GigaOm’s very interesting debate about the relative merits of Microsoft’s Azure versus Amazon AWS. Bottom line for me: Microsoft’s moves are impressive, and will be attractive to those who are already part of the Microsoft ecosystem, but come with several big disadvantages:
1. Lock-in. Azur is a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering. So long as one perceives no risk in locking into the MS platform, no worries. For me, lots of worry.
2. Future. Nobody’s graduating from college with .NET skills. Java, Python, Scala and big data tech like NOSQL databases and Hadoop are in hyper-growth mode. Microsoft’s closed platform is less interesting to the next generation of developers. If they want to work on a proprietary platform, they will learn IOS.
3. Choice. There will be innovation at Microsoft, but far less than in the open source world. Those who can exploit breakthrough technology will outpace those who are locked in.
