What admins need to know about Windows Azure services

Microsoft is famous for saying it’s "all in" with cloud computing, and for developers, there’s been a lot of information, code and features to sink their teeth into. But as an IT administrator, the cloud represents something outside of your boundaries -- something your company pays for, but you don’t directly control.

The truth is, there hasn’t been a lot of really good messaging around what Windows Azure means for IT professionals. So let’s take a look at the Azure lifecycle from an IT perspective and try to piece together how the worlds of cloud computing and IT departments come together.

First, understand the essentials of Azure
Windows Azure, put very succinctly, is an environment run by Microsoft that lets developers create applications that will run anywhere without worrying about things like specifying hardware, dealing with demand, or acquiring management teams to take care of the bells and whistles. Azure basically abstracts the layers of service provisioning and computer management from the developer, so he or she can write an application to the Azure platform but not be concerned with resources, machines, state, and so on.

Companies supposedly benefit because you only pay for what you use (i.e. the time Microsoft’s resources are used on your company’s behalf), which minimizes capital costs to run your Internet-connected applications.

Microsoft sharpens Windows Server 8, Azure cloud story

If IT managers in Windows shops had any doubts about Windows Server 8 and Azure serving as fundamental building blocks for their company’s cloud strategy, they don’t have any now.

From dawn to dusk at the BUILD conference here this week, Microsoft executives pounded home the message that Server 8 and Azure will have a hand-in-glove relationship that will anchor most of the company’s enterprise platforms and applications.

They also consistently pushed the cloud platform as a scalable, highly available option for application developers and IT shops, emphasizing the company is also building features into the server product that are informed by its experience engineering and managing the hosting service.

Three questions to ask when considering Microsoft Azure

Cloud computing is, for some, a means of escaping from the clutches of traditional computer and software vendors. Most enterprises realize that the value of cloud will depend on how well services integrate with their own IT commitments and investments.

Because Microsoft is so much a part of internal IT, Microsoft's cloud approach is especially important to users. Many will find it compelling; others may decide it's impossible to adopt. Which camp are you in?

The foundation of Microsoft Azure's value proposition is the notion that users must design their enterprise IT infrastructure for peak load and high reliability operation, although both of these requirements waste a lot of budget dollars. The Azure solution is to draw on cloud computing to fill processing needs that exceed the long-time average. It also backs up application resources to achieve the necessary levels of availability, if normal data center elements can't provide those levels.

This means that Azure, unlike most cloud architectures, has to be based on elastic workload sharing between the enterprise and the cloud. They accomplish this by adopting many service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts, including workflow management (the Azure Service Bus).

A really useless Cloud Computing Index

Investment firm, First Trust Portfolios' Cloud Computing Index is an interesting sign of the times in cloud computing and the surest sign that we're in a cloud bubble, according to many analysts.

The bubble hype is neither here nor there, but looking at the description of the fund, the key question is whether its top 10 holdings appropriately reflect leaders and bellwethers of the cloud computing landscape. Here's the list as of July 21:

Google, Inc.

Amazon.com, Inc.

Open Text Corporation

VMware, Inc.

Salesforce.com, Inc.

Blackboard, Inc.

Netflix, Inc.

Teradata Corporation

TIBCO Software Inc.

F5 Networks, Inc.

A good number of companies here do represent trends in cloud computing, but others don't exactly fit the bill.

Why Microsoft's 'cloud bribes' are the right idea

Although many view cloud migration fees as payola, the charges are exactly what's needed from cloud computing companies

InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard uncovered the fact that Microsoft is paying some organizations to adopt its Office 365 cloud service, mostly in funds that Microsoft earmarks for their customers' migration costs and other required consulting. Although this raised the eyebrows of some bloggers -- and I'm sure Google wasn't thrilled -- I think this is both smart and ethical. Here's why.

Those who sell cloud services, which now includes everyone, often don't consider the path from the existing as-is state to the cloud. If executed properly, there is a huge amount of work and a huge cost that can remove much of the monetary advantages of moving to the cloud.

Microsoft benefits from subsidizing the switch because it can capture a customer that will use that product for many years. Thus, the money spent to support migration costs will come back 20- or 30-fold over the life of the product. This is the cloud computing equivalent to free installation of a cable TV service.