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stevemar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:35:00 GMT

I talked about the results of a benchmarking study performed by Greg Leake a couple months back on my blog. Greg took a hard look at Windows Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 in comparison to IBM’s Power6 and WebSphere 7 from both a cost and performance standpoint. The results show that customers can save up to 81% in total system costs by running applications on Windows Server 2008 rather than IBM WebSphere 7 on Power6/AIX. The study also shows that Power6 customers who switch to Windows Server 2008, but continue to use WebSphere, could save up to 66%. What’s more, these cost cutting measures do not come at the sacrifice of performance; customers could see an increase in performance up to 57% by employing .NET Framework and/or Windows Server 2008.

Why do I bring this up again? Well, we’re not done putting our platform to the test! Recently, we discovered that IBM quietly published their own benchmarking results to attempt to invalidate our original results. This provides us with yet another opportunity to make some comparisons, and bring them out to our collective customers in a public forum. The outcome - we stand by our previously published results and my earlier invitation stands to have IBM to meet us in an independent lab to perform additional testing of the .NET StockTrader and WSTest benchmark workloads and pricing analysis of the middle tier application servers tested in our benchmark report.

I guess the only thing I’m left wondering about is who will love Windows next?

Microsoft Keynoting at JavaOne...That Just Happened!

stevemar — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:25:00 GMT

While the idea of Microsoft giving a keynote address at JavaOne – the Java community’s biggest conference of the year – has probably raised a few eyebrows, it really shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise at this point. Not only have we been involved in JavaOne for the past few years, you’ve also heard me talk many, many times about the importance of interoperability: most recently in the context of cloud computing and often as it relates to Web services. The latter has been a heavy focus for my team – and Microsoft in general – for a number of years. In fact, sometimes folks are caught off guard at just how active Microsoft has been in driving better interoperability via Web services and through our work with W3C, WS-I, WS-*, OASIS (e.g., the recent announcement regarding WS-RX, WS-TX and WS-SX), DMTF and more.

As we look at our latest research numbers, we see that 73% of professional developers rely on .NET or a combination of .NET and Java. In that sense, both Java and .NET have won in the enterprise and it is incumbent on both Microsoft and Sun to ensure that interoperability for the platforms is real, available and as easy to implement as possible. It’s a responsibility that we both share and customers tell us loud and clear that they expect innovation to accompany interoperability. I’m proud to say that this is something we take seriously and are executing against.

Along these lines, some of you may recall that last November we announced our participation – and the contribution of our StockTrader 2.0 code – to the Apache “Stonehenge” project. Stonehenge was formed to deliver a set of sample applications that demonstrate interoperability across multiple underlying platform technologies by using currently defined W3C and OASIS standard protocols. This is helpful for a number of reasons. While industry efforts like WS-* define approaches to enable interoperability, products may still need to be configured by customers before the benefits of interoperability can be realized. In fact, we’ve had a number of customers tell us they need better examples and more guidance on how to realize the built-in interoperability of applications across multiple vendor platforms. Stonehenge addresses this by providing customers with best practice guidelines and actual code that illustrates precisely how to achieve this in real world scenarios. To put it a little more poetically, Stonehenge will help us complete the “last mile” of interoperability between today’s standards-based infrastructure and tomorrow’s service-based applications.

So what exactly does this have to do with Microsoft – and specifically me and Dan’l Lewin – keynoting at JavaOne? A great deal actually, since during our keynote, Sun Vice President Aisling MacRunnels, Dan’l and I will announce that Sun has also now agreed to participate in the Stonehenge project and will be contributing the Metro-based StockTrader application code. This is important for two reasons. First, it means that Stonehenge will deliver even more value by providing best practice guidelines and reference implementations across an even broader range of scenarios and platforms, including Java, .NET, PHP, etc. The more samples and real world guidance we can give the community the better since it gives customers the ability to choose the best ones for their specific business requirements. It also makes it easier to pinpoint potential interoperability problems.

In addition, it represents another step forward in our ongoing work with Sun. As we all know, today’s IT environments are heterogeneous; whether it’s a single organization that runs both.NET and Java apps or multiple organizations that seek to collaborate with each other. To that end, we’ve been working closely with Sun on a number of interoperability initiatives over the past five years to help customers leverage their existing investments in Sun and Microsoft technologies. Some of the best examples include our work on Web Single Sign On, the Interop Vendor Alliance, our collaboration on virtualization and, of course, our recent agreement to use the SAML federation standard in both the Sun OpenSSO Enterprise federation solution and the forthcoming Microsoft “Geneva” Server federation solution.

Looking ahead, our work with Sun (or perhaps I should say Oracle?) becomes even more important in the context of cloud computing. Success in the cloud for most enterprises will hinge on the ability to utilize a broad and diverse set of computational resources, some of which may be implemented very differently from others. Interoperability protocols are the key to this. Thus, it’s important for us to continue to work together to ensure platform interoperability through these protocols, especially as it relates to Web service interoperability standards. The work that we are announcing today with Sun around Stonehenge is a great step in the right direction since it helps demonstrate seamless interoperability across application platforms – whether those applications are implemented on premises and in the cloud – and whether those applications are implemented on J2, on .NET or on something else.

With that in mind, I’d encourage everyone to take a look at the Stonehenge project and download the StockTrader sample app on one of the many supported platforms such as .NET, Java, PHP, WSAS, Sun Metro, etc. If you are interested, you can also read more about what Microsoft is doing around interoperability in general or watch Dan’l’s and my full JavaOne keynote. The keynote focuses specifically on the work we are doing with Sun to deliver interoperable application platforms that span on-premises and cloud computing, and help our customers leverage their Java and .NET investments.

Azure Dev Challenge Questions Tackled

stevemar — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:33:00 GMT

Last month Microsoft announced its first-ever Azure Developer Challenge. Since then, we’ve received strong interest and several questions about the competition.

The question I most frequently receive is, “Why is the Azure Dev Challenge open to US residents only?”

I am pleased to announce that starting today the Azure Developer Challenge is open to developers outside of the US. Without starting to sound like a lawyer, there were legal and regulatory considerations that took us a little bit longer to resolve for international. We now have those worked out and can’t wait to see your applications. See my previous post for more info on getting registered.

Seperately, we received questions about interopoerability and the use of existing code. Specifically... “Can we use jQuery?” the answer is yes.

Experiment, have fun, and send us feedback about your experiences during the process of submitting an entry for the competition.

Remember, the deadline to submit contest app entries is June 18 for US developers. Developers outside the US have until July 9^th to submit their application. So hurry up and go to www.newcloudapp.com to get started today! To follow the contest chatter on Twitter, search for “#newCloudApp”.

TechEd USA 2009 wrap up

stevemar — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:13:00 GMT

Friday concluded this year’s TechED: North America. We were delighted to have thousands of developers, IT professionals and technology decision makers in attendance, gaining insights into how to make their applications, infrastructures and businesses more innovative and cost effective. Both continue to be core priorities in today’s economy.

Bill Veghte announced the availability of the Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidate, which includes some great new features for improved web experiences, scalability, hardware utilization and virtualization. We also continued to talk about the recent WebSphere Loves Windows campaign emphasizing significant cost savings, better efficiency and improved performance when customers run Websphere on Windows Server or take advantage of the .NET Framework for application development. Last, we demonstrated ways in which our customers could unlock the hidden potential in their existing technologies today by leveraging current versions of Windows Server, System Center, SQL Server, BizTalk Server and Visual Studio together.

So where do we go from here? Well, whether you’re a developer, an IT Pro or a decision maker within your organization you should be thinking about a few key things. Darryl Taft put it perfectly in this article when he called out the fact that IT can be a competitive differentiator in today’s economy. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need new features or technology. Think about harnessing the power that lives within your infrastructure today by taking advantage of tools that make it easier to spin up a new web presence, like the Web Platform Installer (WebPI) . Second, keep your skills fresh by leveraging resources like the Ramp Up program at MSDN. And last but not least, speak up! Engage in community dialogue and as always, tell us what you think!

A Spirited Debate...

stevemar — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:13:00 GMT

As everyone knows, there is no shortage of passion in the tech industry. Naturally, there are many viewpoints out there, which leads to another thing I always enjoy….a spirited debate. Just so happens that I’m having one right here as a result of the recent WebSphere Loves Windows campaign and benchmarking results. I’d like to take the time to thank those of you who have responded or posted on the work to date. Remember, this is all in the name of saving customers money and helping them achieve optimal ROI.

While I rely on Greg to answer some of the technical questions associated with his research, and he’s done so via his blog, I also want to continue to emphasize two points:

· We stand behind the results and the methods used for this testing from end to end. In fact, I recently responded to IBM by offering to pay for independent benchmarking via a third party. I hope to hear back and get that going, yet my phone remains strangely silent.

· Apples to apples comparison? Well, we know that everyone’s apples look a little different, so check out the tool and see for yourself. By doing this you get to run what you deem as the fairest possible comparison and see how it works.

Please keep the feedback coming! We look forward to seeing more results from others as they test new configurations.

The Web Platform

stevemar — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:21:00 GMT

At MIX we unveiled the Web Platform Installer (PI) 2.0 Beta. The WebPI combined with the work we have done on the Web App Gallery is a significant step forward in helping customers build and deploy Web applications and sites. For developers, this means they can easily build and promote their free applications to millions of customers worldwide. I spent some time with Michael Cote of Redmonk talking about our Web Platform in this video which also includes a smart observation from Michael on components of this platform evolving into runtimes, where customers can choose .NET-based or non-Microsoft languages to construct versatile, interoperable solutions. I thought that was a really interesting way to look at it.

For those who haven’t had a chance to look at it, check this out. To date, we have had over 200,000 downloads of WebPI with over 1 million Express Product Installs, which is a real testament to the value that customers are finding in having a one stop shop to get Microsoft’s full Web Platform stack. As always, tell us what you think...

Azure Developer Challenge – Judged by Om Malik and Michael Cote

stevemar — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:04:00 GMT

As you know, I’m always up for a little friendly competition… I’m excited to announce that today, we are kicking off the first Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge.

Over the next two months, developers will have the opportunity to show off what they can do on the Azure Services Platform. We’re looking for innovate apps developed with the user experience in mind that are applicable to the real-world and highlight new opportunities cloud computing brings to developers.

There are a couple of surprise twists to this challenge. The first twist is this contest will have three winners – best .NET application, a top PHP application, and one more we’ll talk about in just a bit. For the .NET application category, we want to see a great .NET application running on Windows Azure using ASP.NET or Silverlight to incorporate additional Azure services such as .NET Services and Live Services. Incorporate other Microsoft, 3rd party services, or other cloud services and author a unique web, mobile, or desktop application.

For the PHP contest category running on Windows Azure, we want to see a PHP application taking interoperability to the next level by integrating with other Azure services, 3^rd party web services and APIs, and services provided by other cloud providers.

The second twist to this contest is that we’re really excited that the winner of the .NET and PHP application categories will be judged by industry leaders Om Malik, founder and senior writer for the GigaOM Network, and Michael Cote, IT Management Lead analyst at RedMonk. The winners chosen by the judges will be announced at Structure 09 on June 25.

And now the third and final twist… We are inviting the community of web and software developers to decide the third overall community winner via online voting. This winner will be announced on June 30.

But before you head off to create your masterpiece, make sure you check out www.Newcloudapp.com for official rules, registration info, important deadlines and to learn what money, fame, and glory are in store for three creative developers J.

Expect to see some chatter about this on Twitter. Search for “#newCloudApp” as developers start sharing their creations online.

Good luck!

...And we'll prove it!

stevemar — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Yesterday I blogged about some recent findings regarding both system cost and performance when comparing Windows Server 2008 on an HP Blade Server against AIX on a POWER 570/POWER6 based server. As I stated, the tests showed that WebSphere loved running on Windows…to the tune of 66% cost savings and with better performance.

We encourage customers, third parties and IBM to check out the findings, run the sample apps and let us know what they find. IBM had a thought, but not about the results, just the fine print. Let me be clear: we stand behind our testing methodology and the results it generated. To prove it, we’ll pay for the bake-off. Here is our open letter to IBM:

Dear Ron,

I know you are just as interested in saving customers money and improving performance as we are which is why our recent tests caught your eye. To demonstrate my confidence in the numbers we have produced, I’d like to propose having a third party re-run the benchmark tests and publish the results. To make it easy, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and fund it. Are you in?

Hope to hear back soon!

Thanks,

steve

WebSphere Loves Windows…Who Knew?

stevemar — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:55:00 GMT

For years I’ve heard people say that Microsoft technology is great for mid range solutions. I can’t tell you how many CIOs have told me things like “we use WinTel for department level applications but the big iron apps run on Unix.” There’s a general belief in the industry that the further you get into the datacenter, the less Microsoft technology you tend to find. While license numbers, data from IDC and other major third parties paint a different story, we decided it was time to put ourselves to the test against one of the biggest players in the space – AIX running on optimized IBM Power6 with WebSphere.

About a year ago, I blogged about some .NET / Windows Server benchmark testing results produced by Greg Leake. After taking some well deserved time off, Greg went back to the lab, expanded his testing and agreed to help get to the bottom of the “back office” debate. For the first time, the results include IBM hardware (POWER6) which allows us to evaluate price / performance using typical customer configurations. In an era of cost cutting and the need to squeeze as much optimization out of systems as possible, we think customers will find this information very interesting.

Let’s start with costs… Greg’s findings demonstrate that customers save up to 81% in total system costs by running applications on Microsoft .NET and Windows Server 2008 vs. IBM WebSphere 7 on POWER6/AIX. The study also showed that customers who run their IBM WebSphere 7 applications on Windows Server 2008 and Hewlett Packard/Intel 64-bit blade servers can save up to 66% in total system costs when compared to running the same applications on IBM WebSphere 7 on an IBM Power6/AIX platform. These results illuminate significant savings for businesses of all sizes, and particularly speak to the value of the Windows Server platform. Our hope is that people are able to make use of these findings to get more for their money, either by making new investments or by maximizing assets they are already using. Who knew WebSphere and Windows Server were such a match?

Most folks tend to buy into the potential for cost savings but speculate that they give up performance to get it. The study also found that for the hardware configurations tested the Microsoft .NET Framework on Windows Server 2008 handles 57% more load than WebSphere 7 running on IBM Power6/AIX. We also found that Windows Server 2008 running WebSphere 7 handles 37% more load than IBM WebSphere 7 running on POWER6.

So, what do these findings really mean and why am I sharing them with you today? A few important things to know:

1) Windows Server and the .NET Framework continue to be a powerful, leading combination for application development, deployment and management.

2) Customers who have made a bet on WebSphere can improve performance and reduce costs by running WebSphere on Windows.

Please visit http://www.wholoveswindows.com/websphere/ to read more about these results and check out the .NET StockTrader downloads. We think the .NET StockTrader is a GREAT example of how small bits of innovation can have BIG impact. Don’t take our word for it – these sample applications and guidelines are available to anyone. Instructions on how to replicate the testing we conducted are also available here, and I strongly encourage customers, and all third parties, to conduct tests for themselves. Let us know what you think

Two flavors of cloud computing – Public and Private

stevemar — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:27:00 GMT

Six years ago we announced a multi-year, multi-product vision for the Enterprise which we called Dynamic IT. The principles were simple - virtualization, model driven, services oriented and user centric. Shortly thereafter, we began to conceptualize a services-based offering in the cloud which culminated in our Azure Services Platform announcement last October. These two initiatives might seem distinct, but they are in fact highly related. Simply put, this is the continued evolution from physical to logical to virtual.

In addition to the interest in cloud computing, there is even more interest in the application of cloud computing principles in the enterprise data center. As I have mentioned previously, at some point in the future, the Azure Services Platform and an enterprise data center will be, technically speaking, largely indistinguishable. Both will:

· Be highly virtualized and elastic

· Be managed in a consistent manner within and across the firewall

· Hide the complexities of hardware infrastructure from the applications they serve

We are learning a lot from the investments that we are making in Azure and will use these learnings to drive additional benefits for customers not just in the cloud but also with our premises technologies. One of our primary objectives is to deliver the technology that empowers Enterprises to build private clouds within their existing datacenters.

While there are a lot of vendors talking about private clouds, let’s think this through a bit. Would you buy beef from a vegetarian? I digress… here’s the point – the knowledge that we gain from running a public cloud will yield better technology for the private ones that we help customers deliver.

How does Microsoft deliver this today?

· Hardware Abstraction: Delivered in Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

· Logical Pooling of Compute: Delivered through management tools like VMM, you can connect the compute power from your servers into a single, logical resource

· Automated Provisioning of Resources: Delivered this with tools like Intelligent Placement in VMM allowing you to expand and contract workloads across your fabric

With Windows Server 2008 R2 our fabric capabilities become even stronger. In this release, we deliver enhancements to the native virtualization capabilities:

· Live Migration

· Larger VM Support: 32 and 64-bit VMs, with up to 64GB memory per VM

· Boot from VHD & Clustered Shared Volumes (core enhancements from Windows Azure)

To net this out, we’re bringing the lessons learned from our public cloud to the places where they will likely deliver the most benefit in the near term – right in your data center. As we evolve the technology that drives Azure, you can count on continued innovation and evolution of our premises technology that will make private cloud computing a reality.

Walking the Walk – the Cloud and Standards

stevemar — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:50:00 GMT

Earlier today, the DMTF announced the creation of the “Open Standards Cloud Incubator” group which will specifically focus on developing a set of informational specifications for cloud resource management. This is one of what will probably be a number of important efforts to drive additional value and choice for customers. This particular effort may catch the eye of folks on the enterprise side, as managing applications and infrastructure that spans premises and cloud is a very real topic of conversation. In the end, success in the cloud for most enterprises will include the ability to utilize a broad and diverse set of computational resources, some of which may be implemented very differently from others. A sensible goal of the DMTF is to reduce the friction across different vendor offerings in these datacenter scenarios.

As we have said previously, Microsoft will approach cloud standardization from multiple angles:

· Practical interoperability – Microsoft-based services should be easily interoperable in practice with a diverse set of applications, platforms, and other clouds. We envision that our customers will integrate applications across multiple data centers, for example, having some of the component services running on Microsoft technology while other components run on Amazon, Google, Salesforce, or other data centers. Microsoft will work with other cloud vendors to produce guidance on building applications, to define the interoperability protocols, and to test real-world interoperability.

· Standards--Microsoft will continue to invest in organizations, like DMTF, that help push the interoperability state of the art forward. Management is a great example of this, as there will likely need to be further evolution of the management protocols, such as WS-Management, to add cloud-specific extensions.

· Data portability -- Microsoft believes that our customers own the data that they have entrusted to our applications and platforms, and the applications they build on our platforms. Microsoft will work with other datacenter and cloud vendors to make this bi-directional, customer-centric approach a more common industry practice.

While it's still very early to talk about elaborate technical standards for cloud computing, establishing the conduits for the conversations and outlining a collaborative approach is critical. Projects like the DMTF incubator will develop requirements and use case scenarios to allow all the participants to better understand where standards for communication with cloud services can create the most value.

As always, we pledge to be open, collaborative and transparent about our efforts in the cloud standards space. If you have thoughts on where we should focus additional attention, please let us know!

The "Benefits" of Singularity... Thoughts on the Events of the Week

stevemar — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:20:00 GMT

Even before the events of early this week, we were fielding questions about a homogenous hardware / software approach. Apple being the obvious example - clearly there is a segment that is willing to pay significantly more for a closed hardware / software experience. The argument is an interesting one and is something that is intriguing at first blush. Having a singular or very limited set of hardware to test against could decrease a variety of expenses such as development and testing. You could even argue acceleration in go to market because there wouldn’t be a handoff between the software side and the hardware side. While you’re basking in additional benefits, let me paint you another picture.

Moments after Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey cried “I wish I was never born” he found himself in a strange, and far less wonderful life. Pottersville is mostly a slum with a single land owner in town, the residents are disgruntled, all the houses look the same and every dollar earned or spent flows to and from a single entity. Sure, queue up the haters, a Microsoft guy telling everyone what the world looks like with complete vertical consolidation will strike some as odd.

Here’s the reality…There are over 400,000 Microsoft partners worldwide. This diverse ecosystem includes hardware providers of all shapes and sizes, system integrators, ISVs, value-added resellers, hosters, distributors and many, many others. One of my favorite moments over the course of the year is spending time with our partner advisory council where folks from HP to SolidSoft get together and tell us how we can better meet customer needs. Here’s what I know for sure – the innovation we collectively deliver to customers is a reflection of the collective IQ and RD spend across those hundreds of thousands of partners. The strength of our offering and our ability to meet customer needs is predicated on the relationships that we have and the competition that is created from innovation.

What’s my view on the events of the week? No thanks, Mr. Potter. Beyond vertical singularity, I’ll save my thoughts on the future of Java for another day….

.NET Services - Cloud Interoperability

stevemar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:02:00 GMT

Speaking of standards - I’m thrilled to report that we will release the “M5” (Milestone 5) CTP (Community Technology Preview – think Beta) for .NET Services (part of the Azure Services Platform) tomorrow! For those who aren’t familiar with this effort, here’s the primer… Almost two years ago, we introduced these services – Service Bus (secure messaging across networks and firewalls), Access Control (user access to web apps and services across multiple standards-based identity providers), and Workflow (for orchestrating and routing Service Bus messages). From the beginning, .NET Services was designed for multi-cloud, multi-platform use. Developers can use the .NET Services in conjunction with ANY programming language (using support for industry-standard protocols, or via available SDKs for .NET, Java and Ruby) on ANY platform to create or extend federated applications. A good overview of .NET Services is available here.

This milestone contains enhancements to all of the services including expanded support for standards like REST, ATOM, SOAP and HTTP. As I mentioned previously, we demonstrated at MIX cloud to cloud interop in action. Specifically, we showed how the Access Control Service and Service Bus could be integrated with a Python Application deployed into Google App Engine using just two lines of code. As always, feedback from developers is critical to us. So, please take time to sign up for the CTP, and tell us what you think. We’re on our way to commercial availability later this year and we need your help to get there.

If you haven’t already, you can follow our cloud efforts by adding @Azure on Twitter.

Moving beyond the “Manifesto”

stevemar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:52:00 GMT

As you might expect, several of us spent most of Thursday and Friday last week in conversations with developers, standards body members and other vendors regarding open standards for cloud computing and how we get there collaboratively. Being in this industry for so many years, I remember a time when new technologies and platforms did not produce much interest in standards and interoperability. It was great this time around to see broad support for openness in the cloud and transparency on the approach to interoperability. I was also happy to see a number of community-driven efforts spin up last week, which will provide enormously valuable feedback in defining the desired end-state. It’s important for everyone to take a step back and remember this isn’t about vendors; it’s about developers and end-users.

As I indicated on Wednesday night, Microsoft welcomes the opportunity for open dialogue on cloud standards. To that end, we have accepted an invitation to meet on Monday at 4pm in New York at the Cloud Computing Expo with other vendors and members of standards bodies. From our perspective, this represents a fresh start on the conversation – a collaborative “do-over” if you will.

Moving Toward an Open Process on Cloud Computing Interoperability

stevemar — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:28:00 GMT

Moving Toward an Open Process on Cloud Computing Interoperability

From the moment we kicked off our cloud computing effort, openness and interop stood at the forefront. As those who are using it will tell you, the Azure Services Platform is an open and flexible platform that is defined by web addressability, SOAP, XML, and REST. Our vision in taking this approach was to ensure that the programming model was extensible and that the individual services could be used in conjunction with applications and infrastructure that ran on both Microsoft and non-Microsoft stacks. This is something that I’ve written about previously and is an area where we receive some of the most positive feedback from our users. At MIX, we highlighted the use of our Identity Service and Service Bus with an application written in Python and deployed into Google App Engine which may have been the first public cloud to cloud interop demo.

But what about web and cloud-specific standards? Microsoft has enjoyed a long and productive history working with many companies regarding standardization projects; a great example being the WS* work which we continue to help evolve. We expect interoperability and standards efforts to evolve organically as the industry gradually shifts focus to the huge opportunity provided by cloud computing.

Recently, we've heard about a “Cloud Manifesto,” purportedly describing principles and guidelines for interoperability in cloud computing. We love the concept. We strongly support an open, collaborative discussion with customers, analysts and other vendors regarding the direction and principles of cloud computing. When the center of gravity is standards and interoperability, we are even more enthusiastic because we believe these are the key to the long term success for the industry, as we are demonstrating through a variety of technologies such as Silverlight, Internet Explorer 8, and the Azure Services Platform. We have learned a lot from the tens-of-thousands of developers who are using our cloud platform and their feedback is driving our efforts. We are happy to participate in a dialogue with other providers and collaborate with them on how cloud computing could evolve to provide additional choices and greater value for customers.

We were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto. What we heard was that there was no desire to discuss, much less implement, enhancements to the document despite the fact that we have learned through direct experience. Very recently we were privately shown a copy of the document, warned that it was a secret, and told that it must be signed "as is," without modifications or additional input. It appears to us that one company, or just a few companies, would prefer to control the evolution of cloud computing, as opposed to reaching a consensus across key stakeholders (including cloud users) through an “open” process. An open Manifesto emerging from a closed process is at least mildly ironic.

To ensure that the work on such a project is open, transparent and complete, we feel strongly that any "manifesto" should be created, from its inception, through an open mechanism like a Wiki, for public debate and comment, all available through a Creative Commons license. After all, what we are really seeking are ideas that have been broadly developed, meet a test of open, logical review and reflect principles on which the broad community agrees. This would help avoid biases toward one technology over another, and expand the opportunities for innovation.

In our view, large parts of the draft Manifesto are sensible. Other parts arguably reflect the authors’ biases. Still other parts are too ambiguous to know exactly what the authors intended.

Cloud computing is an exciting, important, but still nascent marketplace. It will, we expect, be driven in beneficial ways by a lot of innovation that we’re dreaming up today. Innovation lowers costs and increases utility, but it needs freedom to develop. Freezing the state of cloud computing at any time and (especially now) before it has significant industry and customer experience across a wide range of technologies would severely hamper that innovation. At the same time, we strongly believe that interoperability (achieved in many different ways) and consensus-based standards will be valuable in allowing the market to develop in an open, dynamic way in response to different customer needs.

To net this out… In the coming days or weeks you may hear about an “Open Cloud Manifesto.” We love the idea of openness in cloud computing and are eager for industry dialogue on how best to think about cloud computing and interoperability. Cloud computing provides fertile ground that will drive innovation, and an open cloud ecosystem is rich with potential for customers and the industry as a whole. So, we welcome an open dialogue to define interoperability principles that reflect the diversity of cloud approaches. If there is a truly open, transparent, inclusive dialogue on cloud interoperability and standards principles, we are enthusiastically “in”.

Here are some principles on the approach we think better serve customers and the industry overall:

· Interoperability principles and any needed standards for cloud computing need to be defined through a process that is open to public collaboration and scrutiny.

· Creation of interoperability principles and any standards effort that may result should not be a vendor-dominated process. To be fair as well as relevant, they should have support from multiple providers as well as strong support from customers and other stakeholders.

· Due recognition should be given to the fact that the cloud market is immature, with a great deal of innovation yet to come. Therefore, while principles can be agreed upon relatively soon, the relevant standards may take some time to develop and coalesce as the cloud computing industry matures.

What do you think? Where do you think this best lives? An open Wiki? A conference? A summit where a lively give-and-take can get all the issues recognized in an open way? What elements of an open cloud are most important to you? Let us (all) know…