Keep up the great work!

Thanks

I know nothing about nothing
Carlos Miceli wrote something that I totally agree with:
http://www.owlsparks.com/advice/the-uninteresting-goal-of-expertise/
Since I read that I prefer to be called a student.

AZUG has been.. Cute. There is, in particular, a presentation from one of the founders (he works for CapGemini) that is noteworthy: the guy wrote a smart business insight, especially the last part speaking about creating opportunities.
I will ask him if I can publish his presentation and mention him: I am not sure he’d appreciate I would do that without him being informed.

Alex, I like your analogy of Managed vs. Native code. Writing managed code has its advantages, but certainly doesn’t fit all situations.

Yes it is my opinion. I think Azure is a great product. I am all forth for options. But the real truth is that with Azure, your power is limited. This scenario can be compared to the Managed vs Native discussions. The bottom line is that loving one or the other is mostly based on opinion and personal preferences.

I am working with Azure as we speak, and we are planning on using it along side Amazon EC2 and Google Apps Engine. It is the best thing for the job kindda thing.

Allow me a comparison:
Amazon is like a Bic pen. Ugly, featureless but reliable and sold in millions.
Azure is a Parker fountain pen: it writes flawless and easy, costs more, you see it in the pocket of businessmen.
Then there are a lot of other type of pens, sorry, clouds, more or less suited for the job: Flexiscale, Terremark, Mosso to name a few. Diversity is good.

I am also convinced that Azure will help us introduce Cloud technologies to customers that are.. Let’s say: conservative. This is how Microsoft is relevant.

Regarding release time of Amazon RDS : mine was just a comment on the status of the documentation which is above average. Microsoft’s Azure documentation is better organized albeit a bit sketchy (might be good actually: it covers what is needed).
I know what a release process implies: I am confronted with system life-cycle management every given day on an industrial scale (My actual customer, as freelance solution architect, has 18.000 employees out of a 180.000 of the group they belong).
Indeed I’d like, sometimes, to know something less about it

On Wednesday I will participate to the AZUG (Azure User Group) at Microsoft Belgium: I hope to get interesting views ad insights from the community about the kind of projects that are currently under development.

I’m not sure I agree. Are you only comparing what is available in the marketplace right now (basically Amazon, Google, IBM/Ubuntu and some other smaller vendors), or are you including Windows Azure, which is still in beta and only available by invitation? (Until later this month.)

Gabriele Bozzi wrote:
The astonishing way Amazon released a
complete product with a lot of relevant
information (documentation is very good)
makes me think they were preparing their
launch since a long time (if not, they are
poised to conquer the world).
Microsoft is nowhere near with this kind of
readiness and speed. Nevertheless they “own”
the developers.

Just to make sure things are clear, no one can release a major feature instantly. Amazon, Microsoft and any other software company require time to plan, develop, test and release any new, substantial product. They might keep the project under wraps until right before release, but you can be sure they’ve been working on it for months (and years, in some cases).

Alex Espinoza wrote:
I have to say I love having power for the
thing I love to build, because I can take my
time to build them and make sure they run
perfectly. But for things that are not that
lasting Azure would be ok.

For you, an IaaS provider might be a better choice, but many devs would rather build apps using an existing, well-tested infrastructure and move on to the next project faster. For them, Azure makes sense for long-lasting apps.

I know. I would consider Amazon the best Cloud period. I like Azure because it makes things easier for the programmer. But it feels like the native vs managed wars all over. Amazon has great power, but it is easier to blow your leg off (just like C++). And then Azure and Google Apps Engine feels more like Java or .Net where you are very secure.

I have to say I love having power for the thing I love to build, because I can take my time to build them and make sure they run perfectly. But for things that are not that lasting Azure would be ok.

mysql> show engines;
+————+———+——
| Engine | Support | Comment
+————+———+——
| InnoDB | DEFAULT | Supports tra
| MRG_MYISAM | YES | Collection o
| BLACKHOLE | YES | /dev/null sto
| CSV | YES | CSV storage eng
| MEMORY | YES | Hash based,
| FEDERATED | NO | Federated M
| ARCHIVE | YES | Archive stor
| MyISAM | YES | Default engi
+————+———+—–
8 rows in set (0.11 sec)

If only they included the MEMORY model: 68GB ram and still using a slow networked storage….
You can’t have everything

Very interesting article. The news also got me confused. Since Amazon is focused on the IaaS market, and with this starts hitting on the PaaS arena.

It does looks like a good option against Sql Azure, I must say. Sql Server is in whole a better product than MySQL, but most of the time, you just need MySQL’s features.

If you look at Amazon’s business, they needed the RDS feature. It is a need. S3 just doesn’t cut it for everything. The NoSql thing is a real Buzz word right now, but it doesn’t work for Transaction-based systems.

In my case, we are implementing a SaaS application, and we are using Amazon EC2. Amazon is great at IaaS. I love it. Because it allows me to make my application scalable. But there is one important point: I can make my application scalable with Amazon because I control the source code, and I can modify it to take advantage of the Virtualizatio Fabric EC2 has. But when it relates to Databases, I have to use conventional Database’s replication or simply use sharding and/or federation. Modifying the source code for MySql to adapt to this is just to big, maybe Drizzle will change this.

Those practices are very common in on-premise Data Centers, but that doesn’t mean it is easy.

With this Amazon made my (and their customers’) life easier. I don’t need to implement and maintain all those clusters of Virtualized images for my databases. Besides is very difficult to actually have an on-demand and scalable solution for databases if you do it on your own.

Just imagine having to load databases on demand and then synchronizing them when they are loaded. That is simply a lot of work.

It does make me think though. Is Amazon trying to compete against Azure and Google App Engine? (By the way, wait till Google comes out with their RDS).

It is very difficult to see right now. But options are always good. So even if the competition between Amazon RDS and Sql Azure is tilted towards Azure, it is good to have options. Besides competition always brings out better options for customers.