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Any ideas that Azure is an "open" platform were nixed yesterday by open-source-agitator Whurley's speech at the Interactive Austin conference.

Azure Outline

And today ZDNet had this to say about the "Private Cloud."
"Whether or not they admit it publicly (or just express their misgivings relatively privately), Microsoft officials know the “private cloud” is just the newest way of talking about an on-premise datacenter. Sure, it’s not exactly the same mainframe-centric datacenter IT admins may have found themselves outfitting a few years ago. But, in a nutshell, server + virtualization technology + integrated security/management/billing  = private cloud.

"Microsoft recently got tripped up by the public cloud lingo when company execs gave off confusing mixed signals regarding whether or not Microsoft planned to make its Azure cloud operating system available to IT customers to use on-premise. In the end, the Softies admitted Azure was not something Microsoft planned to allow others to run in their own datacenters, but promised they’d make a solid private cloud platform, based on Windows Server, Hyper-V and other Microsoft wares, available to customers who were less enthusiastic about moving their data and apps to a Microsoft-hosted datacenter." – ZDNet

And now the incubators and alliances begin to align.

"The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), whose board includes representatives from companies such as VMware, IBM, Microsoft, Citrix and HP, announced the creation of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator (OCSI) group on Monday.

"Cloud computing will have a major impact on IT management," said DMTF president Winston Bumpus in a statement. "With the DMTF's track record for leading the industry in the development of proven standards for management interoperability, along with its extensive network of Alliance Partners, this Open Cloud Standards Incubator provides an ideal setting for initiating work on specifications to enable interoperable cloud management." — ZDNet

And where is Dell in all this? Does the company that lept for the brass ring of "cloud computing TM" have an alternative strategy in harnessing the vapors? It is not a party, private or public, that I would be willing to miss.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/cloudy-future

Additional Resources:

• A Tale of Three Clouds – Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Reveals Some Concerns
• See ComputerWorld's discussion about Microsoft is the company's Love/Hate relationship with Open Source.

Tags: alliance, azure, cloud computing, hp, microsoft, microsoft cloud, open cloud, open community, open platform, open source rules, private cloud, public cloud, windows server