure compared to other Cloud Offerings? 

Weakness

What is the weakness of Windows Azure compared to other Cloud Offerings? 

Opportunities

The list of service offering from Windows Azure - such as storage, workflow in the cloud, MS Online, Migration to the cloud, cloud strategic planning for businesses, etc

Threats

What are the affect of MS Online on the Partner reseller space, MS Exchange, Sharepoint, MS Office online, etc. How can these be mitigated?

 

 

 

 

Thanks

 

John Shaw

<image001.png>
  Innovative Blended Shore Solutions

[John Shaw]

Hi John,

I agree Azure is still in beta format.  I’m concerned with how this will affect Microsoft’s partner community as your probably aware Microsoft unique selling point isn’t it software but how their partners help them to sell it.  In this regard here are a couple of SWOT points from me:

Strengths...
Windows Azure compared to GoogleApps, IBM and Amazon can be easily exited because it is ASP.NET based.

Weakness…
No virtualization capabilities such as Amazon Virtual Machine in Amazon EC2.

Opportunities…
- Create Windows Dublin services (workflow)
- Create SaaS without having to invest in the infrastructure

Partner Services:
- Migrate BizTalk processes to the cloud (turn off BizTalk servers)
- Assist companies to migrate Lotus to Exchange (MS Online not Azure)
- Assist companies to migrate reference databases to the Azure
- Assessment of a company’s environment that can be put in the cloud, including ROI, Risk assessment, etc

Threats…
Resellers cannot complete when there isn't a margin to sell Exchange Online

John

 

 

John Shaw

  Innovative Blended Shore Solutions

 

Email	:	John...@SphereGen.com
Tel	:	+44 (0) 20 8144 4951
Mob	:	+44 (0) 77 8862 0152
Web	:	www.SphereGen.com

 

To order copies of my book on ADO.NET Data Services  -

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ADO-NET-Data-Services-Working/dp/143021614X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224695974&sr=8-1

Notice: The information contained in this e-mail message and any attachments to it may contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, use, review, distribution, printing or copying of the information contained in this e-mail message and/or attachments to it are strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the material from any computer, including copies.

 

[Tarry Singh]

I disagree there with the weakness:

MSFT is running its own Exchange and loads of other clusters on Hyper-V. So they will use virtualization where required. The big question is : Will it do exactly the same work as Amazon crunching work? Definitely the workloads will need to be optimized, and surely AMZN et al have learned to do it very well. But they will be deploying Hyper-V where necessary, that's for sure.

and agree with the Threats:

Resellers have to find something else to do. They have always existed in the balkanized part of the opportunity quadrant (from the resellers SWOT perspective) and will have very little to fight against given that all the big league fighters will cuddle up to wear this economic storm out together.

Remember: 2009 will also be the year where a lot of relationships will be redefined and revoked.

--
Kind Regards,

Tarry Singh
______________________________________________________________
Founder, Avastu: Research-Analysis-Ideation
"Do something with your ideas!"
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Private Cell: +31629159400
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tarrysingh
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[wayne pauley]

Tarry,
 
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of resellers being left out in the New England Cold ... I know a few resellers in the managed services business and some of them are pretty excited about the cloud.
 
First and foremose - resellers make the real money selling services. Yes - they tend to have a blended margin model for HW/SW & Services - but the HW/SW is just to make money on the thing they provide to their customers - they are trusted advisors and subject matter experts. While the cloud may provide HW and even SW - it is very likely that their is still going to be a need for services - in fact I'd bet $1.00 new ones! (monitoring your cloud usage/performance/etc until the automation is perfected - and once it is - helping provision new app and decomissioning old ones, migrating to the cloud, etc.
 
Second - With the current void in clarity on jurisdictional boundaries for certain kinds of data - there may be a need for operations like a hospital to keep some of the datacenter in the managed service and other activities in the cloud.
 
Third - what about new ways to leverage the clouds inherent BI/Mashup capabilities? Things like binding Salesforce to other SaaS offers or creating tiered cloud offers based on SLA's or QoS (if you look at the cloud offers now - 99.99 uptime is the BEST you will find and the many businesses want 99.999 for some of their activity.
 
Just a few thoughts - I'm sure the rest of the cloud-crowd can come up with more ... resellers are here for a while - and I think should be embraced - especially with all the hype right now - they are after all - considered trusted advisors.
 
-wayne

Wayne

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Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:18:34 +0100
From: tarry...@gmail.com

[John Ravella]

My comments wasn't against Hyper-V--it may very well be good technology. Rather it's Azure, their cloud service platform that's beta-grade at best. But is you want scalability beyond a single CPU, it's just not there and, when asked about it, MSFT was not even ready to say it was a work in progress.

If your planning to build something on a cloud platform, I'd look at Amazon, Google, or some of the other new cloud platform companies. 

Azure is not commerce-ready.

John

John Shaw

<image001.png>
  Innovative Blended Shore Solutions

 

[Daniel Ciruli]

On November 18th, at 6:19pm, Johnr wrote:
 
>My comments wasn't against Hyper-V--it may very well be good technology. Rather it's Azure, their cloud service platform that's beta-grade at best. But is you want scalability beyond a single CPU, it's just not there and, when asked about it, MSFT was not even ready to say it was a work in progress.

>

>If your planning to build something on a cloud platform, I'd look at Amazon, Google, or some of the other new cloud platform companies. 

>

>Azure is not commerce-ready.

 
 

Azure isn't beta grade -- it's a Community Technology Preview. In Microsoft-speak, that means they haven't even locked down the feature set yet, nor have they tuned performance or finished debugging. It's more of a public Alpha than a beta (and they're not pretending otherwise).
 
So...you're right: it is not beta grade, and it's not commerce-ready. They released the developer tools early to get developers on the wagon, so to speak; they typically do the same thing with versions of the OS, of .NET, etc.
 
The release date is scheduled for the second half of 2009.  (Of course, with their history, "scheduled" release dates don't always mean much!)
 


 

---

[Tarry Singh]

@wayne

First and foremose - resellers make the real money selling services. Yes - they tend to have a blended margin model for HW/SW & Services - but the HW/SW is just to make money on the thing they provide to their customers - they are trusted advisors and subject matter experts. While the cloud may provide HW and even SW - it is very likely that their is still going to be a need for services - in fact I'd bet $1.00 new ones! (monitoring your cloud usage/performance/etc until the automation is perfected - and once it is - helping provision new app and decomissioning old ones, migrating to the cloud, etc.
 
Second - With the current void in clarity on jurisdictional boundaries for certain kinds of data - there may be a need for operations like a hospital to keep some of the datacenter in the managed service and other activities in the cloud.

  You may have a point there but still the global cloud providers who prefer to do it all themselves and operate within the legislative domains, can see this as an opportunity to do it themselves. There is a lot of shift at hand today, trusted advisors is something folks will need pretty badly but if you can bind a CC provider with contracts that take into account everything that protects the consumer. So resellers aren't going to vanish overnight, but my personal experience in talking to people is, that the first one who gets to them, happens to make a lot of impact on their decision making process, and today the web gets fastest to you than anything else.