Does Microsoft's Azure plan in a multi-cloud world ominously echo its Windows-everywhere past?

Before iOS and Android usurped the PC by mode of mobile, Microsoft'southward Windows operating organization ruled computing. As a once Windows-centric world has now embraced iOS, Android and Chrome, Microsoft has positioned Azure as a Super Os that embraces these other platforms.

Microsoft envisions Azure as a cloud platform that volition run the world's cantankerous-platform apps, ability tens of billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, stream content like media and games and power intelligent border devices. As a cloud provider second only to Amazon (AWS), and a company achieving billions of dollars of growth in its cloud business every year, Microsoft seems well on its mode to its goal.

Still, Microsoft is trying to seduce the world into its Windows-for-anybody-and-everything like Azure-for-everyone-and-everything strategy. Despite Microsoft's leadership (2nd to Amazon) position in a multi-cloud world, AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the preferred cloud services by many. Given this indisputable reality, perchance Microsoft's approach to the cloud should be as collaborative every bit its Windows and other cross-platform efforts have become.

A multi-deject earth and a multi-platform precedent

The cloud wars are ambitious. The billions of dollars in revenue deject generates, and the influence cloud leaders take on the evolving computing landscape are enticing rewards fueling this struggle. Cloud is the connective tissue that binds the evolving ambient computing landscape, mobile calculating, Always Connected PCs (ACPC), app evolution and workload deployment, IoT, 5G-powered edge computing, and more. It is core to Microsoft's ubiquitous calculating strategy.

It is interesting that when nigh people speak of the cloud, from consumers, It professionals and tech writers alike, there is usually no stardom made between the various cloud providers unless it is necessary to do so to brand a particular indicate. The clouds are ofttimes referred to collectively as "The Cloud." Our computing behavior carries us across different cloud providers as we move from work to habitation or betwixt dissimilar apps and platforms throughout the day and blurs the lines between what deject we are using – and we oft don't care (or find) as long as the task is done. For well-nigh users most of the time, the multi-deject reality is experienced as a atypical cloud experience.

In a multi-deject globe we increasingly experience "The Cloud" as a singular entity.

The multi-cloud world is here, it is circuitous and is integrated in the style enterprises do business concern, and how consumers experience the digital landscape; and similar the multi-Bone reality that changed computing forever – it'due south hither to stay. As Microsoft had to change its "Windows-must-dominate-computing strategy to adapt to a multi-Bone globe, information technology must also atmosphere its Azure-will-ability-the-world'due south-calculating vision with a sober acknowledgment that despite having a leading position, enterprises and consumers are using unlike cloud platforms. Thus, as Microsoft adapted Windows to piece of work with iOS and Android and is pursuing an aggressive cross-platform app strategy – possibly information technology should also aggressively pursue a cross-cloud strategy – like Google is doing.

Google'due south cantankerous-cloud Anthos solution

This past April, Google announced its cross-platform cloud strategy, Anthos. Seemingly taking a folio out of Microsoft's cross-platform playbook, Anthos allows users to run their Google-managed workloads on competing deject platforms like AWS and Azure. Google's SVP of Technical Infrastructure at Google Urs Hölzle said, "The power for businesses to run on multiple clouds is really a game changer."

Since Satya Nadella's tenure as Microsoft's CEO, the company has dramatically shifted its position related to collaboration with other companies and sharing its software, engineering, and knowledge with others. Role on iOS and Android, open sourcing .NET, freely sharing what it learns of A.I., sharing its inclusion strategies in hiring people with autism and more have repositioned the company every bit less Microsoft-centric and more than of a collaborator.

Despite this evolving legacy information technology seems Google beat Microsoft to the dial with a cantankerous-platform cloud strategy. However given Microsoft's new-found openness, clear cross-platform goals and its own investments in Kubernetes - the foundational technology for Googles Anthos – cross-platform cloud seems inevitable for Microsoft.

Microsoft should encompass all cloud platforms

As cloud computing continues to evolve and users go along moving across cloud services to facilitate their digital experiences and enterprises move workloads across different clouds via solutions similar Google'due south Anthos, the perception of "The Cloud" every bit a singular platform, like the Internet, may begin to accept greater root.

This may ultimately lead to deject providers becoming more intentional and more aggressive with solutions that transcend the boundaries of individual deject providers. Perhaps, like Google, Microsoft and Amazon will be pushing solutions that allow users to manage their workloads on rival clouds – and more. Microsoft'south recent cloud partnership for gaming and more with Sony seems to be a step in the right direction.

For now, Microsoft is touting Azure as a platform-agnostic development platform, an environment that powers cross-platform apps, and Linux even powers many of its solutions. However, when it comes to what cloud service will power the earth'due south computing Microsoft seems to be wearing the same Windows-centric-blazon blinders that gave the company Microsoft-focused tunnel vision in years past. The deject, in practice, isn't only a variety of platforms, withal; but in how nosotros experience information technology and in how it is evolving, "The Deject" is a singular conglomeration of Amazon-Microsoft-Google and others which is transparently serving us equally a "atypical platform". Microsoft must acknowledge this and as information technology invests to further Azure's footprint, it must likewise invest in aggressive cross-cloud efforts that bring its assets across other clouds, or rather other parts of "The Cloud."

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