Muglia Cloud Burst
During his Microsoft TechEd 2010 North America conference keynote this morning, Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Division, laid out the company's vision of cloud computing, and offered a roadmap to users who want to fall in line with that vision.
Muglia mentioned the individuality of customers, noting that some want to rely primarily on existing datacenter and applications investments, while others view the cloud as a far-reaching gamechanger for IT. He went on to say that "Microsoft will use a combination of products, services and industry collaboration to help customers make the change when they are ready," adding, "Key to tackling the challenge is for customers to strike the right balance between traditional software-based server architectures managed by the customer or a partner, the vast power and near limitless scalability of cloud services powered remotely by giant server warehouses, and a hybrid model that blends the two."
Muglia delivered several cloud-related news items of interest, including:
Public beta of service pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 coming by the end of July. Created to prepare users for the cloud, SP1 includes Remote FX 3-D graphics for remote users and Dynamic Memory to adjust memory usage. Also included are updates for users of Windows Server and Windows 7.
Windows Azure platform receives enhanced features, including and updated Windows Azure software development kit, which features support for Microsoft .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010, and IntelliTrace. This is available here. "In addition," Microsoft says, "The Windows Azure Content Delivery Network moved from beta to a production service and is now generally available."
Updates to SQL Azure include "spatial data support and access to 50GB of SQL Azure Database capacity, allowing for higher scalability, flexibility, and easier management of applications and services." Beyond that, additional enhancements to management capabilities include "the public preview of SQL Azure Data Sync Service, which provides more flexible control over where and how data is distributed and synced across multiple datacenters, and Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager, a lightweight and easy-to-use tool to help develop, deploy and manage data-driven applications on the cloud."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/07/2010 at 12:48 PM