Microsoft recently made a significant announcement regarding its plans for the PaaS cloud market. During its Worldwide Partner Conference, the company announced a new product in its cloud server platforms called Service Manager Portal.
Currently in preview build, Service Manager Portal essentially white-labels their Windows Azure infrastructure and allows businesses to take advantage of their services without being constrained by Microsoft’s cloud branding.
The company hopes that its partners will take advantage of the services standardized management which allows developers to either host their own proprietary applications to the server or stick with the Azure infrastructure.
Big Changes for Azure
The announcement changes the positioning of Microsoft Azure from strictly a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to a more fully fleshed out Infastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
With new cloud virtualization capabilities, businesses that use Microsoft Azure will finally have the option of running Microsoft Server, Linux, SQL Server and Sharepoint as well as any applications developed for those platforms. Microsoft is currently updating their datacenters to accommodate the new changes.
Apprenda, one of the partners already working with the Service Manager Portal is excited about the possibilities of the technology. Azure is moving from a product, to an effort, said the Vice President of Product Development of Apprendas NY branch. You can consume and acquire services through the portal. Apprenda specializes in selling PaaS software for .NET applications.
Disrupting the Market
Microsoft’s change in direction for Azure is a direct threat at VMwares line of Vcloud services which includes its Vcloud Datacenter services and Vcloud management software. Whereas VMware is offering these tools as separate environments, Microsoft is now bundling all of its cloud management services under one umbrella.
According to GigaOMs Derrick Harris, Service Management Portal could go down as Microsoft’s most-significant blow in its battle against virtualization market leader VMware to become the operating system for the cloud.
While the competition for server side cloud infrastructures is heating up, businesses are reaping the benefits by having more depth with their PaaS applications.
