Cloud Computing Has To Be About Openness And Ease; Not Locking Developers In

from the let's-see-something-real dept

There was a ton of press coverage today over Microsoft's not-particularly-surprising announcement of Microsoft Azure, its attempt to get into the cloud computing business, competing with the likes of Amazon, Google's AppEngine and (now) Rackspace, among others. Microsoft entering this space isn't a surprise at all, so it's a bit disappointing to see the sheer lack of details surrounding the announcement. Amazon has succeeded in the space because of two main things: incredibly cheap prices and ridiculous ease-of-use.

Amazon recognized early on that its "cloud computing" efforts were a true utility offering. It needed to be pure plug and play with very low, easy to understand pricing, and absolutely no hassle to get started. It was so easy and such a good deal, many developers couldn't come up with any reason not to use Amazon's web services. While I initially thought Google's AppEngine might provide serious competition for Amazon, today I'm less sure. Google is using AppEngine more as a way to get startups to build their technology to work on Google's tech platform. That's the same thing that Microsoft will clearly be doing with Azure. Yet, for Amazon, it was never about locking developers in to Amazon's platform: it was just about making use of spare computing cycles. The fact that it wasn't so tied to Amazon's core business may actually be a benefit here, in that it lets Amazon be a lot more open and free about how people can use it, keeping it super cheap and easy. Google and Microsoft, on the other hand, get too focused on using their cloud offerings to tie developers to their own tech stack. I agree that someone else could come in and create a cloud computing solution that beats Amazon by being even more open and easier -- I just don't see either Google or Microsoft being that company.

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