Category Archives: windows

.net, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, visual studio, windows

Where is Microsoft going with its Rich Client API? Microsoft drops some clues as developers fret

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A discussion taking place in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) newsgroup, in a thread called WPF vNext, shows how Microsoft’s confused rich client development strategy is affecting developers, and offers some clues about what is coming.

Developer Rudi Grobler, who posted on his blog some wishes for Windows Phone, Silverlight and WPF, describes his difficulty in discerning Microsoft’s direction:

The strategy for the future is very vague… I daily get questions about should I use WPF or Silverlight? Is WPF dead? Is Silverlight dead? etc…

Jeremiah Morrill describes his frustration with WPF performance:

Microsoft has known of WPF’s performance problems since the first time they wrote a line of code for it.  You will be hard pressed to find a customer that hasn’t complained about perf issues.  And you will not have gone to a PDC in the last few years and not hear folks bring this up to the WPF team. This is 3rd party info by now, but I’ve been told the issues I have noted have been brought up internally, only to be disregarded.

and remarks his frustration with what has happened to Silverlight:

Silverlight’s strategy USED to be about cross-platform, get-the-runtime-on-every-device-out-there, but it’s obvious that is not the strategy any more.  What happened to Silverlight on set-top-boxes?  Android? I read an article that some people saw it on XBox, but nobody has talked about it since.  Cross-platform with OSX has become symbolic at best.

Developer Peter O’Hanlon describes how the uncertainty has affected his business:

I run a small consultancy, and I bet the company on WPF because I could sell the benefits of faster development time for desktop applications. We have spent a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the platform and saw that Silverlight gave us a good fit for developing web apps. In one speech Microsoft caused me months of work repairing the damage when Muglia seemed to suggest that these technologies are dead and Microsoft are betting the farm on Html 5. We hand our code over to the client once we have finished, and they ask us why they need to invest in a dead technology. I don’t care what you say on this thread, Microsoft gave the impression that html 5 was the way to go.

[…] Muglia’s statement about the future being html caused serious issues for my company. We lost two bids because the managers didn’t want to commit to "dead" technology.

Microsoft’s Jaime Rodrigues, WPF Technical Evangelist, offers the following response:

You are telling us to improve perf in WPF. We hear this loudly and we are trying to figure how to solve it. Unfortunately, there are a few pieces to consider:

1)      First of all,  a lot of our customers are telling us to invest more into Silverlight.  Let’s say (again made up) that demand is  4-to 1. How do we justify a revamp of the graphics architecture in WPF.  This is not trivial work; the expertise in this space is limited, we can’t clone our folks to 5x to meet everyone’s needs.

2)      Let’s assume we did take on the work.  My guess (again, I am not engineering) is that it would take two years to implement and thorougly test a release.  At the stage that WPF is at, a rearchitecture or huge changes on the graphics stack would be 80% about testing and 20% about the dev work.    It is not a trivial amount of work.   Would we get the performance you want across myriad of devices? We don’t know. WPF bet on hardware, and there is new devices out  there that are trading hardware for battery, weight, or simply for cost.  it would suck to do that much work, make you wait a long time, and then not get there. Let’s get real on the asks; you say "improve perf" but you are asking us to do a "significant re-write"; these two asks are different.

3)      By the time we get there, what will be a more powerful framework?  Silverlight, WPF, C++, or SuperNew.Next ??  we don’t know today.  We go back to #1 and look at demand We are in agreement that "customers" is the driving principle.

The WPF has looked at the trade-offs, and risk many times.  We are also looking at what customers need. Jer, to you it is all about graphics.  To many others, it is about data.  So, how do we serve all customers??
The strategy is exactly what you have seen/heard:

1)      WPF 4.5 is going to have some significant data binding performance improvements.

2)      We are not redoing the graphics framework, but we are doing a lot of work to let you interoperate with lower level graphics so that if you need more graphics perf you can get it, and still keep the RAD of the rest of the framework.

[…] Hope it helps; apologies if it does not, and again, wait for Rob Relyea or someone else to make it official.  That is just my 2c as a person who bet heavily on WPF but has seen the data that drives the trade-offs the team has to make.

This will be disappointing to former Microsoft evangelist Scott Barnes, who has initiated a Fix WPF campaign.

The problem though is lack of clarity about the strategy. Look at Rodrigue’s third point above. Nobody can predict the future; but what is Microsoft’s current bet? Silverlight, HTML5, or maybe SuperNew.Next – for example, the rumoured new native code UI for Windows 8 or some variant of it?

My own view is that the current difficulties are rooted in what happened with Longhorn and the fact that the Windows team abandoned WPF back in 2004. I’ve written this up in more detail here.

Lest this post be misinterpreted, let me emphasise that Microsoft has a good track record in terms of supporting its Windows APIs long-term, even the ones that become non-strategic. Applications built with the first version of .NET still run; applications built with Visual Basic 6 mostly still run; applications built for ancient versions of Windows often still run or can be coaxed into running. Build an application with WPF or Silverlight today, and it will continue to work and be supported for many years to come.

My guess is that events like the coming 2011 MVP Summit and Mix 2011 in April will bring some clarity about Microsoft’s mobile, tablet, Windows and cross-platform story for rich clients.

Update: Barnes has his own take on this discussion here.

microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, vista, visual studio, windows

Microsoft still paying the price for botched Vista with muddled development strategy

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Professional Developers Conference 2003. Windows Longhorn is revealed, with three “pillars”:

  • Avalon, later named Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
  • Indigo, later named Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
  • WinFS, the relational file system that was later abandoned

With the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft got many things right with the vision it set out at PDC 2003. The company saw that a revolution in user interface technology was under way, driven by the powerful graphics capabilities of modern hardware, and that the old Win32 graphics API would have to be replaced, much as Windows itself replaced DOS and the command-line. XAML and WPF was its answer, bringing together .NET, DirectX, vector graphics, XML and declarative programming to form a new, rich, presentation framework that was both designer-friendly and programmer-friendly.

Microsoft also had plans to take a cut-down version of WPF cross-platform as a browser plugin. WPF/Everywhere, which became Silverlight, was to take WPF to the Mac and to mobile devices.

I still recall the early demos of Avalon, which greatly impressed me: beautiful, rich designs which made traditional Windows applications look dated.

Unfortunately Microsoft largely failed to execute its vision. The preview of Longhorn handed out at PDC, which used Avalon for its GUI, was desperately slow.

Fast forward to April 2005, and Windows geek Paul Thurrott reports on Longhorn progress:

I’m reflecting a bit on Longhorn 5048. My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck.

Thurrott was right. But why did Longhorn go backwards? Well, at some point – and I am not sure of the date, but I think sometime in 2004 – Microsoft decided that the .NET API for Longhorn was not working, performance was too bad, defects too many. The Windows build was rebased on the code for Server 2003 and most of .NET was removed, as documented by Richard Grimes.

Vista as we now know was not a success for Microsoft, though it was by no means all bad and laid the foundation for the well-received Windows 7. My point though is how this impacted Microsoft’s strategy for the client API. WPF was shipped in Longhorn, and also back-ported to Windows XP, but it was there as a runtime for custom applications, not as part of the core operating system.

One way of seeing this is that when Longhorn ran into the ground and had to be reset, the Windows team within Microsoft vowed never again to depend on .NET. While I do not know if this is correct, as a model it makes sense of what has subsequently happened with Silverlight, IE and HTML5, and Windows Phone:

  • Windows team talks up IE9 at PDC 2010 and does not mention Silverlight
  • Microsoft refuses to deliver a tablet version of Windows Phone OS with its .NET application API, favouring some future version of full Windows instead

Note that in 2008 Microsoft advertised for a job vacancy including this in the description:

We will be determining the new Windows user interface guidelines and building a platform that supports it. We’ll eliminate much of the drudgery of Win32 UI development and enable rich, graphical, animated user interface by using markup based UI and a small, high performance, native code runtime.

In other words, the Windows team has possibly been working on its own native code equivalent to XAML and WPF, or perhaps a native code runtime for XAML presentation markup. Maybe this could appear in Windows 8 and support a new touch-oriented user interface.

In the meantime though, Microsoft’s developer division has continued a strong push for .NET, Silverlight and most recently Windows Phone. Look at Visual Studio or talk to the development folk, and you still get the impression that this is the future of Windows client applications.

All this adds up to a muddled development story, which is costly when it comes to evangelising the platform.

In particular, eight years after PDC 2003 there is no clarity about Microsoft’s rich client or RIA (Rich Internet Application) designer and developer story. Is it really WPF, Silverlight and .NET, or is it some new API yet to be revealed, or will IE9 as a runtime play a key role?

There is now a little bit more evidence for this confusion and its cost; but this post is long enough and I have covered it separately.

microsoft, windows

Exchange 2007 to 2010 migration hassles

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I have been running Exchange 2010 for a while now, but over the weekend decided to retire Exchange 2007 which was running alongside it in a “just in case” kind of way. This turned out to be more hassle than I had expected. In principle removing your last Exchange 2007 box is simple enough: first check that that all the data has been migrated, then uninstall it from Control Panel. The catch is that Exchange will refuse to uninstall if it detects certain conditions.

The first problem I discovered was that my Exchange public folders had not replicated to Exchange 2010, even though I thought I had set this up. You are meant to run the script MoveAllReplicas.ps1, but I ran into an error that, from what I can tell, is a common one:

Set-PublicFolder : The parameter "Replicas" cannot be $null or an empty array.

Although I found many references to this error, I did not come across any direct solutions. However, I did find Microsoft’s public folder management utility – no, not the one built into the Exchange Management Console, but one of those little utilities created by a member of the Exchange team to make up for deficiencies in the official tools. This is called Exfolders, and replaces a similar tool called PFDAVAdmin. When I ran Exfolders I found I could not log on to the Exchange database, with the error reported being:

An error occurred while trying to establish a connection to the Exchange server. Exception: The Active Directory user wasn’t found.

This led me to an informative blog post that refers to this official post, which describes a problem which occurs on Exchange systems on which Exchange 2000 or 2003 previously existed. Read the post for more details; but the fix is to dive into ADSI Edit (Active Directory Services Interface Editor) which is a low-level editing tool for Active Directory similar in some respects to Regedit and equally hazardous. You have to find and delete the empty Servers container relating to the obsolete Exchange 2003 First Administrative Group.

image

No, it is not intuitive; yes, most would consider it a bug; and Microsoft now adds:

Removed the reference to upcoming fix (no fix current planned)

The benefit though was that ExFolders now worked. Using this tool I manually created public folder replicas on Exchange 2010 and replication happened at last.

I waited for replication to complete, then tried again with MoveAllReplicas.ps1. I still got the same error though. I went back to ExFolders and successfully deleted the replicas shown on the old Exchange 2007 box, but when I tried to delete the public folder database itself got an error stating that replicas existed. In consequence, Exchange 2007 could not be uninstalled. Of course I could just have shut the machine down forever; but I do not recommend this – you end up with references in Active Directory to an Exchange server that no longer exists, which only causes problems.

The solution was to go back to ADSI Edit and delete the reference to the obstinate Public Folder Store, as recommended by Microsoft’s Ben Winzenz here.

Exchange 2007 now uninstalled cleanly and I have the VM space I need to try Microsoft Lync, which I noticed getting some attention at Mobile World Congress last week.

javascript, microsoft, mobile, nokia, professional, software development, sql, windows

IE9 in Windows Phone will be good for cross-platform JavaScript and HTML5 apps

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, accompanied by Nokia’s Stephen Elop, showed coming updates for Windows Phone 7 at a Mobile World Congress keynote last night.

A minor update due in early March will add copy and paste, and CDMA support is also coming in the first half of 2011.

The more interesting update is planned for the second half of 2011 – I’m guessing late this year – and will have multi-tasking for 3rd party apps, as well as a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9. We were told that this will feature the same HTML 5 standards support and hardware acceleration as in the desktop version.

Windows Phone VP Joe Belfiore showed the fish demo running on Windows Phone with IE9 alongside Safari on the iPhone. The iPhone fish jerk slowly across the screen.

image 

Note that Apple will likely have a new iPhone out before mobile IE9 is ready, which may well equal or exceed IE9’s graphics performance.

Nevertheless, this is interesting for developers since it means that the fast “Chakra” JavaScript runtime will be available on the device. HTML and JavaScript is one route to cross-platform mobile applications.

Silverlight on Windows Phone includes a WebBrowser control which has access to isolated storage. This means you could write most of your app in cross-platform JavaScript and HTML, but wrap it in Silverlight for access to native phone features.

It is a shame though that Microsoft does not include the Sqlite local database engine found in WebKit-based mobile browsers. Sqlite is in the public domain so this may be an example of the “not invented here” syndrome. Microsoft does not even have SQL Compact Edition in Windows Phone 7, though it would not surprise me if this also appears in the autumn update. Full details are being held back until the Mix conference in April.

Although it has not been stated, it would make sense for this update to be used in the first Windows Phones from Nokia. On Sunday evening, Nokia stated its desire to deliver a Windows Phone device before the end of the year.

microsoft, mobile, open source, professional, qt, software development, windows

Qt will not be ported to Windows Phone 7 says Nokia

Director of the Qt Ecosystem Daniel Kihlberg has posted officially on the future of Qt, Nokia’s cross-platform application framework.

However you spin it, Nokia’s change of direction, relegating Symbian to low-end phones and focusing on Windows Phone as its Smartphone platform, is not good for Qt developers. Kihlberg offers a glimmer of hope for MeeGo though. Whereas CEO Stephen Elop was almost dismissive of MeeGo, saying that a device would be released as part of a learning process, Kihlberg positions it as a source of future disruption:

Nokia also announced it will ship its first MeeGo-related device in 2011, which will rely on the Qt ecosystem – and then will continue with MeeGo as an open source project for future disruption.  Nokia can’t afford to be behind the next disruption again and Qt can play an important role in making sure it isn’t.

But why not port Qt to Windows Phone, which needs a native development stack? Nokia’s Aron Kozak states in a comment:

Qt will not be ported to Windows Phone 7. One of the key benefits of joining an established ecosystem is that there is an established toolchain that everyone uses. All Windows Phone apps will run on all WP7 devices. Adding Qt to the mix would only cause fragmentation.

Unfortunate from a Qt perspective but wise from a developer ecosystem perspective.

In truth, this is near-fatal for the future of Qt at Nokia:

I have to say, Nokia made a bad decision jumping to WP7 knowing that Qt wouldn’t be on it. Now that Nokia did this, they basically went from Qt “Code once, run everywhere” to “Code once, run nowhere”.

says developer Keith Rusler.

The other problem is that developers feel misled:

When Elop came in he said that Qt will be the main framework. Symbian and MeeGo would be unified through Qt. We all stopped working on Symbian C++ and started learning Qt. We have now wasted 6 motnhs of our family’s lives on a dead end. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have started learning Java instead!

Irrespective of the business merits of Elop’s decision, the truth is that its relationship with developers has been deeply wounded. I am not sure how it could have been better handled – except that I think Nokia should have insisted on Qt support in Windows Phone – but I still observe that it has been handled badly. The evidence suggests that Elop under-estimates the importance of nurturing developers in the ecosystems he talks so much about.

microsoft, professional, virtualization, windows

Restoring an old Small Business Server 2008 backup: beware expired Active Directory

Seemingly tricky problems sometimes have simple solutions – but you have to find them first.

So it was with this one. I was asked to recover some emails from Small Business Server, from a backup that was about six months old. This SBS runs on Hyper-V using a proven backup system and I decided to restore onto a test system just to recover the emails. All went well until the first boot. The restored SBS went into a reboot cycle. Trying safe mode revealed the error:

STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start because of the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning. Error Status: 0xc0000001

The suggested fix for this is to boot into Directory Services Restore Mode. In my case this was not possible, because after the first failure the VM booted into Windows Error Recovery mode which does not offer Directory Services Restore Mode. Rather than try to get round this, I simply restored the server again, and took a snapshot before the first boot so I would not have to do so again.

I could now get into Directory Services Restore Mode, though note that you need to log on as .\administrator using the password set when SBS 2008 was installed. I tried some of the steps here with little success. The suggested ntdsutil commands did not work. I had to activate an instance, which by the way is ntds, and then got a message saying the operation failed because the system was in Directory Services Restore Mode and to try rebooting. I knew what the result would be.

In other words, I was getting nowhere. Then I found a user with a similar problem. The reason: Active Directory will not restore if it is older than the “tombstone lifetime”. This is nicely explained here. It is to do replication. Active Directory is designed to replicate between domain controllers, which means it has to keep a record of deleted items. If a particular instance is older than the tombstone lifetime, it could not replicate safely, hence the error message.

Well, kind-of. Note that the error message says, “A device attached to the system is not functioning”. If only it could have said, “Active Directory is too old”, that would have saved some time. Note also that SBS is often the sole domain controller, making the problem irrelevant. Note further that in my case I did not care a jot about replication, since all I needed was some emails.

Still, it gave me an easy solution. Just set the date back in Hyper-V and reboot. Everything worked fine.

In the end it did not cost me too much time, and doing this stuff in Hyper-V while getting on with your work during the slow bits is a lot more fun than when using real systems.

I do find it interesting though how these simple problems can surface as bewildering errors that lead you through a maze of obscure technical documents before you find the simple solution.

google, microsoft, mobile, nokia, professional, qt, silverlight, software development, visual studio, windows

Nokia plus Windows Phone 7 – would that be a smart move?

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The rumour is that Nokia’s CEO, ex-Microsoft Stephen Elop, is planning a major strategy announcement on Friday February 11. The obvious move would be to embrace a new Smartphone platform, since neither Symbian nor MeeGo look likely to catch up with frontrunners Google Android or Apple iPhone. Could Elop be planning to partner with his former company and embrace Windows Phone 7?

It is a fascinating proposition. Here is the case in favour. For both Nokia and Microsoft, Android is the key competition in this market. The momentum behind Android is deterring both phone manufacturers and operators from investing seriously in Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s phone is well-regarded, but has made little impact on the general public. Nokia could change that; it could make beautiful Windows 7 phones and get them to the mass market.

Microsoft has also done a good job with the developer tools for Windows Phone 7, with Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight, XNA, and the .NET Framework.

On the other hand, if Nokia were to adopt Windows Phone 7 for its high-end phone platform, would it not alienate its own development community, which is oriented towards Linux and C/C++? I think it would, unless Nokia insisted that as part of its deal with Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 would also support native code development with Qt, Nokia’s cross-platform application framework. This would be great news for Microsoft as well, though it might not recognise it. Windows Phone 7 needs to allow native code development, and Qt is ideal for the purpose. Qt already supports Windows CE, which underlies Windows Phone 7. If Nokia could present Windows Phone 7 as just another platform for Qt, the deal would be palatable for existing Nokia developers.

If Nokia were to announce this, it would transform the prospects for Microsoft’s Smartphone OS as well as helping Nokia to make a renewed impact.

Now for the case against. I am not sure that Qt on Windows Phone 7 would be acceptable to Microsoft, which might prefer to keep developers locked to Visual Studio and .NET; and Nokia has an easy alternative, which is to adopt Android instead. Qt support is still an issue, but there is already an independent project to bring Qt to Android. The combination of the Android and Nokia brands has obvious appeal, whereas taking on Windows Phone 7 would be risky.

The biggest shadow over Windows Phone 7 is cast by Microsoft itself. I do not doubt the commitment of the team which builds it within Microsoft, nor the quality of the developer tools. I do question though whether Microsoft as a whole sees a long-term future for Windows Phone 7 and its “Metro” user interface. The strong hint at CES was that Windows 8, rather than Windows Phone 7, is the basis of Microsoft’s tablet strategy; and if that proves to be the case, then Windows Phone 7 may gradually be displaced. Another puzzle is how Microsoft intends to use “Jupiter”, a rumoured new user interface library for Windows that may well be designed with mobile and touch control in mind. Maybe full Windows with “Jupiter” is the future of Microsoft’s mobile platform, rather than Windows Phone 7? I discuss this in more detail here.

There is enough uncertainty around Windows Phone 7, and enough buzz around Android, that Google’s mobile platform looks to me more attractive than Microsoft’s from Nokia’s perspective. I do not dismiss the Windows Phone idea though; it would be a bold and interesting move.

I expect this post to be very out of date soon, if not by Friday, then certainly by early next week at Mobile World Congress.

Update: A Nokia and Microsoft partnership is looking more likely since Google’s Vic Gundotra tweeted:

#feb11 "Two turkeys do not make an Eagle".

microsoft, mobile, windows

Server admin on the go with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 app for SBS 2011

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Microsoft has created a Windows Phone 7 app for managing the forthcoming Small Business Server 2011 Essentials.

The app sends alerts to your home page, and lets you perform certain tasks remotely:

  • View storage status
  • View status of connected computers
  • Start PC backup
  • Enable and disable user accounts
  • Reset user password
  • Reboot server

imageimage

A neat feature for simple server admin, and a bit of stealth marketing for Microsoft’s smartphone, which is struggling to make an impact.

I hope the app has some additional security though. Otherwise, a phone thief could cause mayhem with those few features.

cloud computing, microsoft, professional, sharepoint, windows, windows 7

Server and Tools shine in Microsoft results – so why is Bob Muglia leaving?

Microsoft released quarterly results yesterday:

Quarter ending December 31 2010 vs quarter ending December 31 2009, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Profit Change
Client (Windows + Live) 5054 -2139 3251 -2166
Server and Tools 4390 412 1776 312
Online 691 112 -543 -80
Business (Office) 5126 612 3965 1018
Entertainment and devices 3698 1317 679 314

Microsoft highlighted strong sales for Xbox (including Kinect) as well as for Office 2010, which it said in the press release is the “fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history.”

Why is Office 2010 selling better than Office 2007? My hunch is that this is a Windows 7 side-effect. New Windows, new Office. I do think Office 2010 is a slightly better product than Office 2007, but not dramatically so. SharePoint Workspace 2010, about which I mean to post when I have a moment, is a big disappointment, with a perplexing user interface and limited functionality.

Windows 7 revenue is smaller than that of a year ago, but then again the product was released in October 2009 so this is more a reflection of its successful launch than anything else.

What impressed me most is the strong performance of Server and Tools, at a time when consolidation through virtualisation and growing interest in cloud computing might be reducing demand. Even virtual machines require an OS licence though, so maybe HP should worry more than Microsoft about that aspect.

I still think they are good figures, and make Server and Tools VP Bob Muglia’s announced departure even more puzzling. Just what was his disagreement with CEO Steve Ballmer?

Server and Tools revenue includes Windows Azure, but it sounds like Microsoft’s cloud is not generating much revenue yet. Here is what CFO Peter Klein said:

Moving on to Server and Tools. For Q3 and the full year, we expect non-annuity revenue, approximately 30% of the total, to generally track with the hardware market. Multi-year licensing revenue which is about 50% of the total, and enterprise services, the remaining 20%, should grow high-single digits for the third quarter and low double-digits for the full fiscal year.

This suggests that 80% of the revenue is from licensing and that 20% is “enterprise services” – which as I understand it is the consulting and enterprise support division at Microsoft. So where is Azure?

Online services, which is Bing and advertising, announced another set of dismal results. Another part of Microsoft’s cloud, Exchange and SharePoint online, is lost somewhere in the Business segment. Overall it is hard to judge how well the company’s cloud computing products are performing, but I think it is safe to assume that revenue is tiny relative to the old Windows and Office stalwarts.

Windows Phone 7 gets a mention:

While we are encouraged by the early progress, we realize we still have a lot of work ahead of us, and we remain focused and committed to the long-term success of Windows Phone 7.

It looks like revenue here is tiny as well; and like most corporate assertions of commitment, this is a reflection of the doubts around Microsoft’s mobile strategy overall: how much of it is Windows Phone 7, and how much a future version of full Windows running on ARM system-on-a-chip packages?

Still, these are good figures overall and show how commentators such as myself tend to neglect the continuing demand for Windows and Office when obsessing about a future which we think will be dominated by cloud plus mobile.

.net, cloud computing, microsoft, professional, software development, windows

How is Windows Azure doing? Few mission critical apps says Microsoft

I attended an online briefing given by Azure marketing man Prashant Ketkar. He said that Microsoft is planning to migrate its own internal systems to Azure, “causing re-architecture of apps,” and spoke of the high efficiency of the platform. There are thousands of servers being managed by very few people he said – if you visit a Microsoft datacenter, “you will be struck by the absence of people.” Some of the efficiency is thanks to what he called a “containerised model”, where a large number of servers is delivered in a unit with all the power, networking and cooling systems already in place. “Just add water, electricity and bandwidth,”, he said, making it sound a bit like an instant meal from the supermarket.

But how is Azure doing? I asked for an indication of how many apps were deployed on Azure, and statistics for data traffic and storage. “For privacy and security reasons we don’t disclose the number of apps that are running on the platform,” he said, though I find that rationale hard to understand. He did add that there are more than 10,000 subscribers and said it is “growing pretty rapidly,” which is marketing speak for “we’re not saying.”

I was intrigued though by what Ketkar said about the kinds of apps that are being deployed on Azure. “No enterprise is talking about taking a tier one mission critical application and moving it to the cloud,” he said. “What we see is a lot of marketing campaigns, we see a lot of spiky workloads moving to the cloud. As the market start to get more and more comfortable, we will see the adoption patterns change.”

I also asked whether Microsoft has any auto-scaling features along the lines of Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk planned. Apparently it does. After acknowledging that there is no such feature currently in the platform, though third-party solutions are available, he said that “we are working on truly addressing the dynamic scaling issues – that is engineering work that is in progress currently.”