it [there]? But wherever it makes sense, do it [there].
InfoWorld: I was talking to a few of the attendees and one said Azure was a response to Amazon EC2 [Elastic Computing Cloud] and what they're doing with cloud servers. They're running Windows. Is this a competitive response to Amazon?
Srivistava: Amazon and Google have been doing great stuff on the cloud. It reinforces the point that this cloud is really an exciting place to be in. Again, if you look at running Windows Server on a machine, Windows Server manages just the machine, right? So running Windows Server on that desk, a lot of people can do that and it's really great that they're doing it. What we are trying to do with Windows Azure is to really build an operating system for the whole cloud that is not a single machine. By managing the cloud, you're taking care of the lifecycle management of your services, you're offering lots and lots more value.
InfoWorld: You're talking about all of these additional services, and what strikes me is that it's almost as if you've created a well-provisioned SOA, with all the service management stuff going on, the lifecycle management. In a way, it's got some de facto governance in there, at least it's sort of playing by the Microsoft rules that you have.
Srivistava: But it's not Microsoft rules, it's playing by your rules. So the user is in control. That is why the critical part is we do a lot of the work for you, but you define the rules, and that is the service model. So you tell us how you want your service to be managed, we just do it. We are the servant. It's not like, "Hey, trust us. We'll just do it for you." We're not saying that. We will follow the rules that you define in the architecture model, so the user is all in control.
InfoWorld: Could you implement tools available on Azure to manage that kind of runtime governance that you're talking about?
Srivistava: That's right.
InfoWorld: It seems with all the stuff that you've added here to the Azure platform, it's really potentially a richer development environment than your average Microsoft customer would set up on premise.
Srivistava: You should not think of it as a monolithic platform. Even the second-layer things are all à la carte. You can call OpenID and not use Live ID if you don't want to. Because we [have these] interfaces, you can call in our service model, services can interact through interfaces there. So it's not monolithic. Now, because a lot of these services are available, yes, it's a very comprehensive platform. [But] you can pick and choose and you can even use third-party stuff whenever you want to. It's very open. And you can even come back and say, "I won't use anything else except Windows Azure and everything else I'm going to get from the outside" and that's fine, too.
InfoWorld: So what happens next? I understand there's going to be some road map laid out next year for Azure.
Srivistava: We are opening up with managed code today. We're going to open up native code after that. We'll definitely have that. Right now we are in one datacenter location. We will give the option for people to keep their data in multiple locations, slowly do it in the U.S. and then go international. [We] will have more than one data location in the calendar year 2009. Clearly we will be adding more features to each of the subsystem that we have got, like tables and storage systems and things like that. And we're going to have more service models.
InfoWorld: It seems to me that having covered the early Web services, protocol development, and all of that, we went from a bunch of standards and the idea that we would build applications across the
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