As expected Microsoft today announced that its Windows Azure product will be no more after April 3. But don’t worry, it’s simply a name change. In a move that sees the product named more accurately for what it actually does, Microsoft will henceforth call the platform Microsoft Azure.
Which is pretty much what everyone thinks of it as anyway. Azure goes far beyond Windows, and the new naming convention makes that obvious.
Maybe more than a name change? Maybe a path away from a Windows-first mindset? When I advised the Azure and Windows Foundation teams during 2005-2011, team member focus centered on expanding the Windows and .NET brands. Semi-recent embrace of Hadoop (instead of internally developed DryadLINQ) and non-Window based Azure VMs (aka cloud instances) would have been unthinkable 5-10 years ago. The bigger question is Microsoft’s monetization path and relevance in an OS commoditized world (see @sjvn article http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9246977/Steven_J._Vaughan_Nichols_Who_needs_operating_systems_anymore_Not_you )