Microsoft has announced a version of Windows that runs over the internet from inside Microsoft's own datacentres. Windows Azure, previously code named "Red Dog," is similar to Amazon's Web Services platform, but Microsoft-centric. The project, called Windows Azure, was unveiled by Microsoft head techie Ray Ozzie during a conference for more than 6,000 Microsoft software developers at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Azure is an ambitious effort to create an operating system that allows for greater flexibility in using Windows—letting companies run some programs on their own computer networks while also commissioning Microsoft to dole out other tasks from its own massive data centers. If successful, Azure could transform Windows from a wasting asset to be defended at all costs into an offensive weapon that gives Microsoft advantages even Google can't match.
"What we announced today was much broader than anything anyone has tried before," says Senior Vice-President Robert Muglia.Indeed, Muglia compared the day's news to the 1992 launch of Microsoft's Windows NT, which enabled Microsoft to go from dominating desktop PCs into the much larger, more lucrative world of back-office corporate computing. That's because Azure could potentially affect the entire Net, from wonky programs used by companies to run their operations to consumer services doled out to teenagers' laptops and cell phones. While Microsoft has rolled out "live" versions of some of its programs in recent years that had Internet-based features, Azure is designed to be a common foundation on which they will all run. Gartner (IT) analyst David Mitchell Smith says "this is much bigger than NT. It's a tremendously broad and ambitious strategy. This is clearly about more than just competing with Amazon."
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