There’s been tons of blog posts, articles, video interviews and general opinion on Azure this week. And understandably so, since this will likely be looked back on as one of the biggest turning points for Microsoft in their entire history.

An interesting point to note in the posts has been how so many have written about their understanding of what Azure is, without taking the time to actually read up on it. So, we’ve seen videos with people being interviewed about their reactions and thoughts on what it will include, how it might be applied, and how to use it. This is very strange. Why? Because everything you need to know is clearly articulated here on the Azure site. There’s even a whitepaper covering all the minute details.

We’re going to dive into it a little in this post, but as a general community service here’s the links you need to read:

• What is Azure?
• Why use Azure?
• Azure and Software plus Services
• Pricing and Licensing

You’ll notice that all four of these links come from Microsoft’s own Azure site. Amazing! Microsoft actually explaining what they are are doing. Who’d have thought?

Well, us actually. But apparently not most of the journalists and prominent commentators. But enough of our complaining.

Digging into Azure

If you are too lazy or time poor to read through the site (even the FAQ) then here’s the essentials you need to know.

Here’s the pretty diagram everyone has been using (straight from the Azure site)

Obviously the first thing you notice is that there is an operating system component – called Windows Azure – and a bunch of services. The combination of the services and the operating system are collectively referred to as the Azure Services Platform or more simply just: Azure.

Azure is all hosted in Microsoft’s data centers and is their cloud offering. It’s basically a cloud services platform. It’s reasonably open in the protocols it supports, and whilst initially targeting .NET and Microsoft developers, is designed to support other platforms in the future (eg Ruby and PHP).

Windows Azure – the operating system part – is what was referred to last month as Microsoft’s Cloud OS (and even Windows Strata for a time). It is all the glue that manages resources in the cloud.

The rest are the services. Live Services is a growing area, and one that will become prevalent on all devices. The .NET services and SQL services are no real surprise to watchers of the space. Even SharePoint services is an understandable offering since Microsoft is pushing SharePoint big time these days.

The one that caught us by surprise was the inclusion of Microsoft CRM in Azure collection.

Yes, hosted CRM is here and logical, but adding a complete service component for CRM in the Azure space is interesting. It shows that Microsoft is placing a big bet on CRM – a component that has had numerous adoption problems in the corporate space. Perhaps this will be its break out opportunity. We know many companies have changed their strategy on CRM in the last week, from having it as a minor piece of their consulting work, to now being an important strategic practice.

Our opinion: Microsoft has changed the game completely. This is a revolution. Amazon and others have been providing excellent token offerings (eg with EC2) leading up to this point in time. But now Microsoft has come in and demonstrated they have the vision, capability and passion to completely dominate the cloud. They’ve been at it for a while, and now its time to get on board. We are in awe.

Microsoft UK is releasing their new Equipt package today (yesterday by the time you read this). We think it’s a lame name, but we like the concept.

It’s a subscription service that offers Office + Live OneCare + Live Workspace + a whole stack of other Live services.

It’s available for a penny under 60 pounds per annum, and you can install each subscription on 3 machines. Note: this is only for home or student users – it’s not a company offering.

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OK Angus, you got us. We took you literally and thought there were going to be some nice little morsels revealed in David Treadwell’s chat on Channel 9.

But like LiveSide, we didn’t hear anything new either.

That said, we found it a useful interview for reviewing where Mesh is going – basically it is the fruition of a whole bunch of stuff Ray Ozzie alluded to earlier in the year. Here’s the description:

What are the platform infrastructure details behind the Mesh technologies?  Corporate Vice President of Live Platform Services, David Treadwell, will be spilling all the beans in his PDC keynote in just a few weeks, but in this Q&A he gives us a sneak peek.  David explains how there’s so much more to Mesh than just the user experience, and how he and his team will be revealing the underlying particulars that fall below the line at PDC – the platform infrastructure that helps developers build stellar Software + Services apps.  And did Tread mention bits that will be given out at the PDC?   I think he did, but you gotta listen to find out more about what we affectionately call the goods.

Source: Channel 9

We think the so called goods may just be the passing reference to the CTP of the developer tools he mentioned, but we can’t be sure. Watch for yourself and decide.

Countdown to PDC2008: What the heck are Microsoft’s Live Platform Services? Treadwell Tells All!

Will you be at PDC? Come say hi if you know who we are.

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Hands up all those people who use Live Search. Yeah we thought so. But that’s all gonna change.

Scene at Microsoft HQ

• Live Search Program Manager: We seem to have a problem with Live Search
• Drone: What’s that?
• Program Manager: It doesn’t seem to be very popular
• Drone: No shit, Sherlock.
• Program Manager: What can we do about it?
• Drone: Nothing. Face it you’re fucked. You couldn’t even pay people to use it.
• Program Manager: You’ve just given me a great idea.

You get the picture. With absolutely no traction in getting people using Live Search, Microsoft has turned to its last resort: pay the punters to use it.

That’s right: with SearchPerks you get credits for using Live Search (we’re not kidding). Next April (yes we checked if it was April 1 – it aint) you can start redeeming these credits for all manner of goodies including music downloads, plane flights and even an Xbox controller.

It’s limited to the first million to sign up (and only in the US – sorry O/S readers – you obviously already use Live Search and don’t need to be bought off).

Madness.

A new release of Live Search Maps made it out last week. Chris Pendleton has a full run down of the awesome feature set.

We had a play with it, using just the simple features that you’d want to use it for (ie no bullshit community junk), and found it all in all pretty ho-hum. In fact it was so lame we couldn’t help feeling that we were stuck in some cached old version. We’ll check again in another week.

Just getting simple directions from here to there is still much simpler in Google.

A week ago Microsoft opened up its latest data center – this time in Texas (so reports Seattle PI). The facility is on a 44 acre site and will use 8 million gallons of recycled water a month. It also sports solar panels on the roof.

It came in at a cool $550M, which is of course nothing when you’ve got $23.5 billion in  cash and short term investments on hand.

The first of two buildings on the site went live last Monday. What a great feeling it must be to power up something like that. And imagine having to reboot the whole thing.

It will be running the Microsoft Live Search Engine, Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live products.