
Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data - martymatheny
http://www.redmondpie.com/guess-what-icloud-uses-windows-azure-services-for-hosting-data/
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varunsrin
[http://gigaom.com/2011/06/10/apple-icloud-microsoft-azure-
am...](http://gigaom.com/2011/06/10/apple-icloud-microsoft-azure-amazon/)

This article from GigaOm explains it better - Apple is likely using Azure /
AWS as a CDN, because their data centers are centrally located (however this
is not fact - we still don't know the extent to which they leverage azure /
aws)

I think its a win-win for everyone involved - Azure makes money, and bags a
high profile customer which validates their platform. Apple can leverage
Azure's distributed datacenters to deliver a great experience for their users.

If this is true, I wouldn't say that it was embarrassing for Microsoft - much
like how Google Maps on the iPhone is valuable asset for Google , not an
embarrassment.

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kenjackson
This is a win all the way around. Azure needs customers and who better than
Apple to stress it and force them to make it better. But I'd hate to be the
Azure VP if Jobs calls you because something isn't to his liking.

At the same time Apple wins because they can focus on their core competency,
UX, not cloud plumbing.

Is Apple or Samsung embarrassed because the chips, flash, and display are
sourced from Samsung? Of course not. Samsung is proud that their parts are the
ones Apple choose, and Apple sells the experience, not a collection of parts.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Apple often removes any mention of the suppliers on the chips, sometimes
cheekily putting Apple logos on chips bought from others, so they appear to be
somewhat embarrassed about it.

Similarly, Samsung seemed a trifle embarrassed when announcing that their
Galaxy S II phone would ship in some territories with Tegra 2 chips rather
than their own Exynos chips.

~~~
Refringe
I'm nitpicking, but I wouldn't say Apple "removes" the logos, just special
orders the chips with their logo instead.

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karl11
Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft?
They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to
use?

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statictype
Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an
embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but
didn't.

~~~
Legion
37signals takes Rails and makes the products they intend to make.

Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their
commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone
else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.

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cube13
>Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their
commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone
else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.

I don't really think that MS has targeted Windows Azure towards the general
consumer market, though. It's basically the same as Amazon Web Services. Apple
using that tech gives them an incredibly strong marketing tool, especially for
companies that are trying to decide between using Amazon or something else for
cloud-based services.

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bad_user
AWS is cheaper. It matters less to me what companies the size of Apple do, as
I'm not Apple.

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sandis
Just thinking – couldn't this be a temporary pre-launch solution because
Apple's huge NC data center isn't fully operational yet?

~~~
bengl3rt
Probably. But, in order to run on Azure, don't things have to be written in
C#/.NET? That would suggest that their production stack will also leverage
these technologies, potentially on windows (unless Mono over Linux or BSD is
actually mature enough for this sort of thing, I wouldn't know)

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jasonlotito
> But, in order to run on Azure, don't things have to be written in C#/.NET?

No, not at all. They also have support for Java, Ruby, and PHP.

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balakk
More precisely, the Azure storage API is HTTP/REST-like. Hence it practically
supports any language that has a HTTP stack.

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bengl3rt
I see. I mean, if they're just using the storage backend, I fully understand -
they realize that solving the problem of storage provisioning and redundancy
is not their core business, and that they should outsource it to somebody
that's already very good at it.

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mamp
I imagine the SVP for cloud computing at Apple is happy to pay for highly
redundant services so he doesn't invoke the Wrath of Jobs (TM). Steve Jobs
probably pushed for multi-vendor redundancy so he could confidently say at the
keynote that they stuffed up the Mobile Me launch, but wouldn't make the same
mistake.

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glassx
Your reply makes a lot of sense, considering we had a major Amazon outage just
a few months ago. Redundancy is the way to go.

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bane
Didn't Apple just build a couple huge data centers? I was under the assumption
they were supposed to be for iCloud?

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webXL
Perhaps they have a bunch of windows servers inside, but why windows.net?

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sriramk
windows.net is the root URL for all the Windows Azure storage services. Back
in 2008, we knew that Windows Azure was going to have the 'Windows' part of
it's name. Since Microsoft already owned windows.net, this made it an obvious
choice. So we get blob.core.windows.net, database.windows.net, etc.

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flocial
Windows Azure can be a number of things. Since they use AWS and the article
shows http requests they might be using it as just a blob store or CDN with
redundancy across providers. I doubt they're running Windows Azure on their
servers not that it wouldn't be pragmatic to.

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tlrobinson
Wait, so what was that billion dollar data center [1] Apple built in North
Carolina for?

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apples-nc-data-
cen...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apples-nc-data-center-
coming-online-this-spring.ars)

~~~
tvon
My guess is that AWS/Azure is only used for short term storage.

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jpalomaki
Relaying on their own data centers and their own cloud stuff would have
created a dependency between iCloud and the data center level stuff. If the
data center project would have been delayed for a reason or another.. too bad
for the iCloud.

Also it might not be a good idea to start testing your inhouse cloud
infrastructure with a high profile product like iCloud that is likely to
attract quite a few users in coming months.

I think it absolutely makes sense to do the development and initial launch
with outside services and then later on maybe migrate to your own data centers
and own cloud stack.

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geuis
Does it really matter what cloud services Apple uses? Yes, they have their own
data centers but why should it be surprising if they also utilize others as
well?

Microsoft is, in many ways, lots of little companies that all live together.
If the Azure business unit makes money from Apple, it doesn't really matter if
the Windows Live teams are failing in their products.

The oft-mentioned great thing about cloud services is not having to worry
about managing hardware. Leave that to the people that are really good at it,
and build your business on top.

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saetaes
This seems to be a logical multi-vendor play to me. Especially if Apple's data
centers aren't geographically distributed, it needs to get other vendors
involved.

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some1else
Microsoft.com purportedly uses Akamai(Linux) for load-balancing and caching
their websites[1]. I don't see anything wrong with using appropriate
technologies.

[1]
[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/17/wwwmicrosoftcom...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/17/wwwmicrosoftcom_runs_linux_up_to_a_point_.html)

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mrich
I find it funny how everybody here tries to spin this to portray Apple in a
positive light, even putting the blame on Microsoft somehow.

Face it, this would be a big deal for any other large company. When a tech
giant builds his latest project on out-of-house infrastructure, how can this
be good? At best, it is a waste of development resources (when it is
temporary), At worst, it is a business risk/reliability nightmare waiting to
happen (when this is their final infrastructure).

~~~
mechanical_fish
You are aware that Apple doesn't own its own chip fabs? That its hardware is
manufactured for it by third parties? That the building space for most Apple
Stores are leased from malls and landlords?

 _Every_ enterprise builds on infrastructure owned by others. That is what
contracts are for. What matters is the degree of lock-in and who controls the
roadmap. And the whole point of modern "cloud" infrastructure is that you
don't own the hardware, you don't have the capital costs of the datacenters,
you have a nice temporary lease that you can nonrenew or perhaps even break if
needed, and your internal architecture is probably generic enough to be ported
to another cloud if needed.

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signa11
i think this is all based on the VL2 paper, described here:
[http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/05/VL2AScalableAndF...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/05/VL2AScalableAndFlexibleDataCenterNetwork.aspx)
and the paper available here:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.156...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.156.6990&rep=rep1&type=pdf).

it boasts of some freakishly fast ability to shuffle 2.7Tb between 75 servers
in 27 seconds...

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galvan
<http://xkcd.com/908/>

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ch0wn
Embarrassment or not, I'm surprised by that. This is a big deal and the first
time we hear about it is after someone took a closer look at the headers.

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dexen
Wasn't the big idea of cloud that you aren't tied to provider and can move
your services anywhere?

Anyway, what other big cloud providers are out there -- ones that aren't
direct competitors to Apple? Amazon's AWS is out of the question, as Amazon
competes directly on those hot multimedia and e-book markets with Apple.
Google's stuff, too, as Google is a major competitor on mobile and multimedia
markets. Microsoft doesn't seem to directly compete with Apple in the hot
markets -- at least not until they squeeze some Windows Phones from Nokia.

~~~
patrickaljord
Read the article, it says it uses AWS too...

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gfodor
I think there's more to the story here because otherwise there was no point to
Apple building the data centers.

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SoftwareMaven
I don't think the implication is that Apple has none of its own
infrastructure, just that they've bought some pieces from third parties.

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bonch
While this may just be temporary, I don't see why it would matter if it
wasn't. Apple probably also uses Linux and FreeBSD for things.

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josephcooney
Agree. Even though Apple have their own data-centres, they might use some
Amazon or MS capacity just as a redundancy hedge.

