Switch Systems Blog

Yesterday Microsoft ran ‘Transitioning to the Cloud’ for its partners, which was unashamedly a marketing event for several of its new products, but never the less it was very interesting.

One key product they were pushing was the Azure Platform, which is their first step into cloud computing, allowing software to be developed away from on-premises and traditional hosted solutions. The Azure platform is different to competitor cloud solutions as it is a ‘platform as a service’ compared to a ‘virtual computing environment’ such as the Amazon’s cloud, ‘EC2′. A cloud platform, such as Azure, allows for seamless scalability as the end users are removed from the ‘plumbing’. This allows for quicker and more efficient software development life cycles as time is dedicated to the bespoke software development, rather than the complex server upkeep and maintenance.

The platform is built from three main components, computing power, storage, and connectivity. The computing power is handled via the Azure Platform, allowing users to throw as much or as little resources at it as they like, for as long as they like. Compatibility is limited but currently works with Microsoft’s .NET Framework and PHP. There are also SDKs available for Ruby and Java developers. As Azure is a platform it allows seamless scalability with litter effort from the end user. Azure even notices when user software starts to become sluggish and will reports a solution. Storage is similarly a scalable solution allowing users to grow their software knowing they won’t be limited by physical storage space. The storage includes use of Azure SQL which is a relational database designed specifically for use with the cloud. The third leg of Azure is AppFabric which, in short, allows the software to talk to other hosted, on-premises, or cloud developments.

These Azure components allow for easy and quick migration to the cloud, with Dot Net Solutions’ Dan Scarfe reporting that it took less than 2 hours to transfer some of his client’s software to the cloud. As AppFabric allows communication between the cloud and on-premises systems, migrating to the cloud can be fragmented between different sections software and company for a manageable transition.

One main issue that was highlighted by another Microsoft partner was the issue of perceived security as many people believe that the cloud is insecure. Microsoft insists that security isn’t an issue with Azure, giving examples of several high profile clients already using Azure. However they were quick to skip over a question relating to who was legally responsible if there was a security issue. It would be nice to have their confidence backup in the end user agreement.