Windows Coming to Amazon EC2
Amazon takes another big steps towards it’s EC2 services. Amazons is planning to include Windows Server and SQL Server to it’s EC2 cloud services. Currently Windows server on EC2 is in private beta. The big question is, Will Microsoft adopt a true utility pricing model for virtual computers running Windows, allowing Amazon to roll the operating system licensing cost into its hourly fee, or will the Windows licenses have to continue to be purchased separately.? The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You’ll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. According to Amazon
Amazon EC2 running Windows Server or SQL Server provides an ideal environment for deploying ASP.NET web sites, high performance computing clusters, media transcoding solutions, and many other Windows-based applications. By choosing Amazon EC2 as the deployment environment for your Windows-based applications, you will be able to take advantage of Amazon’s proven scalability and reliability, as well as the cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model offered by Amazon Web Services.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced in London today that the company will unveil its own "cloud operating system" at its big developer conference at the end of this month. According to The Register, Ballmer said:
We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then. But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud’. Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud look a lot like Windows Server.If you talk to Google they’ll say it’s thin client computing but then they’ll issue a new browser that’s basically a big fat operating system designed to compete with Windows but running on top of it, Our big problem is there’s just no secret that gets kept in Microsoft. The guy in the office next door to somebody working on Midori is not supposed to know about Midori. The last thing we want is for somebody else to obsolete us, if we’re gonna get obseleted [sic] we better do it to ourselves
