[ Cloud Computing ] Re: Role of Windows Appliances and Cloud

Try googling "project Kensho". It comes from the Xen community and the
effort surrounds making appliance VMs portable.

On 12/21/08, Chris Sears <csears@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What if any role is there for Windows Appliances to enable organization to
>> move their pre-existing windows apps up to a cloud like EC2?
>>
>> Today, Windows Appliances are really only viable in private clouds, and
> even there I don't see much ISV interest in offering Windows apps as
> appliances.
>
> The major reason for this is Microsoft licensing. Like most traditional
> software companies, their licensing policies are not conducive to either
> appliance or cloud use cases. With open source OSs, software vendors have
> total freedom to create an appliance version of their app, bundled with a
> customized version of an OS, and then distribute/sell/rent it however they
> like, without their customers worrying about license compliance issues.
> After all, the appeal of appliances is their self-contained, black-box
> nature. If the end user has to open up the appliance "box" and make sure
> they're not violating liceses for whatever is inside, the model breaks down.
> Without doing special licensing deals with MS, that's largely what you would
> have with Windows appliances.
>
> Another major problem with porting existing applications (not just Windows
> app) to EC2 and other similar clouds is that they are built on traditional
> operating environment assumptions that no longer apply in the cloud. The
> major example of this is the lack of local disk persistance on EC2
> instances. Others include a variety of network challenges, like dynamic IPs
> and DNS and VPN connectivity to on-premise private networks to access Active
> Directory or other corporate systems.
>
> These issues can certainly be overcome, but it requires a nontrivial
> investment in either rewritting the app or creating wrappers or support
> systems that hide the environmental differences from the app. In either
> case, it's a fair amount of pain for not much gain.
>
> Instead of fighting to create EC2 appliances, Windows ISV will probably be
> looking into Azure, which would still require significant rewritting to port
> a traditional app to, but at least it's an environment which Microsoft is
> fully supporting, both from marketing and licensing standpoints.
>
> - Chris
>
> http://twitter.com/csears
>
> >
>

--
Sent from my mobile device

Cheers,
Jan

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