Microsoft Extends Azure To Close The Gap With Competitors

Microsoft logo - cloudMicrosoft's venture into the cloud wasn't smooth, but the company is starting to get the fruit of the business. Microsoft has moved to make database services running on Microsoft Azure more accessible, rolling out more SDK, update database managements and many more.

The company is betting in giving as much possibility of cloud platform to engage more customers. By making much fidelity as possible between the environments, Microsoft is hoping that more organizations and businesses to apply Microsoft Azure into their hybrid cloud computing environments.

Microsoft made Azure more accessible by enhancing the level of support. Beside Java and PHP, Azure is also improving its management gateway based on OData created using RESTful APIs.

Furthermore, Azure is providing support for Node.js, Python, .NET, and JavaScript for the Azure DocumentDB. The company updated Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP and JDBC Driver for SQL Server, as well as rolling out new Java SDK. And as an addition to the update, Azure now supports seven versions of Linux, a rival open-source operating system.

These have spanned Azure beyond previous ability, and makes it easier for developers to write applications running on Azure's cloud.

Senior Director for Data Platform Marketing for Microsoft, Tiffany Wissner, said that Microsoft Azure supports the latest versions of both Java and PHP and that the company is also previewing an implementation of the Azure SQL database that it says provides near-complete SQL Server engine compatibility.

The company claims that internal tests have shown improvement in performance of up to a factor of five when computing over 600 million rows of data. Microsoft said that when applying in-memory column store using the new engine, a 100x times performance improvements is possible.

Microsoft was too confident in the past because of its historic success throughout the decades. But the market is changing, and to keep up with the growing trend, Microsoft is approaching a different strategy.

Read: Microsoft is Changing and Makes .NET Framework Open-Source and Cross-Platform

The Cloudy Sky Between the Thunders

Microsoft is moving itself higher into the clouds by improving its Azure cloud platform. Since Satya Nadella became Microsoft's CEO, he has made the cloud a priority for his attempt to "refresh" the company.

By enhancing its cloud's performance and credibility, the moment is critical as the company seeks to migrate all installed base Windows applications into Azure.

Rather than seeing those Windows applications migrate into competitor's cloud computing environments, Microsoft is trying its best to provide a better platform to ensure the growth of its business, contained into one ecosystem.

Expecting users' demand would be high, Microsoft is not willing to allow Azure to fail. So rather than putting all that workload into the cloud, Microsoft is creating a hybrid cloud strategy that relies heavily on RESTful APIs. By exposing more of its services to customers, Microsoft is hoping that people would see Azure as a more natural extension to their IT environment. This is a major advantage since Microsoft's closest competitor in the cloud computing business (Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Cloud) don't offer such integration with existing Windows applications.

Microsoft already has an upper hand with its personalized customer service. But most of the time, Azure is slower than its competitors. In November 2014, Azure suffered global outage that lasted hours, and some people are starting to argue about Microsoft's cloud credibility.

Microsoft is pointing out that those committed changes and updates are meant to be more reliable. So whether or not the new system would be competitive, the strategy is certainly won't fail any developers who wants to implement it.

Microsoft also has expanded an alliance with Accenture. By introducing Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, the cloud platform is designed to bring more capabilities and innovations to enterprises alike. And by working with Avanade, the companies are co-funding and co-engineering the platform with new hybrid cloud technologies and services to help customers build and manage enterprise-wide cloud infrastructure and applications.

Further reading: Cloud Computing: Google Trails Amazon, Aiming to Catch Up