Ever though about a Windows Azure Platform Appliance running in your own backyard? Well, the freshly released Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform could help you get an idea about the intended scale of such an appliance. While not being necessarily a very accurate indicator about the scale at which Microsoft intends to marked the cloud appliance, it is nevertheless an indicator. Since Microsoft talked for the first time about it, I’ve received lots of questions about its availability. Most of these questions came from companies which, despite being important players in their local geography, are too small from a global perspective. For the moment, unless you are Fujitsu, Dell, eBay, HP, or the like, don’t plan on getting your own Azure to play with (what I mean here is that it probably doesn’t make sense for you from a financial point of view).
Microsoft’s strategy so far has been to mention the appliance on virtually every occasion but refrain from providing details. This generated a certain level of expectation within the industry, and even made some analysts question its very existence. I’d dare to say this also generated a certain level of confusion, leading some IT managers to believe that in the not so distant future they’ll be able to play with their own on-premises Azure (although Microsoft never delivered such a promise regarding the appliance).
I guess the Fujitsu announcement brings a bit of clarity into this story. For now, the appliance is clearly neither intended nor marketed as an affordable multi-server (read “a few servers”) solution for IT departments. This quote from the official Azure Platform Appliance page is relevant:
“Think of it as hundreds of servers in pre-configured racks of networking, storage, and server hardware that are based on Microsoft-specified reference architecture.
The Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance is different from typical server appliances in that it involves hundreds of servers rather than just one node or a few nodes and It is designed to be extensible[…]”
I think Microsoft’s communication strategy around the matter, although not perfect and despite some of the confusion it generated, is just about right. Nowadays there’s a lot of buzz around the private cloud concept (I’ve talked about this previously on this blog). Two important approaches are to be considered here:
- Do-it-yourself
- Buy it from a provider
In the case of the former, your IT department will use several tools and technologies (virtualization being among them) in order to become a service provider within the organization. If we’re talking about the Microsoft platform, we’re talking today about Hyper-V and System Center.
In the case of the latter, the same IT department will buy instead something (most probably some kind of appliance) that provides out-of-the-box the needed services.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusion around private clouds today. Some of this confusion also comes from companies (read major players) who (for the moment) lost the cloud train and are trying to overcome this weakness by rebranding collections of their products and services as “private cloud”. By doing this, they hope to mask the lack of real cloud offerings while working hard to recuperate the delay. In this context, like many previous buzz-words (BI and SOA are the ones that I can think about immediately), private cloud is many things to many people. And that’s why I agree with Microsoft’s “better-don’t-give-details-rather-than-being-misleading” strategy, despite the drawbacks I mentioned above.
In a nutshell, the “private cloud” reality in the Microsoft world can be summarized as follows:
- You can do it yourself with Hyper-V and System Center (but don’t expect to get the level of service that you get from Windows Azure); still, you can get excellent results combining the two;
- You can buy it as an appliance (giving you most, if not all, the functionality that exists in the public cloud); right now, you must be a true global player to qualify for it;
- If you’re not a true global player, there is no appliance offering for you yet (again, with the risk of repeating myself, what I mean here is that it probably doesn’t make sense for you from a financial point of view); by all means this does not exclude the fact that at some point in time, a more reduced/compact version of the appliance will become available.
Hopefully, this is a welcomed clarification when it comes to translating the public cloud buzz into the reality of Microsoft’s platform.
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