Clouds

Amazon Cloud offering provides, in beta, a Windows VM and a way to run SQL Server.

The Microsoft Cloud preview basically provides a way to run ASP.NET, what it looks to be Windows Workflow activities, WCF services, and use SQL Data Services.

Microsoft's looks more ambitious, and their architecture is probably more sophisticated and complex and than Amazon's.

However, it looks to be solving the complex problems before solving the simple ones. If I use Azure, I'll need to write my application in a way that can be run in that platform. If I use Amazon's, I can write it in the same way I always did (and of course, I can run all the code I already have).

I'm disappointed that Microsoft does not provide the same services as Amazon. I'm not saying they should not provide an Azure-like platform, but I think they should also provide Windows VMs and SQL Servers.

Actually, I could live without a Windows VM, but not having SQL Server implies a rewrite and I don't think SQL DataServices is the answer to every DB need.

Not everyone is building Facebook. Most of us don't need that level of scalability. But we could use an on-demand platform that provides scalable hosting, and could take advantage of the number of value-added services that can be built on top of that.

So, please, Microsoft, give us SQL Server.

PS: The identity federation stuff in Azure looks very cool.