Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services (GFS) is the team that builds, manages, and secures Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and today we are launching our new external web site on the Windows Azure platform to address these questions and to more broadly share our cloud infrastructure best practices with external audiences!

The GFS team has a newly revamped website that contains content and tools that that addresses the following:

• Customer Priorities that dive deep into infrastructure architecture, operations, reliability, security and compliance, and the sustainability strategies for our data centers and fiber optic network – all top of mind for customers, including:
• 20-30 minute interactive presentations featuring data center subject matter experts addressing some of the top 3-5 customer questions we receive
• Strategy Briefs for downloading and sharing
• Video overviews from strategy leads addressing key priorities
• Related whitepapers, technical content, and slideshows
• Future Insights that explore the forward-looking challenges of providing cloud services at massive scale and the business impact, reliability, security, sustainability opportunities and roadmap
• Blogs with industry relevant discussions on cloud infrastructure issues and best practices
• Video tours of our data center facilities

The resources available via this website have been designed to help customers better understand Microsoft’s data center strategy, and to more broadly share our best practices as we make strides towards more efficient and operationally robust infrastructures.

Check out this great resource if you want a deeper understanding out how Microsoft does what it does in the cloud!

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If you’re looking to integrate rich media capabilities into your cloud-based solution architectures, I highly recommend you take a look at Windows Azure Media Services today!

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• Microsoft Private Cloud Website
• Microsoft Private Cloud Whitepaper (compares/contrasts Microsoft’s private cloud solutions versus VMware)
• Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Whitepaper
• Microsoft Dynamic Datacenter Services Solution Brief
• Microsoft Cloud Computing Solution Accelerators
• Microsoft Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises Whitepaper (by the way, this tool is running within the Windows Azure cloud)
• TechNet TechNet Magazine Article, “Cloud Computing: Architecting a Microsoft Private Cloud”
• Microsoft Private Cloud Solution Hub

There’s a ton of information in the form of whitepapers, presentations, videos, demos, and software downloads referenced by the links above.  This should hopefully be a good start to understanding the breadth of the Microsoft offerings as it relates to private cloud and building out your own private cloud infrastructure.

Enjoy!

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This should prove to be a great online session for attendees to learn how to build cloud-based applications using Windows Azure.  An added treat is that the session will be delivered by three of Microsoft’s foremost technology experts, Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich.  Having heard each of these gentlemen speak during my tenure at Microsoft, you won’t be disappointed.

Register now for this great event.  Oh yeah, the event is FREE!

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• Deployment Planning
• Starting with well-configured infrastructure
• Security and access management
• Search database optimization
• Monitoring Latency
• Testing of crawling and querying subsystems
• Antivirus

Definitely worth a read.  Check it out!

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Let’s round out this series with a word on complexity of the respective cloud offerings from Google and Microsoft and provide a different perspective on who’s truly positioned to capitalize on the cloud.

It’s no secret why Microsoft wants to win with Office 365.  Protection of the platform is a key component to its growth and market leadership.  However, is that not what Google is trying to do?  If Google can protect the web platform, what will that widespread acceptance allow it to do?  While Microsoft has the perceived “monopoly” on the desktop, what’s Google’s advantage?

Let’s be frank here, the introduction of Google Apps is NOT to provide users with robust online collaboration and information sharing tools that it plans to build the next generation of its business with, but rather to get Microsoft to divert its energies away from the ultimate prize, the INTERNET.  How does Google make money? The INTERNET, and more specifically, search and advertising.  With more users opting for internet-based tools, the more of a surface Google has to inject its keen business sense on capitalizing on this tremendous market.

As a matter of fact, Google Apps have started learning some lessons from Office 365, and is moving at a feverish pace to improve the offline experience. Why? Because if momentum shifts back to the “desktop”, then that impacts Google’s bottom line.  Can’t sell advertising on the desktop.  Search is free, however, it’s a vehicle to the several hundred billion dollar advertising industry.  Why do you think Bing exists?

All-in-all, both platforms have their pluses and minuses, with both vendors constantly lobbying their product as the better solution.  Microsoft has been in this game for quite a while and Google, even with its massive success, is *still*, relatively speaking, a new kid on the block.  Microsoft’s effectiveness is not the result of it’s ability to innovate, as there is no question that Microsoft can be innovative when it wants to be.  And Google’s effectiveness will not be the result of its ability to roll out new features quickly (and buggy ).

What’s going to truly win this battle is who will be the first to achieve the “holy grail” of interoperability. The true “visionary” will be the one who can tear down the walls that are beginning to get created within the cloud and allow the industry to truly realize what the original intent of the cloud is and how it can make our digital lives a lot easier.

Support for open standards as it relates to data protocols for information exchange, standardization of authentication/authorization methods for user access, security protocols for ensuring that communication from the PC/Mobile Device/Browser to the cloud and inter-cloud platform communication is as secure as Fort Knox, and a clear execution of these standards within the respective offering is what’s truly going to establish the market leader, IMHO.

So, dear reader, while you can certainly be entertained by all of us technology wonks about what does/doesn’t make for the better platform, at the end of the day, you have the power of choice. Choose wisely.

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Here we cover collaboration capabilities within the respective cloud offerings from Google and Microsoft.  Collaboration is defined as working together to achieve a common goal.  Document sharing is part of collaboration activities, but it in itself is not collaboration. Mr. Nauges article suggests that Google Apps has better collaboration capabilities.  So I suppose that capabilities such as:

• Integration between Office Web Applications and Office desktop productivity suite (supporting rich documents, offline editing, and document co-authoring)
• Simple setup experience
• Instant Messaging, Presence Awareness
• Voice/Video/Web Conferencing (including multi-party online meeting and video conferencing capabilities)
• E-mail/Voicemail
• E-mail Archival/Retention

don’t really make Microsoft a viable competitor here This is not to bash Google Apps, because for many organizations that need a quick collaboration solution with a basic set of capabilities in order to conduct day-to-day business tasks, Google Apps could certainly be a viable choice.  However, the point here is while it is your choice, based on what your needs are, don’t be misinformed. Get the facts. By the way, how long was Google Apps in “Beta”?

The cost comparison cited in Mr. Nagues article doesn’t quite cover ALL of the costs associated with the respective solutions.  Here’s some additional information, with respect to the costs of the solutions that you, dear reader, may want to take into consideration, as it’s always wise to look before you leap.

Stay tuned to the next (and last) post in this series around platform complexity and round out with my final synopsis.

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Now,  let’s cover the area of mobility features for the respective cloud offerings from Google and Microsoft and dive a bit deeper into the author’s claims that Google Apps provides better mobile device support in comparison to the capabilities provided by Office 365.

“Anywhere, anytime, and on any device”.  I find it amazing that the industry now embraces a vision pioneered by Microsoft, called Software + Services, whose 3 screens vision has made its way into the technology roadmaps of leading competitors! Now I make no excuses about Microsoft dropping the ball on Mobile, far beyond the scope of this article, but in the industry at large. Windows Phone 7, Windows-based multi-touch devices, and innovative technologies like Kinect will reshape how we interact with the world in the years to come, but it is very apparent that in today’s market, it has a long way to go. With the rapid advancement of mobile technology, it grows increasingly difficult to keep up with the change and both Google Apps and Office 365 are learning from this.

Today’s IT organizations, in the wake of security breaches and other malicious threats as it relates to the protection of their intellectual property, are looking for solutions that not only provide users mobile access to data, but do so in a secure manner and provide the necessary controls in order to manage that security. E-mail is perhaps the most dominant mobile app for business users, aside from the growing popularity of Angry Birds, and will continue to be an area where Office 365 hands down has the more superior solution.

Rather than spend time in this post trying to list mobility support features in Office 365, Microsoft kindly put this information in a document that’s available for download. Rather than go with my opinion (or that of the author of the article I’m critiquing), get the facts for yourself.

With all the knocks the author seems to levy around the lack of mobile support within Office 365 and the need to have Windows-based devices to unlock capabilities within the platform, not once has he covered the challenges of accessing Google Apps with non-Google mobile devices, like… say… Windows Phone. You have to rely on an assortment of 3rd party add-ons to get the most basic of functionality. Things like document editing/authoring, calendar synchronization and other capabilities beg for an integrated phone app experience versus just accessing the pure web-based applications provided by Google. Office Mobile integrated with Office 365 provides a superior productivity experience. While it’s true that mobile support outside of Windows-based mobile devices are lacking, the same could be said for Google Apps as well, can it not? Again, it’s your choice, but don’t be misinformed.

In the next post I’ll talk about collaboration support with respect to the two cloud offerings.

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