Microsoft launches Windows Azure, its "cloud OS"
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Analogously, should these cloud providers be required by law to maintain a (geographically distributed) computing reserve? A second (or third, even) clone of the current cloud?
I understand that the communication between the cloud and the world is distributed, but the actual cloud seems to be as distributed as a rock.
Second why do people think that your own data center will be better? It is like putting your money under the bed rather than in the bank. So people do that but not a good idea.
Lastly we will see a common API emerge that will allow us to move with little impertinent. The emergence of Eucalyptus is an early indication of this.
That aside, the proper way to make the analogy you're making is not to compare investing in a CDS against putting money in or under your mattress, but rather to compare it with putting it in a certificate of deposit in your locally-owned bank or loaning it to a locally-owned business. Either of these would very likely have less return and a higher risk for you. However, you would be less susceptible to a global default cascade like the one that is happening now.
The reason that ...your own data center [would] be better... isn't that it's less likely to go down, but rather that, if everybody has their own data center, the chances of a global blackout go down drastically. This is precisely the analogue I was pointing out. If banks had stayed non-optimum and local, then (arguably) we would not be facing a (potential) global economic meltdown.
You may argue (rightly) that if you pursue these localist strategies when everyone else is pursuing these more profitable consolidated strategies, which carry this systemic risk of catastrophic failure, that you'd succumb to competition from others. This is the point of asking for regulation in the market, and (possibly) the case for asking for it here. At some point, almost by definition, the cloud computing market will commoditize. When that happens, the only way to cut costs will be do do without redundancy, if that is a legally available option.
The underlying problem is that people discount the cost/benefit of events that happen in the distant future, and the global catastrophes in these two systems always seems distant.
Finally, one may object that if redundancy is such a good idea, then it will happen naturally and never be eroded by market forces. In this case, then, there can really be no objection to legislation on the matter, because everyone will naturally comply anyways.
Do they have anything like the FDIC over there? Even if retail banks did fail here, everyone would get 250k back per.
Unconnected tribals will probably have the best shot at making it through something really crazy like that.
If there is I can't see it. Did they even do a proper business case?
I can't see startups using it for a ton of reasons.
I can't see most businesses using it. They want their data in their data center.
The only use I can see would be a way for MS to sell software as a service to companies that want hosted Exchange, sharepoint, etc.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/4/3/e43bb484-3b52-4...
The root website is www.azure.com - that should link to all the relevant docs, bits, sites. We're turning on all the switches as I write this so you may see a few 404s before noon PST.
I would be hesitant to start using this because there is no way to anticipate the pricing scheme whenever it shows up. Last thing I want is to commit to a platform andthen find out it's cost-prohibitve. Also, google promises to keep certain level of usage free which makes me more likely to try because I know I won't get suddenly hosed with high prices.
Then again the target market for Azure seems to be enterprise IT depts, who tend to be involved with proprietary technology, and not start-up developers looking for a cheap and efficient host.
2. This is not true, they target several markets and among them both corporate develoers and web developers: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/corpdev.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/azure/webdev.mspx
We got invaded, like digg, so long to an unbiased HN.
They're now serving up millions of dollars worth of games per month (allegedly 70% of Xbox owners have used Live Arcade) and are moving into streaming video too. I can now watch MSNBC through it.
They've achieved the dream an internet-connected box on millions of people's TVs. Apple tried and failed miserably with their TV product.
There clearly are people at the company that get it.
Microsoft does not understand the internet and has never made any notable internet service. Silverlight? Live? MSN? Hotmail? All knockoffs. And they have "failed miserably" every time.
Why would I trust their new internet cloud system when it directly, extricably integrates into all of these other failed initiatives as a feature?
Some huge sites (Myspace, MS's stuff, PlentyofFish) run on their servers and programming languages. Their browser still has the majority of the market share (though arguably not for quality reasons.)
I don't understand this "they're failing at the internet" sentiment. It seems to just be normal anti-Microsoft stuff. They're failing at search, not the internet as a whole.
All of this is exaggerated in their internet initiatives. Who uses Hotmail anymore? Who used MSN, which they abandoned for Live? Who uses Live? Why would they try to compete against Flash with Silverlight? What gives them the authority or experience to do such a thing?
And if you asked me which were the two most horrendous monstrosities of popular websites on the internet, I would say PlentyOfFish and MySpace. They are the two sites which have the least sense of design, ergonomics, usability, and general respect.
Why, then, should I trust that they would make good decisions on their backend code and server software?
Or try adcenter as I said. Watch those billion iframes with their individual spinner loaders going round for 10 minutes while it loads.
And certainly they've failed at other things that are online. But it's not fair to say they've failed at everything internet related.
I'm still in shock that the xbox doesn't have a browser. That's really scary. Either they are just amazingly arrogant and want everything locked down walled garden, or they are still in denial about the importance of the web, or they just don't get it.
Without a reasonable keyboard, there's not point. And reading the internet off the TV sucks. I'd rather surf on my Moto Q, and that's saying a lot because surfing on that tiny thing sucks ass.
The Xbox itself is a good product. They overlooked the market the Wii pursued, but then again everyone but Nintendo did. If I recall Nintendo has never had an unprofitable quarter, even during the GameCube days when they were doing much less volume than the competitors.
Moreover, they've just begun to capitalize on it. As I said, they've got an internet connected box tethered to everyone's TV. They've been working on the dream of the living room PC for years, and now they've finally gotten there.
Teenage male bedroom TVs perhaps. Lets not get carried away here.
And I consider myself a pretty "hard-core" gamer.
Nintendo played a blinding strategy - let Sony and Microsoft play "Who has the biggest willy" with their hardcore gaming hardware which renders 4 gazillion polygons a second, while Nintendo makes fun games with wide appeal.
It's not like there are ten new cloud platform come in every day and we have to make a snap decision. We can, in fact, afford to look at the offer itself.
Oh, and extorsioning, strongarming, deceiving, FUDing, bribing, monopolizing, etc.
I'm getting a lot of "page not available" errors and broken image links.
Also, people tend to overlook this but cloud isn't really about infrastructure or hosting. Sure those are the current analogs--cloud is about what happens next, and I think it's more about shifting architectural tenets so that we do what works well with cloud scale and lifecycle. When you do those things, other interesting things start to become possible (e.g., in the cloud, it's hard to have misaligned test and prod envs, not the rule like it is most everywhere else).