Windows Azure Platform Appliance – WPC Announcement

Microsoft announced at the Worldwide Partners Conference a new member in the Azure family: the Windows Azure Platform Appliance.

You can watch Bob Muglia’s keynote announcing the Azure Appliance:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc/

Microsoft has updated its Azure Website with Appliance information:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/

You can watch Steve Marx on Channel 9 talking about the Azure Appliance:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dunnry/Introducing-the-Windows-Azure-Platform-Appliance/

So what is the Azure Platform Appliance?  From what I read today, this is Microsoft’s private cloud offering for governments, large organizations and service providers.

Cool!  This mean that I will be able to download it and install it on a couple of servers!  Not exactly.  The Appliance is a complete solution that comes with both hardware and software and it’s likely that you’ll have to buy at least 1000 servers (think containers) so it’s clearly not targeted at the usual enterprises data centers.