Comments on: Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism

Microsoft's latest vision of cloud computing received a sunny reception compared to the torrent of displeasure that greeted Hailstorm seven years ago.

[Ian_Joyner]

Trust Microsoft? Of course! Trust them to get it wrong.

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.

[krushyou]

Wow, talk about a HUGE FAIL on your part and not very good at trolling either...

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.

[The_Decider]

krushyou,

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.

[rapier1]

You are right, encrypted data can be compromised. However, assuming that the users make use of best practices the encrypted data stored on the servers should be safe.

[Ian_Joyner]

>>>"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.<<<

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.

[Super2online]

Microsoft has always been a company that knows how to get it right on the second or third try. It appears that the second version of longhorn (Vista being the first, and 7 being the second) is addressing its shortcomings and putting out a product we will be much happier with.

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.

[someguy999]

.NET My Services (Hailstorm), was a good idea... however it was incredibly complex, it was just truly just the nuts and bolts, the tools to use sucked ... nothing like the idea of putting your entire database in the cloud.

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.

[jabberwolf]

"Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism"

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?!

[ckurowic]

Apple has nothing to do with it, why did you even bring it up? Inferiority complex? I know, it is hard not to have one as a PC user....

[myles taylor]

I didn't see Apple mentioned at all. Why not say something about Linux, or Android, since anything non-Microsoft is obviously coming into play here.

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.

[The_Decider]

There is still too many inherent issues with online mainframes(AKA "cloud"-named that to make it seem new and high tech) for any rational company to put its mission critical data on it. Whether it is MS or some other company providing the service.

[gtyron]

For the record, I do hate Windows and cloud computing, I just didn't feel the need to reiterate.

[jabailo]

Man, it's been a really long, long time since Microsoft delivered.

[axeman1108]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO AZURE

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.

[Sesetamhet]

We are not all a bunch of Apple groupies. Microsoft has done many things that inhibit opensource development, and with it the development of software itself. And a reputation for getting it right on the third try? Is this thing still going to be based on DOS, an inherently flawed backend? The fact is, systems that comply to POSIX standards (like Linux and Mac) are OBJECTIVELY better than Windows. They are faster and more secure by any standard, due to the conditions under which they were created. I hardly think that trusting Microsoft, a company that has a record of abusing its power, is a good thing to do...

[solomonster]

Don't underestimate how great a standardized platform can be for opening up real opportunities. Go back a dozen years or so and think about the pre-win32 (Windows 95) days. Software vendors had to write all of their own drivers for specific devices and services to control them. If you had a different printer than say, HP Laserjet III, you had to make sure there were drivers written for your WordPerfect 5.1 application to run on them. Windows 95 helped change that by makeing a ton of basic "services" availible in the OS. This opened up the field for application companies to focus time/money/effort on features rather than basic communications and interop capabilities. The whole Web Services Infrastructure talk of the last several years has been driving integration forward by making the load lighter for ISV's doing this in the enterprise while waiting for hosted application support to catch up. Sure its about trust. But not trust of one company; its trust of someone other than your own local data center in your enterprise having your application and handling the transaction.
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;

[Kostagh]

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.
It's freaky and almost terrifying. No.