Azure Roadmap

I didn't have the opportunity to attend MIX, but have had a chance to catch some of the Azure Session re-broadcasts.

One session of particular interest was A Lap around Microsoft .NET Services by John Shewchuk. Part of his presentation included the updated Azure Road map. I felt that this bit of info was worth sharing.

As you can see the Microsoft team has come a long way in a short period of time. I find the next milestone to be very interesting: "Pricing & SLA Confirmation". Up until this time, every time that I have heard a question asked that involved either Pricing or SLA, it has been deflected. This is understandable as it is no doubt a complex situation.

Up until this point, it is very safe to say that people are impressed with the Cloud technology that has been presented. Pricing and SLA could very well make or break Azure. If the Pricing is too cost prohibitive then adoption will suffer, if the SLAs are not strong enough...adoption will suffer.

I am also interested in knowing whether the initial "Production" applications running on the platform will have to be "big" enough (read: Profitable) for Microsoft's initial adoption? Will smaller applications, that may not be as profitable for Microsoft, be included in the initial Production release of Azure? I guess time will tell.