On the second day of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference President of Server and Tools Business Satya Nadella spoke about how every company can optimize their business through the cloud. Microsoft makes this possible through its suite of cloud products that span both the public (Windows Azure Platform) and the private cloud (Hyper-V & System Center). Both sides share the same common elements of identity, virtualization, management, development.
Nadella explained why Windows Azure is the cloud platform for business:
- Azure’s core is built to be the best public cloud service for the enterprise.
- It provides a rich, high level services and support for all developers.
- Users are able to connect back with the identity inside the enterprise.
- It allows data sync and message passing with a company’s on-premises applications.
Plus, Windows Azure contains a rich set of capabilities beyond the core storage and compute including:
- A rich database that can shard and scale out from the cloud.
- The Window Azure DataMarket that now also includes applications as well as data sets.
- First class support for development using Java and PHP frame works in addition to .NET and Visual Studio.
As a result of these capabilities 30,000 companies have become Azure Partners in the first year. Plus, several companies have switched from Amazon to Azure due to Azure’s reach capability and tools environment.
One example of a company optimizing its business is Boeing, which needed a way to highlight the features of their new 737 aircraft to customers who often were not present at an airport or the factory. The cloud provides the perfect scalable and high speed platform for allowing the customers to view images of the plane and easily zoom in to view any detail.
Because of its efficiency, performance, scalability and affordability the cloud is the future of business.