“Big Data analytics will shape the form of nearly every process going forward in time, from the color of the latest fashions, what the candidates say in one town versus another to the chemical composition of the latest super drug,” noted Steve Knodl, Director of Product Management at NextIO, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Whether these are considered “new” products,” Knodl continued, “or continuous improvement on previous processes is largely in the eyes o...| By Walter Pinson | Article Rating: |
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| December 21, 2009 07:30 AM EST | Reads: |
20,821 |
My colleague, Peter Palmieri, just penned a blog post about Microsoft’s recent announcement that the Azure platform will offer extensive and familiar relational database features via SQL Data Services (SDS).
In his post, Leveraging Skills, Peter discusses the fact that .NET developers will be able to leverage their existing SQL Server database skills when developing against the Azure platform.
In doing so, he has touched upon what I think is Microsoft’s most strategic advantage in the realm of cloud computing.
Microsoft has a ready-made ecosystem and developer community from which to draw its consumer innovators and early adopters.
And I believe it plans on leveraging that advantage to vanquish the competition. The sheer breadth and depth of these cloud consumer first-movers may prove to be game-changing.

From my perspective, abstraction is the key to wide-scale adoption of enterprise cloud services. One of the general advantages of cloud computing is the associated cost savings gained through economies-of-scale and pay-as-you-go economics. For CTOs, CIOs, and enterprise IT managers, re-tooling and re-training the developer and operations workforce cuts into that cost savings; weakening the cloud computing value proposition.
Further, said developer and operations workforce is aware of something called job security. The need to retool and retrain is not only costly to the enterprise, it takes a heavy toll on the workforce as well. My money says that the largest pools of cloud computing evangelists will come from the groups with the lowest hurdles, or barriers to adoption.
Providers of enterprise cloud computing services will do themselves a huge favor by minimizing the barriers to adopting their platforms. The name of the game is abstraction and Microsoft has a built-in advantage in this area.
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Windows is broadly trusted in the enterprise.
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Microsoft had the strategic savvy to use Windows as the abstraction layer; turning it into a very familiar gateway to the clouds.
As a result, all Microsoft .NET developers and engineers are now (potential) cloud developers and engineers. Update your resumes folks.
Photo Credit lrargerich.
Published December 21, 2009 Reads 20,821
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
More Stories By Walter Pinson
Walter Pinson is the Chief Software Architect at SMBLive; whose IAmFound social marketing platform helps SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) get discovered online and generate inbound sales leads. In his role as CSA, Walter manages a globally distributed product development group and has SaaS products deployed at major telecommunications channel partners in the US, UK, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico. Additionally, Walter is a co-founder and principal of Pinson3 Systems; a boutique software engineering concern serving the intelligence and defense sectors with solutions ranging from enterprise web-based multi-modal biometric analysis systems to information warfare training systems. Prior to his role at SMBLive and founding Pinson3 Systems, Walter was a Senior Strategy Consultant with Microsoft focused on SaaS, SOA, and .NET adoption in the telecommunications sector. Walter has published articles for Cloud Computing Journal, is a member of ACM and IEEE, and currently has one patent pending. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from The Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University, where he focused on distributed and parallel computing. Walter is currently working on his MBA at the GMU School of Management.
“Big Data analytics will shape the form of nearly every process going forward in time, from the color of the latest fashions, what the candidates say in one town versus another to the chemical composition of the latest super drug,” noted Steve Knodl, Director of Product Management at NextIO, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Whether these are considered “new” products,” Knodl continued, “or continuous improvement on previous processes is largely in the eyes o...May. 24, 2013 04:00 AM EDT Reads: 6,601 |
By Jeremy Geelan Organizations want extraordinary results from their IT units. Today's mantra is faster delivery, better quality, cheaper solutions, and safer environments. Many CIOs are implementing cloud computing enterprise architectures to address these challenges with results varying greatly. Why are some organizations seeing only limited results from cloud computing implementations while others are increasing market share, decreasing costs, generating value, and innovating faster? May. 24, 2013 03:15 AM EDT Reads: 3,255 |
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OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS app...May. 23, 2013 02:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,190 |
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Wowrack’s core expertise lies in high-availability Private and Public Cloud IaaS Hosting Solutions. Wowrack provides a true Hybrid service – where business release all IT management and hardware provisioning – taking the data center and server system administrative headaches off our customer’s shoulders. ...May. 23, 2013 12:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,145 |
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In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, will describe how OAuth can be used to facilitate certain business models and simplify the sharing of private data.
Alistair Farquharson is a visionary industry veteran focused on using disruptive technologies to drive business growth and improve efficiency and agility within organizations. As the CTO of SOA Software A...May. 23, 2013 11:14 AM EDT Reads: 941 |
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nfina Technologies develops, manufactures, and markets highly reliable cloud server products, designed to solve the most demanding data center requirements in mission-critical cloud applications. Nfina’s staff has decades of experience in co...May. 23, 2013 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,090 |
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...May. 23, 2013 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,118 |
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Organizations want extraordinary results from their IT units. Today's mantra is faster delivery, better quality, cheaper solutions, and safer environments. Many CIOs are implementing cloud computing enterprise architectures to address these challenges with results varying greatly. Why are some organizations seeing only limited results from cloud computing implementations while others are increasing market share, decreasing costs, generating value, and innovating faster?
The rise of cloud computing has exposed hard drive-based storage as the new data center bottleneck. Combating this, data center managers have deployed SSDs to gain the performance needed to provide real-time access to data. However, due to budget constraints, many have turned to consumer-grade SSDs without understanding that they wear out quickly when processing enterprise workloads. In this session, Esther Spanjer will discuss recent endurance advancements in SSD technology that enable usage of...
“Open source has always provided a number of benefits, including easing adoption costs, propagating a better understanding of the technology, and allowing for faster evolution and commercialization of products and services based on it,” noted Terry Woloszyn, Founder & CEO, Leeward Security Ltd., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This is clearly evident with the OpenStack and CloudStack,” Woloszyn continued, “and others that have been quickly commercialized as...
SYS-CON Events announced today that OpenStack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. OpenStack software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed by a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.
OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS app...
SYS-CON Events announced today that Wowrack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Wowrack’s core expertise lies in high-availability Private and Public Cloud IaaS Hosting Solutions. Wowrack provides a true Hybrid service – where business release all IT management and hardware provisioning – taking the data center and server system administrative headaches off our customer’s shoulders. ...
Many have heard of OAuth but are unsure of how it might apply to their business.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, will describe how OAuth can be used to facilitate certain business models and simplify the sharing of private data.
Alistair Farquharson is a visionary industry veteran focused on using disruptive technologies to drive business growth and improve efficiency and agility within organizations. As the CTO of SOA Software A...
SYS-CON Events announced today that nfina Technologies, a provider of highly reliable cloud server products, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
nfina Technologies develops, manufactures, and markets highly reliable cloud server products, designed to solve the most demanding data center requirements in mission-critical cloud applications. Nfina’s staff has decades of experience in co...
“Social, mobile, analytics and cloud can’t be looked at as distinct technology trends; they are facets of the same movement and an everyday reality for consumers and businesses alike,” said Craig Sowell, IBM VP of SmartCloud Marketing, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This means that businesses need to start looking at trends as one: cloud is the delivery, analytics is the unique insight, social is a shareable service, and mobile is the ubiquitous access.”
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