RSSDoor Number Two
First, a question of semantics: is it insulting to describe anything to do with cloud computing as "vaporware?" Clouds being vaporous conglomerations themselves, it seems like we might need a new term to describe promised, but undelivered, cloud-based services.
I'm not sure that's what is going on with Microsoft's Azure right now, but just going by historical yardsticks, you have to wonder. The oh-so-mysterious Windows Azure Platform Appliance is "not for the faint of heart" writes Carl Brooks, but it's still pretty unclear who it is for. Very large enterprises, says Microsoft, but other than billing the device as a "proven cloud platform" it's not getting much more specific.
It sounds like a return to the "private cloud" schtick, which is its own sort of vaporware, if I may still use the term. Put a bunch of these bad boys in your datacenter, and you'll have Azure, only private. But if you're going to put a bunch of boxes in a datacenter and want to run the same stuff you can run on Azure, then what exactly is wrong with using your existing Microsoft-based datacenter?
