{"id":283041,"date":"2010-02-05T15:00:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T20:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=96900"},"modified":"2010-02-05T15:00:56","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T20:00:56","slug":"why-azure-could-help-drive-cloud-revenue-in-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/283041","title":{"rendered":"Why Azure Could Help Drive Cloud Revenue in 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>Azure<\/a>, the cloud computing platform that Microsoft rolled out <\/a> this week, could drive significant cloud revenues<\/a> in 2010, as the company is more uniquely positioned to serve the needs of enterprise customers than any other large-scale cloud provider to date.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has been selling software to enterprises since its inception; it’s in Redmond’s DNA to offer solutions to many of the deepest installed bases in the world.\u00a0And its well-established focus on the developer community means it knows how to make application development surrounding software platforms work well. Add to that the fact that the company has deep pockets, which means it could afford to give Azure offerings away<\/a> until it gains momentum.<\/p>\n

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To get a better sense of Azure adoption and use, I spoke with Grant Leathers, director of enterprise infrastructure, and Andy Lapin, director of enterprise architecture, at Kelley Blue Book, which operates the popular car site www.kbb.com<\/a>. As both longstanding Microsoft customers and Azure alpha customers, they have been following Azure developments since the beginning and have a clear, compelling and — I believe — soon-to-be common use case.<\/p>\n

The www.kbb.com<\/a> web site serves some 14 million monthly users and requires two data centers. Its preferred method of operation involves running a primary “hot” site, then backing it up with a secondary “warm” site which can be used in disaster recovery scenarios. However, since there is relatively good uptime at the primary site, the secondary site implies dozens of systems that are sitting idle most of the time. So the opportunity to move this entire secondary infrastructure into a cloud service that could spin up or down as needed could eliminate the need for a second physical facility.<\/p>\n

For Kelley Blue Book, the value proposition surrounding cloud computing has always been clear. “When you compute out the cost of a cloud option compared to hosting the backup site yourself, the savings are obvious,” said Lapin. “Just think about the servers, maintenance, power and space costs. All of that goes away and only a fraction of that spending is needed to spin up a similar cloud-based infrastructure.” It currently has a working www.kbb.com<\/a> replica in the cloud, and has especially benefited from integration with Visual Studio, which allowed for the reuse of\u00a0existing skill sets as well as easy porting of local applications.<\/p>\n