This has been a consistent direction from Microsoft for some time. When Microsoft talks about private cloud or hybrid cloud, they refer to a design approach in which infrastructure and applications are separated. Even today, using the latest versions of Windows Server and System Center, you can manage physical hardware, storage and networking as a "fabric" and even offer self-service server provisioning.<p>In large shops, this allows for a real separation of roles between infrastructure and applications. I think this is a useful separation. Even in small shops where the same people are doing everything, this mental separation enables better management. Many small and medium sized businesses still operate in the mode that deploying an application or a major upgrade involves starting with deploying a new server.
These kinds of developments can't make VMware happy. I have not understood why VMware never made a big iaas play when it had the chance to compete before others became established and established mindshare. I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted.
Can anybody explain me in layman terms what this means?<p>I understand that Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Platform that provides services through which you can deploy your application on cloud.<p>Does this mean that you can run Azure on your own datacenter like Microsoft is doing currently?
Microsoft always referred to Azure, from the beginning, as a new operating system - it was, after all, originally branded as "Windows Azure". This actually feels like it delivers on that promise - a datacenter operating system.<p>This has the definite advantage of limiting fear of being 'locked in' in deploying into Microsoft's Azure cloud - you can always run your application on your own Azure fabric. So does this also open up the opportunity for alternate Azure hosting providers to enter the market?<p>It also opens up the possibility of private-cloud versions of Microsoft's cloud offerings. Office365 runs on Azure fabric; can Microsoft now package that up as something you can deploy into your own Azure datacenter?
Amazing! This is again a smart move from MS. There is still a market segment that does not want to move to the cloud but looking for cloud like services, for example fast provisioning.
Dear MS.<p>Thanks for going open source with dotNet. We will use it on our Linuxes and BSDs, with gratitude and joy.<p>But when it comes to your intention of bringing your non-open-source'ed software to our data centers: we were actually almost finished taking them out, and feel much better that way.