Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism
LOS ANGELES--Microsoft's Hailstorm prompted an avalanche of criticism when it was proposed seven years ago, but developers seem to have few qualms with Windows Azure, which embraces many of the same notions.
With Windows Azure, Microsoft not only controls the operating system but also the data centers where the applications run and the servers where the information is stored. If anything, Microsoft's control has grown, not shrunk, from the vision that the company outlined in 2001.
So why the lack of uproar this time?
Timing is a huge factor. For one thing, Microsoft's image has changed dramatically from the one it had when Hailstorm was introduced.
"It was the evil empire against Java and open source," independent analyst Peter O'Kelly said. Even Microsoft's code name was off-putting.
"When you think Hailstorm, you think destroy my garden, not helping me," O'Kelly said.
A slide from Microsoft's introduction of Azure Monday at its Professional Developers Conference.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)The industry has also changed dramatically. Companies have gotten a lot more comfortable with the notion that corporate information can live outside a business' own data center.
"Salesforce.com is the big one that broke through that glass ceiling," O'Kelly said.
Microsoft corporate VP David Treadwell doesn't dispute the notion that there are elements of today's strategy that can be traced back to Hailstorm.
"You are implying correctly that Hailstorm was kind of before its time," he said in an interview.
Microsoft has also learned from its experiences, Treadwell said.
With Hailstorm, Microsoft insisted on owning the relationship with the customers. Now, the company is talking about the notion of federated identity and cooperating with OpenID.
And, while Microsoft is big, it is no longer the only behemoth.
Much of Google's vision is downright audacious relative to what Microsoft proposed with Hailstorm, O'Kelly said. "Fundamentally, their mission is very clear. It is to organize all of the world's information. You are part of the world's information."
Security and trust
Also, while the data may live in Microsoft's data centers with Windows Azure, it can also be encrypted and other measures can be taken to make sure that it stays proprietary.
Azure gives companies the ability to tightly control the security of the data, said Jordan Ellington, vice president of legal technology at global firm Transperfect. Companies can encrypt the data at the server and send it encrypted over Microsoft's network and unencrypt it at the client.
"We wouldn't let Microsoft actually host our data. We're just using them as plumbing," Ellington said. Whereas, "small companies are not threatened by the intellectual property issues because it's a cheap service."
"I don't see, for quite some time, large corporations putting all their information in the cloud; it's too attractive of a target," he said.
But businesses now have to evaluate not just the theory of whether allowing others to hold their data is a good thing. The reality is that, in many cases, large third parties may be able to do more to protect a company's data than some mid-size firms can do on their own.
"Organizations have come to say, 'let's compare it to practical alternatives as opposed to some Utopian ideal," O'Kelly said.
Ray Ozzie
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)Plus, Windows Azure is still at the community preview stage, so businesses will have time to kick the tires before it's even ready to host their mission-critical applications.
"It's no different from paying any other hosting company," said Troy Farrell, solutions architect for Operitel Corp., which provides software management services for e-learning. "I guess some people genuinely distrust Microsoft because of their size, like some people distrust Google, which is hosting and storing data in Google Apps and other services," he said.
Trust is indeed an issue with cloud computing, Ray Ozzie told CNET News earlier this week. But Microsoft believes that trust may help them in this area, particularly when it comes to competing with Google.
"Cloud computing is ultimately going to be, do you trust this provider to have more to lose than I have to lose as a company if they mess me up?" Ozzie said in an interview. Ozzie said Microsoft is well-positioned to garner that trust, both because of the scale of its investment and because it is putting its money where its mouth is--building its own Azure-based applications.
Still, Ozzie said he'd expect businesses to move in waves, first moving infrastructure type things and only later moving business applications.
Even those who don't really trust Microsoft have options.
"Microsoft never has to see anything you are doing," said Alberto Ramirez, a developer at consultancy Tallan. Information "can be encrypted on both ends. They're just passing it along."
Microsoft may also benefit from the constraints of a tighter economy.
"There is demand for this, especially now," Ramirez said. "IT departments are scaling back. This requires no IT staff and no server in a room. And the security is taken care of."
CNET News' Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
An article in July Communications of the ACM looks at the many issues involved in Cloud computing, not the least of which is privacy - who owns your data? What of security?
Was not the Internet developed to be distributed so that the whole of society could not be brought down with one A-bomb?
One of the cited advantages of cloud is that individuals and companies will no longer have to set up their own systems and data centres, and updates to system software and applications is done centrally. Well, that's great Microsoft supplies systems that are hard to manage and then the solution is to get out of that by handing them control of everything. Something is seriously wrong with this model.
Security and trust
"Also, while the data may live in Microsoft's data centers with Windows Azure, it can also be encrypted and other measures can be taken to make sure that it stays proprietary.
Azure gives companies the ability to tightly control the security of the data, said Jordan Ellington, vice president of legal technology at global firm Transperfect. Companies can encrypt the data at the server and send it encrypted over Microsoft's network and unencrypt it at the client."
The only thing wrong is your inability to read and understand what you just read.
Just because it is transmitted using encryption does not mean it is secure. That is the attitude of the technically ignorant.
It is also stored on server running MS software, hardly trustworthy.
Azure gives companies the ability to tightly control the security of the data, said Jordan Ellington, vice president of legal technology at global firm Transperfect. Companies can encrypt the data at the server and send it encrypted over Microsoft's network and unencrypt it at the client."
The only thing wrong is your inability to read and understand what you just read.<<<
My ability to read and understand it is just fine. The question is about your naiveté. (Encrypted data can be unencrypted.) Besides, I'm saying the whole monolythic approach is fundamentally flawed. Provide people and organizations with the systems to do their own thing. People like feeling in control, not resigning that to some domineering entity like Microsoft. Even if this weren't a failing of MS, it would be hard for people to trust such an entity.
Azure, having started from the ashes of Hailstorm has corrected the concerns of its potential users and will now find a place in our strategies allowing us all to benefit from a more thought out technology. I credit Ray Ozzie for understanding how to meld the best of Hailstorm into the best of his own vision of whats needed to create web based applications with the kind of control and security we desire to move forward.
I'm just amazed that this is the first article I've read evening mentioning Hailstorm... everyone has treated Azure like its some new thing that either MS (or Amazon) thought up. I guess that just means that I'm getting older and the general industry is getting younger.
Hopefully Azure will be easier to use. It certainly couldn't get more complex than what Hailstorm was.
So avoids because... it works?
So it working "manages" to avoid criticism.
Why does CNET seem like it's full of Apple groupies wishing Microsoft to fail and praising anything Apple no matter what?!
I didn't see any praise for Apple here and I only saw praise for Azure. The article examined the history of the industry and talked about how Miscrosoft learned from it's mistakes. I can only say you must have some kind of inferiority complex.
I really wouldn't be so worried as to whether Microsoft will deliver or not. They will deliver. The question you should ask yourself is at what point are you going to say enough is enough. Another words how much market acquisition is going to be acceptable for Microsoft. How much dominance will be acceptable for Microsoft. The sheer thought and magnitude of trusting your most protected / private information on a public forum for every hacker in the world to take advantage of is complete and total insanity. And of course Microsoft's gaping security holes in their os's through out the years has absolutely nothing to do with this opinion :). Right. But like everything else that Microsoft develops and pushes out to the masses, it will be forced down our throats whether we want it or not. I think it is time for some of these competing vendors to stand up and start developing competitive alternatives. Personally I am tired of Microsoft's monopoly. Unfortunately I don't have a cool billion sitting in a bank account to create a solution for this problem. So the best we can hope for is that Linux and a few others wake up. Will see.
And who better to lead in this than Microsoft? With the cultural marketshare for desktop applications shrinking, they have a huge incentive to help ease the shift to these applications and make them work. The alternative is to protect their base on the desktop and hope people don't change;
- by Kostagh November 1, 2008 12:36 PM PDT
- I think it's totally improper to have your own personal data anywhere else than on your own personal computer (allthough I prefer own personal brain). It's plain wrong. It's like living in a house with transparent walls put in the middle of a huge shopping mall.
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(17 Comments)It's freaky and almost terrifying. No.