azure

Although much of Microsoft's focus at its partner conference will be on the cloud, many of its product announcements have to do with on-premise software such as Windows and Windows Server.

On Monday, the first full day of its annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft is scheduled to announce, among other things, the beta of Service Pack 1 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The update for Windows 7 is quite minor and consists mostly of previous bug fixes and other tweaks. On the server side, though, the service pack will add some new features around virtualization. … Read more

Microsoft is announcing on Monday that it plans to let businesses and partners run Windows Azure in their own data centers by purchasing a new server appliance.

The software company had previously hinted that customers might someday be able to host their own instances of the cloud-based operating system, but had yet to commit to that option.

The Windows Azure Platform Appliance will be made up of hundreds of servers, along with networking gear and other components in a container-size package. HP, Dell, and Fujitsu will be among the first to sell the appliances, although Redmond is offering few details, … Read more

Microsoft's cloud-computing push, Windows Azure, was only launched six months ago and while it is still early days for the technology, Azure has already attracted thousands of users and could prove central to the software giant's technology plans.

Azure is Microsoft's cloud-computing platform, which provides its users with scalable computing power and storage, as well as a number of other online services hosted on Microsoft data centers.

While Microsoft has offered online services for some time with consumer products such as Hotmail and Windows Live, Azure aims to boost its software-as-a-service presence to cater to its enterprise … Read more

Although he's presided over the expansion of Microsoft's server business, Bob Muglia is ready to help companies move away from that same server software.

Well, he is at least as long as those businesses are moving to the Microsoft cloud-based services that are replicating the software that, at one point, ran only in a company's own data center.

In an interview, the president of Microsoft's server and tools business talked about the shifts to the cloud, Google's role in the enterprise and the future of Microsoft's server products, including the next version of Windows Server, which he said will be a major update.

Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

You mentioned that Microsoft is pretty much doing everything for the cloud first. Does that mean that over time on-premises customers are actually going to be getting technology that's somewhat older, for better and for worse? Muglia: Well, I think the way to look at it is that we're able to use the cloud to do a lot more of our early validation than we've ever been able to do before. You know, you see us with labs, you know, Live Labs and things like that, being able to take ideas and put them up in the cloud. More and more what you'll see is the beginning of our beta processes will be run for new things up in the cloud, because our ability to get feedback from customers is so much more rapid if customers don't have to deploy the infrastructure themselves. So, there's a set of things that we can do, which will help to reduce our cycle time, and bringing new features to market.

I mean, in general our products run on two- to three-year cycles, and it very often takes customers at least that long to deploy them. I actually think the cloud will expedite customers' ability to get our software and our innovations, even if they run it themselves, because it will shorten our cycle for delivery, and also I think customers as they see these things available in the cloud will have a better understanding of the advantages they can get if they deploy it themselves. So, I actually don't think it slows down things at all for our customers that choose on-premises. … Read more

Microsoft's data center of the future will be more like a trailer park.

Only the concrete pad will need to be built on-site, with everything else shipped in as a pre-manufactured unit. That's a step beyond the current approach, used in places like the company's massive new Chicago data center, where Microsoft has the servers shipped in a container but still requires a traditional building to provide water and cooling.

Data centers are key to the economics of Microsoft's future--everything from Bing to the cloud-based Windows Azure to the Microsoft-hosted versions of today's software like … Read more

With Windows Azure now commercially launched, Microsoft is looking for some new ways to fill up its cloud.

The software maker on Thursday announced a deal in which it will work with the National Science Foundation to find cloud computing projects that could benefit from free access to Windows Azure. Those chosen by the NSF will get three years of free Azure access and support.

"Cloud computing can transform how research is conducted, accelerating scientific exploration, discovery and results," Microsoft Vice President Dan Reed said in a statement. "These grants will also help researchers explore rich and … Read more

With Microsoft finally releasing the Windows Azure cloud operating system to the public earlier this week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took just one day to offer new pricing reductions to re-establish the market price for cloud services.

Effective February 1, AWS is reducing prices by 2 cents per gigabyte based on the tiers of usage offer. Amazon also lowered rates for data transferred out of its Amazon CloudFront content delivery network, cutting rates by 2 cents per gigabyte. And while 2 cents may not sound like much, at the highest usage levels of 1,000 terabytes, that takes the cost … Read more

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing service became generally available on Monday with very little flourish. And that might be because this first wave of Azure offerings is frankly a bit odd.

I am sure Microsoft will eventually figure out how to give its users options that are more obviously appealing (perhaps using Amazon Web Services as the model?), but in the near-term the options are not as clear as they could be.

It's still a positive for cloud enthusiasts that Azure has finally reached a place where Microsoft is comfortable offering it commercially. And if you're part … Read more

Intuit and Microsoft announced Wednesday that the two companies plan to integrate the capabilities of their cloud services platforms, the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) and Windows Azure platform, to build solutions for small businesses. Azure will become a "preferred platform" for small-business application development as part of the relationship.

According to Kim Akers, general manager of Partner Evangelism at Microsoft, there are three constituencies that benefit from this partnership: