Microsoft's new cloud-based platform, Azure, could offer the enterprise a way to overcome its reservations about porting their IT infrastructure online, even if those companies ultimately choose to utilize another cloud platform.

Microsoft intends for Azure, which it originally announced on Oct. 27, 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, to go head-to-head against offerings from Amazon.com and Google. Yet despite the massive promise of cloud-computing, periods of unexpected downtime over the past few months for Azure’s early test release, as well as Google and other online platforms, have hinted at the structural obstacles still facing the cloud model as a whole.

Despite the mistrust that certain IT professionals may have about running their operations via a public cloud, Microsoft has no plans to make Azure available to run on a private cloud set up by a company. However, Microsoft has integrated certain functionality developed for Azure onto Windows Server 2008, such as the ability to boot from a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), which could allow the enterprise to bring an Azure-like experience to certain aspects of the cloud.

Doug Hauger, general manager of Windows Azure, said in an interview with eWeek that Microsoft’s customers had come to him asking for that sort of functionality as they considered building their own private cloud platforms.

"They said, 'Look, we’ll have some of our workloads in a public multitenant offering, but we want to build our own cloud platform,' by which they mean automated provisioning, internal provisioning, and then essentially a scale-out,” Hauger said. Microsoft's answer to that request was to "take the innovation we’re planning for Azure and integrate it into Windows Server, so we have the functionality."

A simpler-than-ever Web-based platform for developing and hosting applications could provide a sizable lure for the enterprise.

"One challenge Microsoft currently has as a high-performance, scalable Web platform [is] the cost and complexity of supporting the .NET/SQL Server stack," Ed Laczynski, CTO of LTech, a cloud-technology integrator, said in an email to eWeek. "If Azure is successful, it will change that. It’s a scalable, one-stop-shop platform."

However, noted Laczynski, the cloud-platform arena has become increasingly crowded with other contenders.

"Our clients are interested in Azure, but they aren’t waiting for it," said Laczynski. "We’ve done deployments on Amazon EC2 for Windows 2003/SQL. (However) We see Azure being very popular in existing Microsoft shops. Ecommerce, Web 2.0 and open-source-based shops that don’t rely on .NET or SQL Server technologies will probably not have much interest in the platform."

But Hauger argues that the cost-savings that come from utilizing the cloud could appeal to those SMBs (small and midsized businesses) and the enterprise currently using non-Microsoft, open-source platforms.

"I started talking to non-Microsoft customers," Hauger added, "expecting them to push back, and they said, 'You don’t understand, we just want a valuable but cost-effective platform.'"

Microsoft plans on making Azure, which is available now, a free offering until the Professional Developers Conference in November. In a July 14 presentation during the Worldwide Partner Conference, Hauger cited a Gartner study that showed cloud services as a potential "$150 billion business opportunity for the marketplace," making it imperative for Microsoft to begin its market-share penetration in an early and aggressive manner.

Microsoft will attempt to "build the market momentum" for Azure, according to Hauger, by offering discounts for partners above and beyond the five-month free period.

In keeping with its new initiative to offer different delivery modes for its upcoming products, Microsoft is proposing three ways for customers to interact with the platform. The first will be a pay-as-you-go "consumption" model, the second a subscription-based format, and the third will be based on volume licensing.

Pricing-wise, the "consumption" model will cost 12 cents per hour for infrastructure usage, and another 15 cents per gigabyte for storage. All three types of Azure services will cost users 10 cents per gigabyte for incoming data, and 15 cents for outgoing. The business edition of the SQL Azure database, with 10 gigabytes of storage, will cost $99.99.

A soft benefit to the platform, of course, could be the business community’s increased acceptance of cloud computing as a concept.

"By investing in Azure, Microsoft is giving credibility to the cloud space in general, which is good for the entire ecosystem," said Laczynski. "If it’s secure and it conforms to open Web standards, they will be able to make an impact in the enterprise with it."