Microsoft storage business or changed walk cloud storage path

Microsoft's new operating system has recently produced quite a lot of noise, especially around virtualization, but it has been silent on data-storage products, and Windowsstorageserver 2008 's Web release is mysterious.

To think, over the past 18 months, Microsoft has announced the R2 version of Windows Server 2008 and Server2008, Windows7, Hyper-V, Azure cloud Platform and many other products.

But where are the announcements about Windows Storage Server 2008 or update StorageServer2003? Or are there any other storage professionals interested? Of course, Server2008 has some interesting storage capabilities, But the product is part of Microsoft's bold assumption of a long journey a few years ago. StorageServer2008? Look at it now and wait until next week.

It can be said that Microsoft's only "new" storage products have been released for several years, consumer-oriented homeserver products, however, this is a Server2003 based products, and in any case, are not related to enterprise-level users?

So, what the hell is going on here?

"Microsoft is now undergoing a period of change, there may be quite a few internal struggles going on in the company's storage business," said Royillsley, senior research analyst at Butler Group. "Now, they don't seem to focus on storage, I don't think they're doing the central thing. ”

If this is true, then Microsoft can and the past, and it is likely that the company has passed the wait-and-see period, and they are likely to take decisive action when they enter the storage market to catch up with other rivals in the market.

The future of cloud storage

According to a report earlier this month, a clue shows that Microsoft's thinking is undergoing structural changes, and the company has incorporated its data storage and Web services business unit under a single business platform under the group.

At first glance, Web services and data storage are a confusing combination, but there are still some reasons why Microsoft is doing this, most likely because Microsoft is considering a strategy: cloud storage services.

We know that Microsoft has at least done something about cloud storage, and Bill Gates talked about this in an interview with Pcmagazine magazine last August about its departure from Microsoft. In the consumer market, Microsoft has been involved in cloud storage through its free windowsliveskydrive service, providing 25GB of storage space for those who want to use it.

Then there was azure, Microsoft's cloud service platform, which was announced at the PDC conference in October, but the details were not disclosed. Last month, Microsoft revealed the role that its SQL Server application might play in the Azure program-a sqldataservices, probably the first relational database to provide services in the cloud, "and we are now officially announcing The SDS relational database will be provided as a feature in Azure services. "The Sqldataservice team blog reveals all this.

However, like cloud applications, cloud storage is a well-known problem as a software that provides a wider range of services. Most crucially, many companies feel unwilling or unable to store data in the cloud for security, privacy, control or management reasons.

"Because of this, I think we will see a lot of cloud within the enterprise within the next 3-5 years as technology matures," said Illsley. "In some areas banks may see applications running before an internal cloud storage, but storage in other areas is likely to go into an internal cloud before the server." In the long run, we may see a 60:40 ratio to differentiate between internal and external clouds, which includes the storage of the cloud. ”

This implies that Microsoft, as well as IBM, HP and the management tool CA, which will develop advanced add-ons, will aim to deploy and manage the internal storage cloud in the coming months.

When will all this happen? Now that's just a guess, but don't be surprised, Microsoft's silence will be roaring for the next 12 months.