Analysis of WindowsAzure and the multi-faceted nature of the cloud

“Cloud computing” is the most popular IT industry concept. Ben Pring, senior analyst at Gartner, believes: "Cloud computing is just like the French feast." But almost everyone has different definitions of cloud computing “. Wikipedia is defined as: cloud computing, a computing method in which computing resources are dynamically scalable and virtualized, often provided over the Internet. Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud-based operating system, and like the Azure Services Platform, is the name of Microsoft's "Software and Services" technology. The main goal of Windows Azure is to provide a platform for developers to help developers run in

First, we need to be clear about whether to talk about the cloud as a service or as an architectural concept. Usually, we will find that we can't come to a specific conclusion in the conversation about cloud computing. The reason is that we always take it for granted that cloud computing is regarded as a service operated by a third-party operator until we suddenly understand what other people are talking about. It is to buy software and hardware to deploy your own cloud architecture.

There is a big difference between these two views. In my opinion, for most companies, investing in autonomous cloud computing projects is not a smart move. Unless these companies intend to become cloud providers, they will not be able to make rational use of funds in the long run. But we must admit that there are not many people who hold the same view. On the contrary, most companies believe that self-developed cloud computing is the best way. In fact, in doing so, there is a clear effect of saving money in the short term, because moving to a virtualized data center architecture that can be automatically provisioned is a more efficient supply method. The US Rapid Defense's new Rapid Access Computing Environment is a classic example. However, this is not the cloud computing we are talking about today. In fact, since the cloud we are talking about is behind a corporate firewall, we don't define it as cloud computing.

So far, Microsoft has been disapproving of packaging Windows Azure into a package that companies can deploy on their own. Therefore, Microsoft insists on a service-type cloud platform to meet the needs of third parties. In this regard, we believe that Azure represents a new, second-generation cloud platform that is more responsive to the needs of today's market than the products of the first-generation vendors. Early vendors were able to offer cloud computing as a single service in the market without providing other services to connect cloud servers and in-house applications. For a few companies that are ready to replace internal computing with clouds, this is definitely a good thing. However, most companies now adopt a comprehensive strategy based on the foreseeable future, so they must retain their computing architecture and extend it to the cloud. Cloud providers serving the market must face this fact and try to solve this problem. Here are four examples of Azure:

Short-term, overflow to replenish the internal environment

This is a case of a service-oriented cloud platform that is widely used in the enterprise market. It takes advantage of the flexibility of cloud computing payment methods, and can effectively save the cost of testing and development servers, even if a company's project requires additional traffic during the peak load period. Because it can be easily copied to internal platforms, the rapid replenishment of elastic requirements is often seen as a fundamental feature of cloud computing. It is widespread because the cloud computing cloud attributes are not used frequently in such cases.

Cloud-based services and applications scalable on-premise

Windows Azure has many examples of this. For example, Microsoft Dynamic ERP software has many new websites and commercial extensions that complement the back-end suite with automated front-end operations. The new service, numbered Dallas, uses Azure as an aggregation point for bonus information services. In this example, the cloud can deliver real-time information in a simpler and more efficient way than the internal architecture, and can launch a new set of local Azure applications. Of course, this also means that, as a basis for Microsoft's software + service strategy, although it does not deny that we have previously defined cloud computing as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, traditional internal computing, it tends to encourage trust in the internal architecture.

Temporary hosting as part of a cloud migration strategy

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. As a temporary phase of the local cloud IT strategy, the move to move the server to the cloud is probably a slow-down plan that many companies have to take to reduce the hassle. However, in general, we see that people are simply putting existing internal applications on the cloud, which turns out to be their full use of the cloud. This is a mistake that many independent software developers make.

Cloud-based services and applications can replace on-premise

Of course, this is probably the ideal state of the cloud. Azure promises to achieve this, but the three scenarios above are enough to distract this effort, especially those that rely on a permanent internal and exclusive computing architecture. As long as Azure continues to evolve on the basic principle of “additions” instead of comparing with the customer's own computing architecture, Azure is expected to compete with other cloud platforms.

In short, the author is worried that developers will stop at Azure or similar platforms. All of the above cases can migrate enterprise IT deployments to the cloud, but they simply use Azure as a platform replacement for software and applications. It does not take full advantage of the real-time nature of the cloud environment, bandwidth fluency and API sharing. I hope that Windows Azure will not become an application sanatorium, but will become an application replenishment station and add vitality to the application.