Microsoft chases Amazon in taking SAP to the cloud
On May 18, both Microsoft and its cloud rival Amazon made dueling announcements involving SAP and their respective cloud strategies.The difference? One is here now. One isn't.
On May 18, both Microsoft and its cloud rival Amazon made dueling announcements involving SAP and their respective cloud strategies.The difference? One is here now. One isn't.
A recent pilot-program announcement between Microsoft and Amazon -- via which enterprise customers can cover their Amazon Web Services Windows Server instances with their existing Microsoft Enterprise licenses -- has led to a number of Microsoft customer questions.
Amazon.com has joined a host of other companies using Linux to pay Microsoft as part of a patent cross-licensing arrangement. Not surprisingly, the wording of the February 22 announcement by Microsoft regarding its latest IP licensing deal doesn't claim Amazon or Linux infringing (or even potentially infringing) on any Microsoft patents.
Amazon and Microsoft, two of the leaders in the evolving cloud-services space, are offering customers a number of wares that -- at least on the surface -- sound similar. But in the area of caching, the paths of the two providers are diverging.
Amazon has made a few tweaks and additions to its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure just days before Microsoft is expected to launch its head-to-head competitive service at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
Microsoft is poised to release Windows Vista Service Pack (SP1) to the retail channel this week. And the final release-to-manufacturing (RTM) of Windows XP SP3 is not far behind, according to testing sources.