Microsoft loves Linux - Azure

[GoodBytes]

Today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that is completely different than the previous CEO, Steve Ballmer. Microsoft loves Linux. Stevee Ballmer called Linux a cancer. This shows the new direction the company is taking.

Satya says he is embracing with open arms Linux. (at least for the Azure platform, which is still something pretty big, a huge step), report Ars Technica.

In San Francisco today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a "cancer" by Nadella's predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced (if not extended) with open arms, at least when it comes to Redmond's Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system.

In addition, Microsoft did an event showcasing the growth of Azure success and what the company is doing to make it even bigger.

Azure, Microsoft Cloud service. It has now 19 locations of its server farms, where 2 new ones are now up and running in Australia. This as many as Amazon Cloud, and 3 times more than Google.

Each region has 600,000 servers, resulting 11 million servers. Last year, Microsoft invested 4.5 BILLION$ on its infrastructure.

Microsoft has the money for "hyper-scale" deployments. Two new Australian regions are coming on line, taking Azure up to 19 in total. This is twice as many as Amazon's AWS platform has, three times as many as Google. Each region sports about 600,000 servers, for a grand total of more than 11 million. Last year's capital expenditure on Azure was $4.5 billion—meaning that functionally, only Microsoft, Amazon, and Google can compete at this scale.

Also, Microosft presented new series of virtual machines. The G-series offers up to 32 Xeron Cores, 450GB of RAM (no typo), and 6.5TB of SSD goodness.

And you can get up to 32TB of storage per VM.

Announced today were a new series of virtual machine types that offered not just the scale out that cloud is known for, but also scale up. The G-series instances offer up to 32 Xeon cores, 450 GB of RAM, and 6.5 TB of local SSD storage. Azure also has a new premium storage facility, offering up to 32 TB of storage per virtual machine, capable sustaining more than 50,000 IOPS, with a sub-1 ms read latency.

If you want to run Oracale or Java apps on Azure (that's supported by Oracle), you can. Which is rather unique, because normally, you need to use what Oracle offer themselves to get this. A very interesting feature for enterprises.

In addition, Azure offers not only Windows, but also Linux distros, with full enterprise support on them.

And that is not all, Microsoft also announces a new partnership with Hadoop vender Cloudera.

Today, Microsoft announced a new partnership with Hadoop vendor Cloudera. As well as letting customers build map-reduce systems on Azure machines, the Cloudera support includes integration with Office 365, enabling PowerBI and Excel users to pull data directly from their Cloudera deployment.

Cloudera is going to be one of the many services that will be offered in a new Azure Marketplace, where third parties can sell virtual machines, applications, and services, all for the Azure platform.

And Microsoft investment is paying off, with over 10 000 customers a week joining in.

The investment seems to be paying off for Microsoft; its annual run rate is $4.4 billion (it's fair to say that the endeavor isn't even close to profitable at this stage), and it's adding more than 10,000 customers a week

You can watch the event here: http://www.neowin.net/news/watch-microsoft039s-cloud-event-right-here

Source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/microsoft-loves-linux-as-it-makes-azure-bigger-better/

[connorpiper]

I really like him. Good on ya Microsoft. 

[bob345]

I'm starting to like this new ceo even more now

[Geekazoid]

Azure this info is correct?

[Vacsol]

All praise Satya Nadella

[TheSLSAMG]

In the news this week: Microsoft loves it's second biggest threat in the market... Linux!

[Briggsy]

Good to see he's not following in Baldmer's steps. that big oaf would have driven microsoft into the ground eventually.

[Jack.EXE]

I'm liking this CEO, maybe MS will turn out alright.

[Victorious Secret]

 

 

The G-series offers up to 32 Xeron Cores, 450GB of RAM (no typo), and 6.5TB of SSD goodness.

 

I have no idea what I would do with this much power. 

 

But I know I want it. 

[Misanthrope]

Interesting. I have a feeling Satya might want out of the OS business and that Windows 10 might end up being their very last OS release, after that he wants everything in the cloud and he wants to be the leading cloud provider so they wouldnt need to sell OSes anymore, or apps for that matter.

 

Time will tell I guess

[Beskamir]

This doesn't make ANY sense other than PR BS. I mean WHY would you love a competitor?

[EChondo]

Hopefully he can turnaround Microsoft's PC gaming division.

 

Still waiting on Halo: MCC here Mr. Nadella. 

[SuperfastJellyfish]

Now all they need to do is embrace UNIX and the Linux kernel and I'll love M$ forever.

(never)

[GoodBytes]

This doesn't make ANY sense other than PR BS. I mean WHY would you love a competitor?

I don't know how much the love extends, at least for now, and I don't know the direction the new CEO wants to push the company into.

But ignoring the future plans of the company.

Microsoft can love Linux, contribute to it, making Linux better, in exchange collect knowledge and ideas to implement to it's own OS, making both OS better at the end of the day.

Or, hate, and think everything Linux does is wrong, and bad and push these ideas, and take other ideas, less good, just to be different, and then both OS looses at the end of the day.

This is actually a bit like OpenGL. Despite Microsoft having DirectX, Microsoft is a a significant contributor to OpenGL. Microsoft learns from OpenGL to make DirectX better, and OpenGl gets better because of Microsoft.

In other words, you can either be in a war, or work together to some level, helping each other, to improve both. Instead of ending up with worse solution, where it doesn't help either company.

Keep in mind that Windows and Linux, OpenGL and DircteX follows different school of thought. And these affect the user, and developers

[mr moose]

This doesn't make ANY sense other than PR BS. I mean WHY would you love a competitor?

 

When you consider the threat in terms of server take up by large business (MS's core revenue), for MS competition that you can control is better than competition with the potential to rise when you are least prepared.  MS are (as always) taking precautions and planning years in advance.  This may amount to nothing or the core benefits of Linux for large scale deployment might get swallowed up into the MS machine, especially considering they are looking at cloud computing and not OS's on local terminals.

[The_Strict_Nein]

Interesting. I have a feeling Satya might want out of the OS business and that Windows 10 might end up being their very last OS release, after that he wants everything in the cloud and he wants to be the leading cloud provider so they wouldnt need to sell OSes anymore, or apps for that matter.

Time will tell I guess

Fundamentally, a bog standard computer still needs an OS and Linux is too cluncky for the general user (it is, don't pretend it isn't).

We're decades (I'm talking 50/60 years before we can fulfill 100% of the world's computer needs with thin-client systems at a reasonable cost. You don't want to live in a world whereby getting access to a decent gaming system means paying Nvidia/AMD $100 a month, but because it's not a Microsoft thin-client you need to pay Microsoft $50 a month to use a thin-client with Office and other Microsoft exclusives

[Tonylu1595]

Ok microsoft, you earned one more "good" point. 

[mr moose]

Fundamentally, a bog standard computer still needs an OS and Linux is too cluncky for the general user (it is, don't pretend it isn't).

We're decades (I'm talking 50/60 years before we can fulfill 100% of the world's computer needs with thin-client systems at a reasonable cost. You don't want to live in a world whereby getting access to a decent gaming system means paying Nvidia/AMD $100 a month, but because it's not a Microsoft thin-client you need to pay Microsoft $50 a month to use a thin-client with Office and other Microsoft exclusives

 

Although this is probably true, for 90% of the market most office and productivity programs are available as cloud services and most people could get a way with chrome OS.  It is really only people who need in-house processing power that will still require a decent OS.  Having said that the market I think MS is looking at with Linux is more a server based market than consumer OS. 

[vm'N]

Fundamentally, a bog standard computer still needs an OS and Linux is too cluncky for the general user (it is, don't pretend it isn't).

It is not because linux is more cluncky. There are ton of distros are user-friendly.

People just have gotten used to Windows, and how you do things in Windows.

It may feel cluncky because they are used for something else.

This is one reason why Microsoft is cooperating with schools. Get the users used to their product.

[Techhog]

I don't know how much the love extends, at least for now, and I don't know the direction the new CEO wants to push the company into.

But ignoring the future plans of the company.

Microsoft can love Linux, contribute to it, making Linux better, in exchange collect knowledge and ideas to implement to it's own OS, making both OS better at the end of the day.

Or, hate, and think everything Linux does is wrong, and bad and push these ideas, and take other ideas, less good, just to be different, and then both OS looses at the end of the day.

This is actually a bit like OpenGL. Despite Microsoft having DirectX, Microsoft is a a significant contributor to OpenGL. Microsoft learns from OpenGL to make DirectX better, and OpenGl gets better because of Microsoft.

In other words, you can either be in a war, or work together to some level, helping each other, to improve both. Instead of ending up with worse solution, where it doesn't help either company.

Keep in mind that Windows and Linux, OpenGL and DircteX follows different school of thought. And these affect the user, and developers

Not to mention that Windows 10 added some Linux/OS X features, and they've switched more toward a lighter OS since 7. We'll never see Windows on the Linux kernal though, even though I'm sure there are people who  want that.

 

 

 

It is not because linux is more cluncky. There are ton of distros are user-friendly.

People just have gotten used to Windows, and how you do things in Windows.

It may feel cluncky because they are used for something else.

This is one reason why Microsoft is cooperating with schools. Get the users used to their product.

Even Ubuntu requires a lot of terminal use though unless your needs are so basic that Chrome OS could meet them.

[kwljunky]

Th true test will be..if he decides to bring back games for windows live...

 

If he does..

 

[LAwLz]

I can't help but feel like they are doing this for some bad reason.

Sorry Microsoft but all the anti-competitive bullshit you've pulled toward GNU/Linux throughout the years makes it hard to believe that you just did a 180 turn and went "we love you now!". It's kind of like an abusive husband coming home after a big fight going "baby, I love you. Here, I brought some flowers". Sure you brought flowers today but yesterday you were trying to kill her.

[bcredeur97]

hmm nice! windows 11 (12?) running on the Linux kernel? XDD

 

probabaly not but we can dream

[Kherm]

I can't help but feel like they are doing this for some bad reason.

Sorry Microsoft but all the anti-competitive bullshit you've pulled toward GNU/Linux throughout the years makes it hard to believe that you just did a 180 turn and went "we love you now!". It's kind of like an abusive husband coming home after a big fight going "baby, I love you. Here, I brought some flowers". Sure you brought flowers today but yesterday you were trying to kill her.

No, you've got it all wrong, It was Ballmer's fault that Microsoft pulled all of that bullshit at them. But, since he's gone now (thank god) we've got someone completely different at the wheel who wants to embrace Linux.

[Trik'Stari]

Now if he would only act on all these statements

 

"Microsoft loves the PC gaming community"

"Microsoft love linux"

 

*force game devs to downgrade video game performance on PC to have parity with xbox*

?

 

I can't help but feel like they are doing this for some bad reason.

Sorry Microsoft but all the anti-competitive bullshit you've pulled toward GNU/Linux throughout the years makes it hard to believe that you just did a 180 turn and went "we love you now!". It's kind of like an abusive husband coming home after a big fight going "baby, I love you. Here, I brought some flowers". Sure you brought flowers today but yesterday you were trying to kill her.

 

"But it was her fault for burning the roast damnit!"