Microsoft's big switch to server/client computing
Speaking at Structure 08, Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services at Microsoft, shed some light on the cloud-based infrastructure supporting Microsoft's online services.
Despite characterizations that Microsoft is stuck in the client/server world, the company is spending billions to apply the cloud, or server/client, model, where most of the computing happens in the cloud and some small amount on the client (offline support for applications). But until Microsoft Office and other applications are built for the cloud, the laggard characterization will continue to stick to the company's forehead.
Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services at Microsoft.
(Credit: Dan Farber)Microsoft has one of the biggest collections of Web sites, with 550 million users, 2 billion search queries, and 10 billion page views per month, as well as 8 billion messages on Microsoft Messenger per day. The company deploys 10,000 new servers per month on average to keep up with demand, Chrapaty said. She broke down Microsoft's model for building infrastructure into a three-letter acronym.
The cloud is all about GET--Growth, Efficiency, and Trust, Chrapaty said. In terms of growth, data centers are a $300 million to $500 million investment. "You have to make every kilowatt count," she said, noting that Microsoft has 35 criteria, such as network egress, power, and available staff, to determine locations for data centers.
Efficiency involves tools for manageability, operability, and sustainability, which translate into cost savings. "It's nice to go to Steve (Ballmer) and say you can save millions of billions of dollars," she said. Trust is having the security, reliability, availability, performance, and familiarity with the local languages and markets, Chrapaty explained.
Trust is also the user community feeling that privacy will be respected as people live their lives on line. That is a challenge that every large site will have to grapple with long after technology issues are resolved.
Click here to see more stories from the Structure 08 conference and on cloud computing generally.
Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBS Interactive News, which includes CBSNews.com and CNET News. He has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. E-mail Dan. 
Trust, reliability, and efficiency as mentioned are not Microsoft attributes at all.
Microsoft will find it hard to compete in this space if those are the 3 requirements.
Google is better suited here.
"The company deploys 10,000 new servers per month on average to keep up with demand, Chrapaty said."
That means on average they deploy 120,000 servers each year! That doesn't seem accurate.
also. here's my question to the guy who says you can trust Google. why? (and once again try and contain the answer to just talking about Google, and not your feelings on MS) what makes you feel you can trust them more than say... S3 and amazon... or anybody else. App engine went down and its been less than a month... so does that build on your reliability level? It seems more like a bandwagon statement... another great example is how adwords refuses to go to the level of detail with what you'll actually get out of it to its users... basically you pay us money and we'll put you where we think you should go...
- by starsfan18 June 27, 2008 7:08 AM PDT
- Debra is pretty smart if she can find a way to save "millions of billions of dollars."
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