Posts tagged Azure Services Platform
Microsoft and Salesforce Kiss and Make Up
Aug 5th
SAN FRANCISCO – Software manufacturing leading corporation Microsoft has revealed it has reached a deal to resolve a patent duel with Salesforce.com – a cloud computing firm.
Each had brought a lawsuit in the US court accusing the other to have violated its patented technology.
Under the terms and conditions of the agreement, both companies will have the rights to use each others technology. It was also decided that Salesforce.com will pay compensation to Microsoft, though the amount to be paid was not revealed.
“We are pleased to reach this agreement with Salesforce.com to put an end to the litigation between our two companies,” said Horacio Gutierrez – Microsoft corporate Vice President.
“Today’s agreement is an example of how companies can compete vigorously in the marketplace while respecting each other’s intellectual property rights.”
The legal duel arose as Microsoft is finding it hard to accustom itself with latest trends of programs being shared as services in the internet cloud instead of being purchased, installed, and maintained on individual computers.
Microsoft manufactured its trend defining software such as Office, outlook, and Windows, whereas San Francisco-based Salesforce has rapidly become popular and prospering name in cloud computing.
Microsoft has introduced Windows Azure cloud Platform providing wide range of live services offered through web.
Salesforce filed a litigation in June against Microsoft for violating its patent rights, apparently as retaliation for similar lawsuit that the US technology giant filed against Salesforce in May.
Various Sources
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Microsoft to Offer U.S. Scientists Free Cloud Computing
Feb 5th
U.S. Scientists Given Access to Cloud Computing
The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company’s new cloud computing service.
A goal of the three-year project is to give scientists the computing power to cope with exploding amounts of research data. It uses Microsoft’s Windows Azure computing system, which the company recently introduced to compete with cloud computing services from companies like Amazon, Google, I.B.M. and Yahoo. These cloud computing systems allow organizations and individuals to run computing tasks and Internet services remotely in relatively low-cost data centers.
The new program was announced on Thursday at a news conference in Washington.
Neither Microsoft nor the foundation was willing to place a dollar amount on the agreement, but Dan Reed, the corporate vice president for technology strategy and policy at Microsoft, said that the company was prepared to invest millions of dollars in the service and that it could support thousands of scientific research programs.
Access to the service will come in grants from the foundation to new and continuing scientific research. Microsoft executives said they planned eventually to make the new service global.
The government has traditionally supported a group of scientific computing centers at universities and laboratories around the country. These centers have typically housed supercomputers capable of solving scientific and engineering problems quickly. In recent years, however, increasing emphasis has been placed on computing systems capable of storing and analyzing vast amounts of data.
“It’s all about data,” said Jeannette M. Wing, assistant director of computer and information science and engineering directorate at the science foundation. “We are generating streams and rivers of data.”
Genetic sequencing systems are capable of generating as much as a terabyte, 1,000 gigabytes, of information a minute, Dr. Wing said.
Microsoft made its commitment to scientific computing two years after a similar service was introduced by Google and I.B.M. Several scientists familiar with the Microsoft project said the software company was hoping to differentiate the new service by offering scientists a set of custom applications that simplified access to Azure and the use of older software applications like Microsoft Excel.
“We’re trying to figure out how to engage the majority of scientists,” said Dr. Reed, who directed several of the nation’s scientific computing centers before joining Microsoft.
Simplicity of use is one Microsoft goal. Programming modern cloud systems for full efficiency has been difficult. The company is trying to overcome this difficulty in creating a variety of software tools for scientists, said Ed Lazowska, a University of Washington computer scientist who works with the Microsoft researchers.
Dr. Lazowska said the explosion of data being collected by scientists had transformed the staffing needs of the typical scientific research program on campus from a half-time graduate student one day a week to a full-time employee dedicated to managing the data. He said such exponential growth in cost was increasingly hampering scientific research.
Full Source The New York Times
