Data as a Service: What does it mean for open government? (PDC09 Announcement)
By Kristin Bockius, State & Local Government Social Media Marketing Manager
We’ve been hearing about cloud computing and “Software as a Service” (Saas) for quite a while now, but the promising cloud-based “Data as a Service” (Daas) has received little attention outside of the IT and data warehousing community. DaaS is significant because it provides an efficient, cost-effective way to make sense of disparate structured and unstructured cloud-based data across a variety of networks. Former Credit Suisse software analyst Jason Maynard has called this "data-as-an-answer" for its ability to provide insight beyond one silo or data set, according to an article in The Register.
Today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Azure and SQL Azure platform. The Windows Azure platform—along with Windows Server AppFabric—provides a powerful, scalable, and interoperable platform for developing and managing web and composite applications, enabling developers to focus on building mission-critical applications using familiar .NET programming models. With software-plus-services and DaaS, state and local governments have the power of choice to run applications locally, in the cloud or a combination of the two, instead of being boxed into a single deployment model, data center, bandwidth constraint or browser window.
Microsoft will also release a community technology preview (CTP) of a content brokerage and discovery platform, codenamed Microsoft “Dallas.” “Dallas” is available to provide developers and information workers of all sizes access to premium third party data, web services, and self service business intelligence and analytics. “Dallas” is an important part of our efforts to help state and local governments make data sets more meaningful and valuable while offering increased transparency to citizens (for example, where tax dollars are going or how the state is spending stimulus funds). Using DaaS and Windows Azure, governments can develop powerful, customized tools that will present information that citizens need in ways that are more intuitive and readable—and ultimately, help them realize the promise of open government.
Finally, Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO appeared with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie via satellite during the opening keynote to showcase several new Azure features, including the open catalogue and data marketplace built on Windows Azure and SQL Azure. You can view the keynote and Kundra’s comments on demand at http://www.microsoftpdc.com.
For more information about Windows Azure and Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 (available beginning today), please visit this Web site.
Visit our Federal Blog for a blog post from Teresa Carlson, Microsoft Federal VP, about this announcement – FutureFed Blog.
