Microsoft announces Windows Azure will be tested in China

June 6 Microsoft Public Cloud Windows Azure will be in China to accept the test, this is the global IT giants landed in China's first public cloud project, attracted much attention. With concern, various queries and attacks followed, the most criticized is "Windows Azure is not open", "Microsoft's cloud technology is not open source," in the open and open source of the tide, Microsoft is customizing what kind of new technology route? Jean Paoli, president of Microsoft Open Technology Ltd., accepted the China electronic newspaper "In fact, Windows Azure's support for open source, and an open embrace, is beyond imagination," the reporter interviewed.

Set up a subsidiary to promote open and open source

Today, users face a more mixed and complex IT environment with open source technology and proprietary technology. But in the era of it as a service, users increasingly want it to be like free-flowing water, ubiquitous air that can be enjoyed anytime, anywhere, with other technical entanglements, corporate conflicts, and it complexities that are not user-related.

It should be said that Microsoft has been actively promoting the interoperability of Microsoft technology and other IT technologies over the years. In recent years, with the development of open source and open source community, the open source community has become a very important force in the Global Software service industry, which occupies a considerable market share. Microsoft realizes that there must be a wider embrace of the open source community in addition to interoperability, or it will lose a large chunk of the forest.

At a time when Microsoft is undergoing a huge transformation from software to equipment and services companies, there have been so many changes in Microsoft over the past, so such a message has not been too much attention: April 12, 2012, Microsoft announced the establishment of "Microsoft Open Technology Co., Ltd.", Microsoft's positioning of the company is "driving the company's engagement in interoperability, open standards and open source".

Choosing to set up an independent Open-source technology is an ideal model for Microsoft. On the one hand, the team can be more flexible to participate in a variety of open source and standard Community cooperation, more dimensions to promote the openness and interoperability of Microsoft. On the other hand, with a Microsoft-born and independent identity, they are better able to communicate with Microsoft, quickly integrate resources with open source and standard Community interactions, counter Microsoft's own innovation, implement Microsoft's proprietary development process, and adopt a step-by-step approach to pushing Microsoft to embrace openness and open source on a larger scale.

Jean Paoli is the World Wide Web Consortium (WWW) XML 1.0 Standard co-founder, an advocate of XML and open standards, and head of Microsoft's interoperability technology strategy, because of his background and identity, he is the perfect candidate for Microsoft's Open technology company's general manager. As President of the Department, Jean Paoli said he was reporting to Microsoft's Open source Technology board that "how many open source architectures, open source technology can interoperate with Microsoft's technology, how many open source technology users are developing software in Microsoft's Environment" is the board's standard for measuring and evaluating his performance.

Microsoft is constantly opening its source code to its technology, and at the same time, more and more open source technology is being absorbed into its new products by Microsoft, which is an important signal and an important adjustment in Microsoft's strategy. Jean Paoli said: "Open source is actually just a business model choice." The advent of the cloud has changed the way we think about business models, and any software running on azure is a good thing for Microsoft. "With the strategic transformation of equipment and services, Microsoft's business thinking is changing, and open and open source is bound to take greater steps." The Linux Foundation's 2012 annual report shows that Microsoft was the first major contributor to Linux.

Azure Multidimensional Embrace open

Although Microsoft is not a high-profile operation for technology-open companies, this year's work has been fruitful. Jean Paoli provides a long list of Microsoft's support for standards and open source technology that has been settled on Windows Azure.

"Reregistering Azure can be said to be the most open and interoperable public cloud platform in the world," he responded to the open attack on Microsoft's public cloud. He admits that Windows Azure is essentially an Internet service, providing services and interfaces to users primarily through browsers, which fundamentally determines the open source "DNA" of Windows Azure.

Only by providing maximum openness can access to the widest range of users. "So in the early days of design, definition and technology development, Microsoft asked Azure to be an open platform for globalisation." Allow customers to quickly develop, deploy management applications, not only support a variety of open source languages including PHP, Javapythonnode, JS, etc., also support the use of open source database and other services. In fact, many open-source environments such as Linux, Hadoop, MongoDB, Drupal, and Joomla are already running on Microsoft's Windows Azure platform.

Windows Azure has increased its support for open source data since 2013.

At the end of February 2013, Microsoft announced that it would join the Open Data Center Alliance to promote cloud openness. Two months ago Hortonworks released the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) for Windows Beta, an enterprise-oriented and 100% based on Apache Hadoop, for Windows Server's distributed platform. In the first two weeks, Microsoft confirmed the official version of the product (GA). Over the same period, Microsoft released the cloud-based version of Hadoop, a public preview of the Windows Azure Hdinsight service, built on the Hortonworks data platform to ensure long-term compatibility with Apache Hadoop.

Mobile, in March 2013, Microsoft announced that Windows Azure Mobile services support the Android platform, which makes it easier to connect clients and mobile applications to the extensible cloud backend. In April, Microsoft announced that it was adding support for HTML5 applications to Windows Azure Mobile Services, giving businesses more options to easily create applications that could be quickly scaled up in the cloud and on devices.

In terms of media service linkage, Microsoft released Windows Azure Media Services in early 2013 to help companies quickly build media release solutions that transfer audio and video to Windows, IOS, Android, and other devices and platforms. Whether providing training videos to employees, delivering video content to the site, or building Hulu or Netflix video-on-demand services, users can transfer video to HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, Windows 8, IPad, IPhone , Android, Xbox, Windows phone, and other clients.

"Microsoft wants to be a cloud-era service provider," said Zhang, chairman of the Asia Pacific Research and Development Group, a senior vice president at Microsoft and an interview with the China Electronics News reporter. On the one hand we want to do a better job on the platform, on the other hand, we want a larger dimension to embrace openness and attract more power to Microsoft's platform. ”