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Information Technology News Microsoft's Azure Cloud Computing isn't just blue sky
Information Technology News Microsoft's Azure Cloud Computing isn't just blue sky | Microsoft's Azure Cloud Computing isn't just blue sky |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Friday, 07 November 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 4 I'm speaking of none other than Facebook, and its "social networking" ilk. A killer aspect of Facebook is that it connects long-lost buddies, sure, but next to that it again makes it dead simple for developers to unfurl works upon users and similarly for users to find new things (apps) on the site to do - and to keep them there. There's no denying an awful lot of time is spent on Facebook and it's because of this richness of applications.Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
Where the iPhone AppStore and Facebook differ from conventional software development is that the means of distribution to the end user is provided for you. There is no work involved. The AppStore hosts your software, too. Steve was actually quizzed during the Q&A session as to whether Microsoft were going to help its loyal coders make a buck by enabling such a quick distribution method. His answer was that Microsoft have “something” in the works and they debated whether to announce it now or not and have decided not to. Personally, I like that answer. I’m going to use it from now on whenever I’d ordinarily answer “no.” For instance, when asked “have you finished that report?” my new answer will be, “I debated whether to show you now what I have done but I decided not to, not just yet.” Nevertheless, AppStore-like app store or not, Azure does look after your app hosting. If you’re a developer, your Azure-targeted software will go and reside, and execute, on a Microsoft server somewhere out there in the cloud. Conceptually, this is still in the same territory as Google’s AppEngine. And, like Google, Microsoft tout an advantage of their cloud platform as being infinite scalability. The services you make available can be quietly moved from small server to big server as needs arise. It can be moved to different locations around the world. It can be stored on a virtual machine or a ‘real’ server. You’ll never know, nor care, and no matter how popular your application becomes and how hard hit it gets you will never have deal with transitioning to a larger server, a larger data centre, or any infrastructure matter save for your own bandwidth to access the cloud wherever you may be. The comparison ends here, for Azure goes further than Google do. Ballmer went on to say “Everything you can program for you should be able to do against the cloud.” What does this mean? CONTINUED |
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