Windows Azure Service Available in China -- Visual Studio Magazine

Windows Azure Service Available in China

A 99.5 percent service level agreement is promised.

By Kurt Mackie
03/27/2014

The Azure cloud now reaches all the way to China.

Microsoft's cloud computing service reached "general availability" commercial status Wednesday, prompting Microsoft to tout that it's the "first" multinational company to offer public cloud services in the country.

Windows Azure services are provided by Chinese Internet service provider and Microsoft partner 21Vianet. The company currently supports "more than 3,000 customers in China," according to an announcement by Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft's corporate vice president for cloud and enterprise marketing. 21Vianet uses technology "based on" Microsoft's Windows Azure technology, a Microsoft blog post explained. 21Vianet has almost 100 employees certified on Windows Azure.

The move is part of broader expansion of Windows Azure into the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, too, at a cost to Microsoft of hundreds of millions of dollars. Microsoft also announced yesterday that it's planning to rename Windows Azure and will start calling it "Microsoft Azure" on April 3.

Microsoft may be the first multinational company with infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-service offerings in China, but it still faces competition from Amazon and other service providers in that country, according to a blog post by Charlie Dai, a principal consultant on enterprise architecture at Forrester Research. Competitors such as IBM and Oracle are using OpenStack technologies to offer cloud services in the country, while the use of CloudStack is being driven by Citrix.

Microsoft and 21Vianet's Windows Azure service likely will put pressure on local low-cost service providers in China, such as Aliyun, according to Dai. The service can compete by offering better uptime guarantees. Currently Microsoft's cloud computing service is the first in China to offer a service level agreement of 99.5 percent, he explained.

Dai added that Microsoft has set a positive example with its partner ecosystem in the country. Amazon has a longer operational history in providing cloud services, but it "still has a way to [go] before it understands local customers and establishes a partner ecosystem" in China, Dai explained.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

AdaBoost Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the AdaBoost.R2 algorithm for regression problems (where the goal is to predict a single numeric value). The implementation follows the original source research paper closely, so you can use it as a guide for customization for specific scenarios.
Versioning and Documenting ASP.NET Core Services

Building an API with ASP.NET Core is only half the job. If your API is going to live more than one release cycle, you're going to need to version it. If you have other people building clients for it, you're going to need to document it.
TypeScript Tops New JetBrains 'Language Promise Index'

In its latest annual developer ecosystem report, JetBrains introduced a new "Language Promise Index" topped by Microsoft's TypeScript programming language.
OpenSilver 3.1 Unveils Drag-and-Drop XAML Designer for VS Code

Claiming an industry first, Userware announced a drag-and-drop XAML designer for use in VS Code, coming with OpenSilver 3.1, the latest iteration of the open-source implementation of Microsoft's long-deprecated and oft-mourned rich client development platform, Silverlight.
Visual Studio Dev Vexed by Copilot's Obtuse 'Responsible AI' Refusal

No matter what, some systems simply won't divulge exactly what in the current conversation caused them to balk, simply pointing to vague policies and generic guidance.