IBF Media has been running a series of events called Capital Connection 2010 which is focused on serving the needs of entrepreneurs looking to connect with participants in the venture capital eco-system, technology executives, and to get access to capital and resources to help build their growing enterprises.
IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion
The latest in the series was a panel discussion on ‘Cloud Platforms and Solutions: Business Models and Architectures for Value Creation in the Enterprise’. The emphasis was more on the value that Platform as a Service (PaaS) brings to an enterprise. The organizers managed to get the best PaaS providers in the business – Google, Microsoft and OrangeScape. While I represented Microsoft Corporation as the subject matter expert on Windows Azure, we had Rajdeep Dua from Google to provide the Google App Engine context. Suresh Sambandam, CEO of OrangeScape PaaS (which incidentally supports both GAE and Azure) was also one of the panelists. The session was moderated by Raghavan Subramanian from Infosys who did a great job of asking very relevant questions to the panel and driving a meaningful discussion.
The discussion was very lively and made it interesting and valuable for the attendees and panelists. I want to share the answers to the questions that were asked in the panel. This represents only the points that I shared and not the views of other panelists in the discussion.
Q) What does your company offer in terms of PaaS? What are the key differentiators?
A) Microsoft’s PaaS offering is called Windows Azure Platform.
There are three key services within this –
- Windows Azure – The Cloud OS from Microsoft
- SQL Azure – Relational Database for the Cloud
- Windows Azure AppFabric – Bridge between on-premise and Cloud Services
Key differentiators –
- Based on familiar .NET Platform
- Great integration with Visual Studio and 3rd party tools
- Reliable SLAs for the enterprise
- Integration with on-premise assets
- Choice of storage between relational (SQL Azure) and non-relational (Azure Storage)
IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion
Q) What is the threat faced from the layers above (SaaS) and below (IaaS) PaaS?
A) I believe the line drawn between IaaS and PaaS is blurring slowly. Windows Azure is clearly a meta-platform and customers can run Java, PHP, Perl along with .NET applications. Worker role and Native Execution mode enables to port legacy applications to Azure. Since Microsoft also plays in the SaaS layer through the Microsoft Online services, it is an opportunity for us rather than threat. We encourage ISVs to build SaaS offerings on Azure.
Q) Who is the target audience? Is it ISVs or enterprise?
A) Our target audience is the following –
- ISV – Offer SaaS based solutions of their existing or new applications
- Enterprise – Move seasonal and on-demand Line of Business (LoB) applications to Azure
- Start-up – Go live quickly by avoiding up-front investment in infrastructure
- System Integrators – Offer migration and integration of Cloud Services
Q) What is the role of standards for lowering the entry barrier?
A) Standards are applicable at multiple levels. Here are a few
- Security Standards – Azure is SAS70 complaint
- Industry Standards – Supporting industry specific standards like HIPAA
- Open Standards – Azure storage, compute and management APIs are based on open standards like HTTP, XML and REST.
Q) Are there Cloud friendly languages? Do programming languages need new constructs to target cloud capabilities like multi-tenancy?
A) Developers interact with the Cloud in one of the two ways –
- Consume APIs and interact with the Cloud through the management API
- Develop applications that get deployed on the Cloud platform
For consuming the APIs, any language with support for HTTP libraries will work. More than languages the frameworks like .NET and Java need to evolved to support Cloud. For example .NET developers are able to leverage the LINQ constructs to interact with the Cloud storage efficiently.
IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion
Q) How do you assure continuity of business? Are you a viable and reliable vendor for the enterprises to bet their business on your Cloud platform?
A) Microsoft has been in the data center business for 15 years. Hotmail was acquired in 1977, Outlook Web Access (OWA) was launched 11 years ago. Hosted Exchange processes more than 1 billion messages per month. More than 2000 institutions signed up for Live@Edu with millions of email accounts. Enterprise customers trust us as we have been a credible player for more than a decade. Windows Azure has the right level of SLAs defined which raises the confidence level of our customers.
Q) How about 3rd party components and licensing on the Cloud?
A) Most of the component vendors are aligning with the Cloud. Players like PayPal started to offer services for the SaaS developers by collaborating with PaaS providers. Companies like Twilio are bringing telephony to the Cloud. Most of the components will evolve to support the new paradigm.
As a Cloud Computing Strategist, Janakiram MSV helps businesses understand and adopt the Cloud Computing paradigm. His core strength is designing and architecting solutions for the Cloud. Janakiram focuses on industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings including Microsoft Windows Azure.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree that Azure has an edge over any other platform as the popular & successful .Net is the basic application dev platform. May be 1000s of .Net developers can migrate to cloud apps dev with a little effort.
But we can't rule out a few other start-ups viz OrangeScape & Wolf. I find them more developer friendly as they are 5G visual languages. One should know the business logic/workflow & everything else is “point & click” without writing any code!
Basant – I agree with you. OrangeScape and Wolf Frameworks target a different audience. These platforms are called Data Driven Business Application Platforms. They bring an abstraction on PaaS and make it more accessible to business users.