Microsoft yesterday officially launched Windows Azure Platform in Kenya. Windows Azure is Microsoft cloud computing platform used to build, host and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers. But there is an interesting twist to Microsoft Azure platform- Linux
Vincent Mugambi the Microsoft Kenyan lead developer confirmed that Microsoft enables Linux to run on the Windows Azure Platform. Azure will not just be a cloud platform but provide infrastructure cloud. It means one can run Windows and Linux Instances and their applications.
Microsoft is offering infrastructure services as a preview at first, with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Release. Microsoft Cloud will allow a number of different Linuxes..Ubuntu 12.04, SUSE Linux OpenSUSE 12.1 and Enterprise Linux Server 11 SP2.
It comes out that sometime you can fight your rivals by embracing them..Yeah rather than fight Linux, Microsoft has decided to embrace it. Traditionally Linux and Microsoft have gone head to head on the server side of things and now I am not sure what to call this. Probably this could beginning of the end of the hard fought debate about the open source vs closed . The other way to look at this is that Microsoft has boarded the Open source bus. It will be interesting to see what happen next between the two..
That a side this is strategic and significant move on the side of Microsoft. Cloud is the future of computing . As people talk about applications, and the access point, cloud would be the home of everything. For risk of repeating myself ..everything will takes place in cloud while the devices like laptops, tablets, phones will remain just access points. For Small businesses in Kenya this is going to be blessing as it will give them a chance to grow the businesses without thinking about the infrastructure cost.