n face off
Microsoft vs. Red Hat
Scott Crenshaw
Pallavi Kathuria
VP & GM, Cloud Business Unit, Red Hat
Director – Server Business, Microsoft India
War In The Clouds Microsoft is betting big on Azure. Red Hat claims Cloud Foundations is superior. Whose story is better?
A
s more businesses embrace cloud computing,
one of the pre-conditions for any new investment in a cloud-based solution is that the latter would supplement the existing IT infrastructure and capabilities, instead of creating new silos. Keeping this in mind, Microsoft has designed Windows Azure grounds up to be the most open cloud platform available today. It is a general purpose ‘public cloud’ platform offering that is hosted out of Microsoft’s network of 6 state-of-the-art datacenters. Windows Azure enables managing and maintaining the systems with no need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. Windows Azure follows multiple open standards and protocols, including SOAP, REST, XML, WS-Eventing, SAML, HTTP, etc. It allows developers to run applications written in Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby & Python. It makes a compelling choice for partners as well as end-customers as it is a public cloud offering that reduces not only Capex costs, but also Opex by providing customers freedom from hardware and software licenses. It updates and upgrades itself – letting the customers focus on running their business, not the infrastructure. Windows Azure has received an overwhelming response from the ecosystem with over 6,000 applications developed from India alone. Most large SIs in India such as Wipro, KPMG, HCL, MindTree, Cognizant, MahindraSatyam, have launched Windows Azure practices and Centers-of-Excellence for offering cloud based services.
T
here are only two companies that can provide a
stack of cloud-enabled enterprise software - Red Hat and Microsoft. Most firms building private clouds, as well as providers offering private and public clouds, prefer to build their stack on open platforms. Red Hat provides an open source alternative to Microsoft’s Azure. Windows Azure requires that customers rewrite applications to use APIs that are specific to Microsoft’s hosted Azure service or large hosted services at a small number of Microsoft hosting partners. Red Hat, by contrast, enables customers to run applications written in their choice of language and framework across physical servers, virtualized environments, and private and public clouds. Microsoft Azure limits opportunities for partners to add value and make money. Red Hat Cloud Foundations actually increases the opportunities for partners by offering a complete channel-ready solution including products, reference architectures, sales guides, and training. Leveraging the open architecture approach, the channel can choose the right cloud provider that meets their needs in terms of technology, SLA, and business models. Red Hat’s certified cloud provider program is the industry’s first program to certify that vendors have validated cloud capabilities and support processes that provide rapid problem resolution. Red Hat stack includes all the needed components: system and storage virtualization, OS, application interfaces, management tools, and middleware. These allow customers to create IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS infrastructures. No other vendor offers this range or flexibility. — As told to Yogesh Gupta
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Indian Channelworld january 2011
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1/15/2011 8:41:23 PM