Control Cloud Initiative Microsoft Cloud Computing Strategy

At the moment, PCs are still the core tool in our day-to-day life-we use PCs to process documents, store data, and share information with others via email or u disk. If the PC hard drive is broken, we will be stranded because of data loss. In the "Cloud computing" era, the cloud will do the work of storing and computing for us. "Cloud" is the computer group, each group includes hundreds of thousands of units, and even millions of computers. The benefit of the cloud is that the computer can be updated at any time to ensure that the cloud is immortal. Google has several such "clouds", and other IT giants, such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon, have or are building such "clouds". At that time, we only need a computer to be able to access the Internet, do not need to care about the storage or calculation of which "cloud", but once necessary, we can use any equipment, such as computers, mobile phones, to quickly calculate and find this information. We don't have to worry about losing data any more.

At a news conference on March 17, Schmidt made a figurative analogy. "Cloud computing," he said, "is like a bank ATM, and we don't have to carry a lot of cash out of the house, and we can get it anytime we want." Kusheme, Google's engineer, argues that the PC era is like everyone needs to use electricity to buy their own generators, while in the "cloud computing" era, everyone does not have to have generators to buy electricity directly from large power plants. "Cloud computing" is not really a new concept. According to Kusheme, "cloud computing" before, there are "grid computing" (grid Computing) and so on, the idea is about how the computer together to play a role. More than 10 years ago, when she was a graduate student, she knew the concepts, but the problem was that these concepts had never been well realized.

After Kusheme joined Google, she found that this kind of concept had been practiced. Google's technology allows hundreds of thousands of of computers to work together to form powerful data centers. Google China CEO Lee Kai-Fu, said in an interview with Caijing reporter that Google's real competitiveness lies in these "clouds", they let Google have the unmatched ability to store and compute global data. At the beginning of its creation, Google did not deliberately pursue concepts such as "cloud computing" and "Lattice computing". But as a search engine, Google needs these "clouds" objectively. In fact, Yahoo's search also uses "cloud computing". Cloud computing is a new way of sharing infrastructure that can connect huge system pools together to provide a wide range of IT services. Many factors drive the need for such environments, including connectivity devices, real-time data streams, adoption of SOA, and rapid growth in WEB 2.0 applications such as search, open collaboration, social networking, and mobile commerce. In addition, the improvement of the performance of digital components has greatly increased the size of the IT environment, thus further strengthening the need for a unified cloud management.

Microsoft last week showed evidence that it will continue to dominate the next 10 years. Microsoft has released products and strategies that are more integrated into cloud computing, including the Azure series of cloud computing services, network delivery, lightweight Office applications, and the latest live mesh middleware software.

Google may have won the search war, but Microsoft will not cede global cloud computing sovereignty.

If the past 33 years, Microsoft's success depends on the developer community, with a large group of loyal, and middle-paid software warriors. Microsoft's mantra is: "Create a platform, and a developer, partner, user of the ecological system, willing to spend money will naturally follow." "An attractive platform, and the potential to reach large buyers, helps Microsoft attract developers and create applications and services that attract consumers and business users," he said.

Microsoft now understands that its platform must extend to every device (PCs, laptops, smartphones, automobiles, home appliances, etc.), and offline solutions. Microsoft missed the web search revolution, but the bigger revolution: The next 20 years of cloud computing migration, Microsoft will never be absent.

Google is building a similar ecosystem from scratch, and is keen to attract millions of of developers to join. Amazon is pushing its flexible computing cloud program, with Rackspace, EMC, IBM and many others wanting to get a piece. Most of these companies focus on escrow services, but the biggest piece will be the platform, the service, where developers can create and execute their applications for cloud computing operating systems.

One of the early examples of this trend is the Force.com platform owned by Salesforce.com. Sun, the first to shout "Network is computer," has all the resources to build a global cloud, but so far there is no positive action. As my friend Steve Gillmor says, Sun is now in a dilemma.

Openness is a major issue in the gradual process of global cloud computing. Companies do not want to be locked in a particular cloud computing system, and they want a variety of cloud computing systems and services to be interoperable through standards. Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software engineer, said last week at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) that the basic level of cloud computing operating systems would be performed at Microsoft's datacenter, but SQL services. NET and live services, which can be executed by the developer in a mixed mix of the company's internal and external data centers. Azure cloud Computing is also cross-platform, but different cloud computing will generate some costs, and the use of basic services in the application of the different cloud between the mobile, natural is not easy, simple.

Microsoft's cloud computing strategy is slower to start than its competitors, and its size is like the Manhattan Project of Windows. Azure is still in the pre-beta phase, whether it can be completed in the future, or whether it can attract a sufficient number of consumers and companies to adopt, supporting Microsoft's business model and the existing market share, are uncertain. But there is no turning back, and Microsoft is finally setting the position of office in cloud computing.

Ray Ozzie is a slow-moving, but absolutely capable master of accomplishing things. Microsoft is famous for its insistence and money. But building a global-scale platform, or a network operating system that supports billions of of users and a few megabytes of information a day, will be a big test of Microsoft's strength in the face of Google's strong competition. When Azure matures and the battle for cloud computing for developers rises, even Bill Gates may drop back into the battlefield after charging, leading the killing.