Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 104 posts

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#81

Post by rubinelli »

iamleppert wrote: post #71
bostonpete wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your points but I think your characterization of this attitude as lazy or stupid are overly hostile. I'm not going to defend the mindset but I can see some appeal in having one company to deal with. Anyone who's ever faced a problem where multiple vendors are blaming each other for your ongoing woes knows how frustrating that can be.

And that's what a CIO/CTO's job is. Be technically competent to understand the technology he is using, or (at least) have someone on his team that is. It isn't rocket science to figure out where the problem is (be it CPU, network I/O, some software run wild), etc. If you're involved in IT, especially if you're developing software, you should be able to do some rudimentary analysis of the software you're actually buyi…

That's a very simplistic view. As many AWS, GAE, and Heroku clients will tell you, when your app is up there in the cloud, there are times when all the instrumentation in the world won't help you fix a problem.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#82

Post by rbanffy »

MichaelGG wrote: post #65
iamleppert wrote: post #47

Love this quote: “The biggest advantage I have with Microsoft is I don’t have to go to any other vendor for any solution -- I can go to one partner for all of my operating systems, all of my development environment and all of my infrastructure tools,” he said. “Why would I waste time looking at another third-party solution?” ... "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". "I'm a lazy C-level exec." "I love having all my…

The flip side is that you end up in a scenario where two or three vendors can blame each other for problems. With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, and can't blame any other vendors, driver, hardware, or network issues. Edit: Also, really? You don't think there's any benefit to integration? That's like Microsoft's whole deal - make their stuff work well with their other stuff. Sure, it creates loc…

> With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it,

Not really. Vendor lock in still applies.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#83

Post by jf22 »

avenger123 wrote: post #39
jf22 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an MS dev with a little Django, Rails and PHP experience and I'm always sort of overwhelmed with the choices I have non-ms environments. Recently I wanted to get a simple laptop for Python development and I don't know how to begin selecting the right tools for the job. I see myself having to make all sorts of evaluations I'm just too inexperienced to make. Which OS? Whats PyPy good for? Is it supported on Ubuntu?…

You know, to some extent, this is a direct result of working with Microsoft tools. I am generalizing but Microsoft developers get to used to getting mostly nice and tidy answers to everything (regardless if its good). With open-source, my gosh, you actually have to do some analysis and make a sound judgement without having the Microsoft mothership tell you whether its good or bad. I don't dispute that the choices can…

"With open-source, my gosh, you actually have to do some analysis and make a sound judgement without having the Microsoft mothership tell you whether its good or bad."

I think you're comment is fair but a little condescending.

Speaking for myself, I play and experiment with tons of non-ms libraries for asp.net work, ran Ubuntu as a desktop for several years, have an trivial app on heroku.

Just because somebody appreciates the simple things does not mean they don't have curiosity and don't appreciate knowing technology on a lower level.

The big divide between the ms and non-ms communities is because of this sort of comment.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#84

Post by ianstallings »

biot wrote: post #64
ianstallings wrote: post #12

Knowing the price of Azure that should mean they have roughly pulls out calculator and hits some keys .. 12 customers.

Thank you for contributing such a thoughtful and valuable comment to this discussion. It really serves to improve the signal to noise ratio and raise the level of intelligent discourse here.

Kiss my ass.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#85

Post by OGinparadise »

tytso wrote: post #41

Comparing against Amazon's total cloud sales may be comparing apples and orange. To quote from the article: "Microsoft’s $1 billion sales figure includes Azure, as well as software provided to partners to create related Windows cloud services, Anderson said in an interview." What software is included "to create related Windows cloud services", and is that the only use for said softare? i.e., are they including things…

The numbers are fishy, but if they are growing by XX% (1) a year, expect MS to reach that pretty soon. Love it or hate it, getting all your tech needs from one company has its advantages (and disadvantages).

1. Azure subscriptions have risen 48 percent in the past six months, said Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft’s vice president for marketing for the server and tools division. That unit, which encompasses Azure, has posted nine straight quarters of sales growth of at least 10 percent, he said.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#86

Post by nivla »

rbanffy wrote: post #82
MichaelGG wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that you end up in a scenario where two or three vendors can blame each other for problems. With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, and can't blame any other vendors, driver, hardware, or network issues. Edit: Also, really? You don't think there's any benefit to integration? That's like Microsoft's whole deal - make their stuff work well with their other stuff. Sure, it creates loc…

> With Azure, if SQL has a problem, Microsoft has to fix it, Not really. Vendor lock in still applies.

>Not really.

Mind explaining a bit more? If I buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 and the lock screen wouldn't let me in because of a bug in Android, Samsung is still responsible.

>Vendor lock in still applies.

Again, how exactly would that be, if I am say using Ubuntu and Mysql+PHP on a Azure?

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#87

Post by sampsonjs »

iamleppert wrote: post #47

Love this quote: “The biggest advantage I have with Microsoft is I don’t have to go to any other vendor for any solution -- I can go to one partner for all of my operating systems, all of my development environment and all of my infrastructure tools,” he said. “Why would I waste time looking at another third-party solution?” ... "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". "I'm a lazy C-level exec." "I love having all my…

C#, .Net ASP, Visual Studio, and Azure are all very good development products. I know, because I tried them myself. Or ask the Stack Overflow guys. It's called thinking for yourself. As for your appeal to the recieved wisdom that everything MS does must suck because Graham said so, let me point out that their monopoly gives them very little advantage when it comes to catering to developers. No one has to use their servers, languages, DBs, etc. So they have to do a good job.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#88

Post by dewiz »

blantonl wrote: post #43

Who here on HN is running any portion of their startup or established Internet business on Azure?

building a new service on Azure here, started 3 monts ago, switching completely from LAMP to .NET. I love working with VS and I'm getting to know Azure setvices better day by day, so far so good.

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#89

Post by brudgers »

The next time you see an article mentioning Microsoft's Online Services Division, it's history of losses, and suggesting that Ballmer should be fired, just remember that Azure's revenue is not part of the Online Services Division (and neither is Office 365).

Re: Microsoft Azure Sales Top $1 Billion, Challenging Amazon

#90

Post by avenger123 »

jf22 wrote: post #83
avenger123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, to some extent, this is a direct result of working with Microsoft tools. I am generalizing but Microsoft developers get to used to getting mostly nice and tidy answers to everything (regardless if its good). With open-source, my gosh, you actually have to do some analysis and make a sound judgement without having the Microsoft mothership tell you whether its good or bad. I don't dispute that the choices can…

"With open-source, my gosh, you actually have to do some analysis and make a sound judgement without having the Microsoft mothership tell you whether its good or bad." I think you're comment is fair but a little condescending. Speaking for myself, I play and experiment with tons of non-ms libraries for asp.net work, ran Ubuntu as a desktop for several years, have an trivial app on heroku. Just because somebody apprec…

Not meant to come across that way (especially towards your comments).

I definitely agree that there is value with a full life-cycle integrated approach that Microsoft offers with their stack. I really like what Microsoft is doing with ASP.NET MVC. I also like their move towards embracing the best of open source such as their recent full support of git within their stack. I setup a gitlab virtual machine and using the Visual Studio git extension with it has its quirks but works really well. I find this a really good compromise of mixing the best of both worlds.

I guess my main angst is with Microsoft stack developers who I've worked with that really don't want to step outside their comfort zone. It's definitely obvious you are not within this group.

Post reply on HN