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Microsoft Goes Further Into the Cloud

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For as long as most of us have been using computers at work, we’ve been using Microsoft products. Aside from a few handfuls of creatives on Macs and geeky types using Linux, being an office worker has usually meant being intimately familiar with Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

But, at least by many accounts, a new era is dawning. We’re no longer tethered to the programs installed on our hard drives. It’s often easier to collaborate with colleagues by sharing a Google Doc than by emailing a Word attachment. And more and more work gets done entirely outside of the constraints of an office computer, by coworkers accessing a shared company platform on the web.

In this environment, Microsoft is well aware that it needs to compete where its customers are working—in the cloud. In 2010, it rolled out Windows Azure, a computing platform that lets users run programs, store data and analyze information on remote Microsoft servers. That first generation of Azure is classified as a platform as a service product. It works together with the company’s software-as-a-service offering, which lets businesses use the familiar Microsoft programs in the cloud through Office 365.

Now, though, Microsoft is aiming squarely at the market for raw computing power currently dominated by Amazon. The most money in the cloud computing world today lies in that raw power, known as infrastructure as a service. The new Windows Azure offering, currently only available in “preview” allows users to rent virtual machines on the company’s servers by the hour or by the month.

Google also recently unveiled an infrastructure-as-a-service offering, which means the market is getting much more crowded with big-name players. That means customers may be able to find good deals as companies vie for their business. But it also means more to consider for anyone looking to sign up with a cloud provider, from making sure any given company will keep data safe and accessible to figuring out how to compare prices in an apples-to-apples fashion.

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts on major cloud computing players.

Windows Azure, Leap Day and Cloud Computing

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On Feb. 29, many users of Microsoft cloud computing service Windows Azure found their systems unavailable, and, for some, the outage continued into the next day. Microsoft has apologized, issued refunds to affected customers and promised to learn from the incident.

The company says the problems were the result of a “Leap Day bug,” an error related to date/time values. In a blog post, Bill Laing, vice president of Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Division, wrote that the problem emerged from the system’s attempt to create “valid-to” dates one year in the future, which Azure figured would be February 29, 2013. Since that day doesn’t exist, the certification creation failed, and users ended up being shut out of their cloud systems.

Then, Laing wrote, Microsoft inadvertently sent out an update package that wasn’t compatible with some companies’ host agents, which meant a delay in getting back to business.

The issue occurred at a time when many businesses are considering whether to go the cloud computing route, and for what operations. Azure is a prominent name in the space, along with products from Amazon, Google and other companies.

It may not be surprising that there would be bugs in cloud systems. They’re complicated, and pretty new. Windows Azure only became generally available in 2010. Then again, there are also plenty of potential pitfalls in storing data and software on-site. Keeping multiple computers updated with new software and security systems isn’t easy, and local servers—not to mention employees’ laptops—are vulnerable to all sorts of disasters. IT support firms can clarify these issues and help businesses choose the best tools—whether local or virtual—for their needs.

In response to the Leap Day problems, Microsoft has promised a number of improvements to its methods. Among other things, Laing wrote, the company will test its offerings better to avoid problems related to time and date values, work to detect errors more quickly and make customers’ dashboard interfaces more consistently available. The company also pledged to improve customer support and communications tools so that, in the event of an incident, those affected will have quicker access to better information about what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is giving a 33 percent credit for the affected billing months for all users of the affected services—Azure Compute, Access Control, Service Bus and Caching—even if their service wasn’t interrupted.

Microsoft must be hoping the slip-up won’t hurt Azure, especially since cloud computing is more and more on the minds of businesses that are choosing how to deal with their data most simply and affordably. In its quest to win over those potential customers, the company also recently cut the price of Azure, following Google and Amazon, which have done the same for their cloud offerings.

A Look At The Major Cloud Computing Players – Microsoft

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Cloud Computing is a hot topic in technology circles – the technology is consistently getting better and better, and more and more companies are coming into the cloud computing fold.

With so much going on in the cloud space, we wanted to provide a few blog entries designed to help you recognize some of the major players in the industry, and understand what they have to offer.

In this blog entry, we’ll focus on Microsoft.

Microsoft:

Microsoft primarily focuses on two areas in Cloud Computing:

– Microsoft Office 365:

This is the cloud version of Microsoft’s widely used Office suite.  In the cloud version of Office, users are able to access Office from anywhere and on a variety of devices – from smart phones to a work computer to a home laptop.

Office 365 also brings advances to collaboration tools – for instance, 365 users can see each other’s availability for scheduling, or work together through social networking.

– Windows Azure:

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform, which provides a wide variety of services.  IT specialists can move a company’s existing applications into the Azure cloud, or develop new web applications using Azure’s proven technology.

In Conclusion:

Microsoft is bringing some of its staple products to the Cloud, and it will be interesting to see how companies move to adopt the new offerings over the next year.

Stay tuned to our blog for more perspectives on other Cloud players like Amazon Web Services, Google and Rackspace.