
Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike - sylens
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/microsoft-screws-customers-and-its-own-advocates-alike/
======
Traster
Well this article doesn't seem very good. Not least because the author seems
perfectly willing to not actually explain the detail, and then jump to
conclusions.

Having read the actual detailed article what seems to be happening is that
some customers buy "on-premises licenses" without mobility rights, and MSFT
used to let them use those licenses on outsourced hardware. But people were
using those licenses to just put their deployments on general cloud services-
which is not what the license was intended for. The license was intended for
fixed, outsourced bare metal hardware.

Basically, MSFT is just catching up to the fact cloud services exist and
you're going to need a specific license if you want to run the software on the
cloud. Now, apparently this author finds this surprising, but given that the
license he's complaining about is an "on premises" license it sounds more like
MSFT were being generous by letting customers use the licenses on outsourced
hardware, and never intended it to be carte blanche for running your "on
premises" license in the cloud - which is very obviously _not_ on your
premises.

What it sounds like is happening at the moment is Amazon is running a shit
tonne of MSFT software without any MSFT licenses. Which sounds pretty cheeky
to me.

~~~
Someone1234
You seem to think simply re-stating the facts is enough to dismiss the
article.

But you forgot to tell us WHY it is acceptable for Microsoft to charge their
customers a premium for using their fully purchased licenses on a cloud
provider of their choice rather than dedicated physical hardware. And why it
is ok for Microsoft to create an artificial monopoly for these licenses via
Azure Dedicated Host.

Microsoft sold licenses that could be used this way, customers used them this
way, and now Microsoft wants to double-dip asking their customers to pay twice
just to actually use their already owned licenses.

> What it sounds like is happening at the moment is Amazon is running a shit
> tonne of MSFT software without any MSFT licenses. Which sounds pretty cheeky
> to me.

That's not what is happening. People are buying Windows Server licenses and
running them on compute that they rent from AWS. Until this change, that was
completely inside the terms of Windows Server licenses (if for no other reason
that they've been pushing hypervisor-based Windows Server virtualization for
almost ten years).

~~~
belltaco
Why is it okay for Nvidia to disable parts of a fully working chip in order to
sell it as a more popular and cheaper part? Why is it okay for them to disable
features in the PC vs Workstation drivers on the same hardware that you
bought?

Why is it okay for Apple to legally restrict OS X from running inside a VM or
on a PC?

Welcome to price differentiation.

~~~
soulofmischief
Well, it _isn 't_ okay for NVIDIA to try and charge me tens of thousands for a
quadro card instead of just letting me virtualize my Geforce 1080.

In fact, it's so not okay, that I don't play ball and I use hacks to get my
1080 support virtualization and pass-through.

It's also not okay for Apple to restrict what hardware I can run their
software with. I have run hackintoshes and OS X VMs.

I voice my support and concern for these vendors' policies appropriately by
using my wallet. The policies you listed are not okay.

~~~
pjmlp
That is not voting with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet would be not using anything from NVidia and Apple to
start with, including the business opportunities it might entail.

~~~
Supermancho
> Voting with your wallet would be not using anything

That's RMS thinking. If you don't mind, I'll expand on it. Voting with your
wallet includes not paying into third party workarounds because their
existence depends on the bad actors to exist (in some cases).

~~~
soulofmischief
I have read literature from Stallman essentially supporting piracy of closed-
source, proprietary products without saying it directly. This is more
impactful in the software realm where you are not still giving hardware sales,
but that is his stance.

However, I think NVIDIA is still leading the industry (AMD is catching up
fast, but still lags behind) and I want to support their hardware development.
However, I make it clear what kind of relationship I expect from them by
virtualizing my Geforce instead of buying a Quadro. I also support open-source
driver initiatives and abhor NVIDIA's practice of not releasing hardware
schematics if they aren't going to open source the driver. It's a complicated
issue.

------
oxfordmale
The real question is why companies are still running Windows Servers in the
cloud. It is already 50% more expensive to run Windows Server on AWS compared
to a Linux based OS, so I can really only justify running Windows Server for
legacy applications that are too difficult to migrate. Actually I am happy
with this price increase, it will give me some leverage to migrate the
remaining applications away from Windows.

~~~
wongarsu
I admit my experience is mostly with JS deployed on Linux, but ASP.NET seems
like a good framework with awesome tooling. Also using the same language on
the frontend and backend is very useful and I consider C# the best option for
Windows frontend work.

Not that I'm saying NodeJS backend with Website/Electron frontend is bad, but
ASP.NET backend with WPF frontend seems great as well, just with more
enterprise-oriented trade-offs, support cycles longer than one year but no
cross-platform support (yes, ASP.NET core is a thing now, but that's a very
recent development).

And compared to the cost of engineers I don't think many companies are that
worried about spending 50% more on infrastructure.

~~~
oxfordmale
Legacy ASP.NET web pages might be harder to migrate, however, newer web sites
can also be implemented using ASP.NET Core MVC. It seems other departments in
Microsoft do understand that their code base needs to be able to run on a
Linux OS, otherwise they are at risk of losing market share. Even SQL Server
can run on Linux now.

~~~
mr_overalls
> SQL Server

Well, it certainly "runs" on Linux, but there are many limitations and bugs.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-
linux-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-
release-notes?view=sql-server-2017#Unsupported)

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-
linux-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-
release-notes?view=sql-server-2017#known-issues)

And this is typical when porting a flagship application to its non-original
OS. I've seen similar issues with Oracle on Windows.

------
belltaco
The signal to noise ratio of the article is very low.

~~~
mcguire
See the linked
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/05/microsoft_licensing...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/05/microsoft_licensing_windows_clouds/)
Register article.

------
drummyfish
> the bad old days of Microsoft being an anti-competitive bully are dead and
> buried.

Wait, there are people who genuinely believe this?

~~~
holtalanm
I genuinely believe that Microsoft is at least making an effort to not be the
'Microsoft of old'.

Also, them open-sourcing a lot of their tools seems to back that effort up:

VSCode

TypeScript

.NET Core

Powershell Core

Just to name a few.

~~~
meesles
When you realize their objective is the commoditization of software and
software development to further increase your dependence on their ecosystem
(it's not just Windows anymore, it's Azure and the IDE and their other tools),
it seems a lot less benevolent. No company worth their salt does anything for
free, there's always a reason.

~~~
holtalanm
That is a given. Of course every company has the goal of making money.

They really don't stand to gain much by open-sourcing their tools, though,
besides developer goodwill, which is something that they sorely needed to
remain competitive in today's market.

------
scarface74
I love that Microsoft is doing this.

I was an exclusive Microsoft developer for almost 20 years until I started
doing cloud deployments to AWS 2 years ago. Before then, server costs were
someone else's problem. Now I’m doing a combination of .Net Core, Python, and
JS/Node.

I realized that everything gets worse when you add Windows to any cloud
solution - licensing costs, resource requirements, (I can do at lot with a
very small Linux instance, Windows not so much), performance, startup times,
easy scripting and automation, etc.

It gives me more of a reason to tell companies to move as far away from
Windows on the server as possible.

I still develop on Windows,C#/.Net Core is my favorite language, don’t know
much about Linux, and all of my “Linux deployments” are serverless with
Docker/Fargate or Lambda.

I don’t have to worry about “server administration”, the one thing that kept
me on Windows. We use managed services.

------
Dayshine
All Windows servers on Azure already have to have "Software assurance". The
license T&C for the last few years have been fairly clear you need to pay for
software assurance to cloud host.

Are they not simply closing the loophole where _direct customers are paying
more_?

~~~
Spooky23
The "loophole" was that you could license a specific host in AWS or GCP and
use the "outsourcing" provision to use existing perpetual licenses on that
host. My understanding is that now you cannot do that with specific providers.
But, if "Spooky23 Outsourcing Services, LLC" rents you a server, you can, but
you cannot do it on AWS.

I don't think that AWS/GCP guarantee that you are on a specific host for any
period of time, and I _think_ that in many scenarios, you cannot move Windows
Server workloads more than once in any 30-day period. I think Microsoft's
position is that customers on these platforms are likely breaking that rule.

That said, those same rules apply to ESX and HyperV, and Microsoft doesn't
blacklist vMotion because it can violate an agreement. Many people see these
sorts of actions as a part of a pattern where Microsoft is leveraging the
existing license rights to drive Azure. That's how they are providing Windows
Server 2008 extended security updates as well.

------
ohthehugemanate
Microsoft closes a loophole that let people use a cheaper, license on
competitor clouds. Leading competitor complains. News at 11.

------
ptah
are they trying to get more people to use linux? because that's how you get
more people to use linux

~~~
bogwog
I don't understand why anyone would even want to use Windows. You're taking on
a huge risk for very little to no benefit. It's not like there's a shortage of
engineers familiar with Linux in the world.

~~~
abarringer
Just because you run windows doesn't mean you like it. SQL Server, vendor app
requirements etc. A windowless world is about as likely as a paperless
bathroom and for the same reasons.

Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing
pricing?

~~~
bogwog
> Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing
> pricing?

The many business risks of being 100% tied down to a single provider
(Microsoft). Licensing is one, but also what would happen if Microsoft decided
to kill off a service that your product depends on? You'd have to invest in
finding an alternative and rewriting your software. Or what if Microsoft sells
that service to another company which is actually directly competing with you,
and then decides to stop providing third party access, or looks at your usage
metrics/data to gain a competitive advantage over you. Or maybe Microsoft gets
an incompetent CEO which drives the company to bankruptcy, and Windows and all
their services you depend on are sold to hundreds of different companies which
you now need to deal with.

Building your software on Linux or BSD means you don't have to worry about any
of that since you own everything. It's like you're getting vertical
integration for free. It's a no-brainer.

~~~
ldiracdelta
You are vastly more likely to have a long, dependable platform when you use
Microsoft than almost anything else. They worship backwards compatibility.
Being stranded and all-alone on an open source dependency is very possible.
You're vastly more likely to be stranded after using a Google open source
product. I say all this having used the linux stack for my entire professional
career. I prefer linux by a long shot, but Microsoft backwards compatibility
is exemplary compared to almost anyone else, including open source.

~~~
bogwog
Now that's some grade-A FUD

------
ineedasername
In a situation like this, if you're not willing to take the price hit on the
chin in the long term, there's about two options: Change your cloud provider
(to Azure) or change your platform (away from windows). It seems MS is betting
there will be, on net, more people who take it on the chin &/or switch to
Azure. But even if they're right, there will still be some loss of marketshare
for those staying with AWS & ditching Windows. This seems like a Bad Thing in
the long term, no matter the specifics of other short term gains.

~~~
pas
Or... people will just pay a bit more to MS and stay on AWS.

It's not like AWS and Windows are for the cost conscious.

~~~
ineedasername
That's why I put in the beginning "if you're not willing to take the price hit
on the chin" caveat. Some will be willing to do so, and for good reason if
they have workloads that really need windows and specific features of AWS. My
point is simply that some people will abandon Windows, and I could be wrong
but even if they have some revenue gain in the near term, losing a bit of
market share is bad in the long term.

~~~
pas
They already have a market share too big to effectively handle/serve.

MS will probably transform into a bit like Apple for enterprises.

------
philliphaydon
Do many people even use byo license on aws to begin with?

------
Ruxbin1986
I wonder, if Microsoft did decided to increase the costs of it's product and
services what's the best way to that?

To me, that's all that's happening here. And the licenses purchase buy
customer in the past weren't intended for Cloud Workloads. Sure, it didn't
outline that you CANT use on AWS, GCP, etc. but that wasn't the intent.

------
cutler
Surprised? This is the same company that not long ago was waging a mafia-style
Linux patent war against open source verndors. Microsoft only got into the
open source game because they had no choice. How long, I wonder, before
ASP.Net Core is "optimised" for deployment on Azure even if it can be run on
Linux?

------
jbigelow76
The whole "won't somebody think of the poor advocates" angle seems pretty thin
to me, tossed in to gin up a little unearned outrage. Did all these advocates
all take big pay cuts to leave Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, etc... to go and
preach the gospel of Azure? I doubt it.

------
CyanLite2
TLDR: Azure is cheaper than AWS for Windows VMs.

------
shyneeup
Now I am curious, who runs production customer facing apps on Azure? I'm
assuming many people do given that Azure is second after AWS in market share
or is that really just mostly corporate IT servers?

~~~
privateSFacct
When folks say Azure is just behind AWS what does that mean? I don't see
nearly that many Azure large scale workloads or is something else counting as
Azure I'm not aware of?

~~~
manojlds
It used to count Office 365 as well, not sure if that's changed.

------
jxcole
It's pretty hard to get upset about this since nobody actually runs Windows
Server on the Cloud anyway. Even Azure is dominated by Linux server usage.

~~~
whoisjuan
"Nobody runs Windows Server on the Cloud" is a massive stretch. It may not be
a leader but it's definitely used [https://www.datanyze.com/market-
share/operating-systems/wind...](https://www.datanyze.com/market-
share/operating-systems/windows-server-market-share)

Also if your stack is .NET you definitely need Windows Server. Even Amazon has
some things built on .NET/Windows Server (woot.com)

~~~
grezql
.net core, which the flagship of the future, is cross platform.

I am running it in ubuntu production environment for an App i made. Very
stable.

~~~
davedx
Yes and no. I work on some ASP .NET applications and on a big .net core
project.

The .net core project indeed runs fine on Linux in AWS. It's a great success
story for us.

The ASP .NET projects I maintain have a budget that doesn't easily allow us to
just migrate them to .net core. There are some hairy legacy libs and code in
there that would also prove challenging to resolve too.

~~~
pathartl
Yeah, this right here. I work on a MVC 5 app that uses some pretty large
legacy libraries that's going to be hard to move from. Some of it is legacy
stuff that may or may not have a .NET Core or .NET Standard equivalent. Others
like Entity Framework have a Core equivalent that changes some paradigms to be
a bit more modern, but ultimately creates a situation where it's not a drop in
replacement.

There's also the question of SQL server. It's not so much of an issue when
you're dealing with Azure, but SQL server on Linux isn't ready for prime time
yet IMO.

