How Microsoft's cloud aims to cover the world

Re: With Microsoft the best things come in threes....

Microsoft do seem to have a much more user friendly and far better integrated cloud model than their only close rival in this space - Amazon.

Re: what is the meaning of cloud?

Whilst I agree with Sgt. Pinback here in many ways, what else is MS going to sell but but re-badged "technology" invented by others? Where is the innovation?

When I was a lad an Azure sky contained very wispy insubstantial clouds with a lot of blue.

Re: what is the meaning of cloud?

Thank god, someone sensible at last. I agree with every word you said.

Re: what is the meaning of cloud?

Hi Sarge,

Thanks for taking the time to post a comment. Allow me to rebut.

"I think your definitions suck young man"

Yes. They probably do suck. Most of what I do sucks. I'm a terrible, terrible person for being incredibly bad at defining something that no two companies, let alone two professionals in the industry can agree on a solid definition for.

You are right about one thing though, using the term "cloud" without a definition is like using the word DevOps. It could literally mean anything. Was my definition an abject failure? Actually it wasn't because I was aware when writing it that it was a failure. What I gave you was a dig at the ludicrous meanings of cloud as deployed by vendors across the world. My sarcasm though, was apparently lost in translation. Mea Culpa.

So here's a definition of cloud you might be able to get behind.

"Cloud = "running workloads on $infrastrucutre in a HIGHLY AUTOMATED and ORCHESTRATED fashion" where $infrastructure's location and ownership dertermine the adjective used to describe the Cloud. (Public, Private, Service Provider, etc.)"

Then again you might not, because to use your very own examples, this means that your "single server with many virtual machines all managed and orchestrated by something like chef/ansible/puppet" qualifies as a cloud, while your "business network" does not. The business network might be managed, certainly, but they rarely meet level of orchestration that would qualify them as cloud environment. Then again you might have a network so supremely tuned and balanced with an unparalleled level of automation. If you do, then congratulations. I still won't ever refer to it as a cloud environment though.

So to sum up:

My definition sucked, you objected, but failed to add much of anything to the conversation. I rebutted, offering a different definition. Have I missed anything? Oh yes. Yes I have.

"(we are all dumber for having read your article, I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul)"

Thanks for the parting shot. It must have been extremely difficult not to lead with it. I could take this criticism to heart. I could decide not to write any more articles. I could give it all up because apparently I will get not points for this effort. I could, but I won't. I won't because as you say at the start, I am a young man. I have at least 30-40 years left in this industry that I deeply love and because I care about the direction it's headed in I decided to get involved in the conversation. So I'll keep writing articles, learning, researching and getting better. One day I might write something you actually like. I sincerely hope not though, because no god I believe in would have mercy on my soul for that.

Re: As usual security

The point of cloud computing is that you don't need to trust them with your data. You can have a hybrid cloud solution where your data lives on-site at your premises while the rest of your infrastructure and services can live in the cloud, if you so choose. That's the beauty of Microsoft Azure's cloud services - YOU choose where your data lives, and YOU choose how to tailor the cloud IaaS and PaaS to meet your requirements.