Online business Toolkit

How Windows Azure avoided a HailStorm of criticism

Ina Fried CNET News

Published: 30 Oct 2008 13:10 GMT

Microsoft's HailStorm prompted an avalanche of criticism when it was proposed seven years ago, but developers seem to have few qualms with Windows Azure, which incorporates many of the same notions.

With Windows Azure, Microsoft not only controls the operating system but also the datacentres where the applications run and the servers where the information is stored. If anything, Microsoft's control has increased, rather than shrunk, in relation to the vision outlined in 2001.

So why the lack of uproar this time?

Timing is a huge factor. For one thing, Microsoft's image has changed dramatically since the time of HailStorm's introduction.

"It was the evil empire against Java and open source," independent analyst Peter O'Kelly said. Even Microsoft's code name was off-putting.

"When you think HailStorm, you think: 'Destroy my garden', not helping me," O'Kelly said.

The industry has also changed dramatically. Companies have become a lot more comfortable with the notion that corporate information can live outside a business' own datacentre.

"Salesforce.com is the big one that broke through that glass ceiling," O'Kelly said.

Microsoft corporate vice president David Treadwell did not dispute the notion that there are elements of today's strategy that can be traced back to HailStorm.

"You are implying correctly that HailStorm was kind of before its time," he said in an interview.

Microsoft has also learned from its experiences, Treadwell said.

With HailStorm, Microsoft insisted on owning the relationship with the customers. Now, the company is talking about the notion of federated identity and co-operating with OpenID.

Also, while Microsoft is big, it is no longer the only technology behemoth.

Much of Google's vision is audacious compared to what Microsoft proposed with HailStorm, O'Kelly said. "Fundamentally, their mission is very clear. It is to organise all of the world's information. You are part of the world's information."

Security and trust
While data may live in Microsoft's datacentres with Windows Azure, it can also be encrypted, and other measures can be taken to make sure that it stays proprietary.

Azure gives companies the ability to tightly control the security of the data, said Jordan Ellington, vice president of legal technology at global firm TransPerfect. Companies can encrypt the data at the server, send it encrypted over Microsoft's network and unencrypt it at the client.

"We wouldn't let Microsoft actually host our data. We're just using them as plumbing," Ellington said, "[whereas] small companies are not threatened by the intellectual-property issues because it's a cheap service."

"I don't see, for quite some time, large corporations putting all their information in the cloud; it's too attractive a target," he said.

Businesses now have to evaluate not just whether allowing others to hold their data is a good thing; the reality is that, in many cases, large third parties may be able to do more to protect a company's data than some medium-sized firms can do on their own.

"Organisations have come to say: 'Let's compare it to practical alternatives, as opposed to some utopian ideal'," O'Kelly said.

In addition, Windows Azure is still at the community preview stage, so businesses will have time to test it out before it's ready to host their mission-critical applications.

"It's no different from paying any other hosting company," said Troy Farrell, solutions architect for Operitel Corporation, which provides software-management services for e-learning.

"I guess some people genuinely distrust Microsoft because of their size, like some people distrust Google, which is hosting and storing data in Google Apps and other services," he said.

Trust is indeed an issue with cloud computing, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie told ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com in an interview earlier this week.

"Cloud computing is ultimately going to be [about]: do you trust this provider to have more to lose than I have to lose as a company if they mess me up?" Ozzie said. He added that Microsoft is well placed to garner that trust, both because of the scale of its investment and because it is putting its money where its mouth is, building its own Azure-based applications.

Ozzie said, however, that he expects businesses to move in waves, moving infrastructure-type systems first and only later moving business applications.

Even those who don't really trust Microsoft have options.

"Microsoft never has to see anything you are doing," said Alberto Ramirez, a developer at consultancy Tallan. "[Information] can be encrypted on both ends. They're just passing it along."

Microsoft may also benefit from the constraints of a tighter economy.

"There is demand for this, especially now," Ramirez said. "IT departments are scaling back. This requires no IT staff and no server in a room. And the security is taken care of."

CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

Credit: Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism from CNET News