ISV’s and Azure
Why should an independent software vendor (ISV) care about cloud computing?
The answer is simple: Using the cloud has the potential to increase an ISV’s revenues and/or decrease its costs. Running code and storing data on computers in large Internet-accessible data centers owned by somebody else can offer compelling advantages. Anyone responsible for charting the course of an ISV ought to be thinking seriously about how cloud computing will affect their business.
That’s the intro to David Chappell’s latest paper on Windows Azure that was published today. It’s titled Windows Azure – A Guide For Decision Makers.
I’m not a developer but if was running an ISV I would be poring over the paper as like it or not, cloud computing is a trend here to stay and now that the business model for Azure is out in the open you can start to make some real decisions about the viability and comparisons with other platforms such as those from Amazon and Google. I’m digging in to some of the numbers that were shared today around the potential cost savings from cloud computing
Chappell gives a solid overview of how Windows Azure works, talks about the business model including the pricing announced today and then goes on to discuss some use case scenarios. Disaster Recover is an obvious business I expect several ISV’s will offer on top of Azure and though the most obvious concern here is security and availability I can hand on heart say that after a trip to Dublin earlier this week I have no concerns. Seriously….on Monday I was what it takes to build and run “the cloud” and it’s staggering. I’ll come back to that another time and I know that security in particular warrants a longer discussion.
Chappell goes on to explain some other use cases and as this point as an ISV I’d expect eyes would start to light up and bells would go off in heads – if they’re the right metaphors. Even as a non-developer I could think of plenty of apps as I read this that could be cloud based or perhaps more so a hybrid of cloud/client. There is a tonne of room for innovation here. Some obvious ones like making Ticketmaster stay up when U2 tickets go on sale to less obvious ones like providing remote management of laptops in Ethiopia or making a version of bit.ly with pretty much infinite scale.
Chappell concludes with a brief look at alternatives in the form of traditional hosting and VM based IaaS services like Amazon or Mosso and notes that admin overhead of the latter.
All in all, a great and easy to read paper. If you’re at all interested in cloud computing or Azure it’s worth 20 minutes of your time.