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>> Ina: I'm Ina Fried with CNET News, I'm here at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, I'm here with
Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie. Microsoft today unveiled Windows Azure, which some people have talked about as
a cloud operating system. Now, this isn't gonna replace the operating system on your computer is it, what exactly is this?
>> Ray: No, we believe there's a need for a new type of operating system that's delivered as a service. The first tier of operating
system that we have really has a scale of 1, it's Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, it's your personal -- it's an operating system
serving your personal needs. The second tier of operating system is really Windows Server and the scale of that is more or less the
size of an enterprise and that's what most people use that server for within enterprise data centers. We believe that there's a need
moving forward for the industry, for a new tier of computing that in essence is designed to serve the level of demand and the peaks
and valleys of that demand and the global nature of that demand coming in from all across the Internet.
>> Ina: So, the idea is that developers will write programs that will then be run on Microsoft's data centers. Do these programs
for Windows Azure, do they have to live in Microsoft's data centers?
>> Ray: Well, there -- Azure has a number of different services levels, there's a foundational level, which is kind of as you said,
the OS and the Cloud and that does run in our data centers and in the Cloud. There are higher level services such as Sequel services,
Dot Net services, Live services, and those can be mixed and matched by a developer and they can be used by services that are running
in our data center or outside our data center, ya know, companies can -- developers can call into those services or call out from those
services.
>> Ian: One of the advantages of having an operating system that lives in the Cloud is that services can then be used by whatever device
you have, whether it's a TC or a phone, how broadly do you guys plan on making this available, obviously you mentioned Windows and
Windows Mobile, should we also expect to see it on Mac's and iPhone's and what about televisions and Xbox's?
>> Ray: The larger vision is that the Live services component of the larger Azure services platform, which we'll actually talk about
more tomorrow, is designed fundamentally to be a bridge between the services on Azure and the Cloud and PC's, phones, ya know, and
a broad variety of devices, you know, we increasingly have many, many, many different types of devices and more and more of them
have simple Internet connections whether it's WiFi or hardwired and we believe that the highest level vision that we would like to
achieve for our customers is to make it easy for users to manage all of the devices around them, more or less as IT people have
learned over the years and we helped them manage all of their devices in their own, you know, their own enterprises.
>> Ian: And how ready for primetime is this, I mean, developers will have access to a preview version but how long a vision are we
talking about before this is kind of production ready, ready to be used, gonna make a difference in the average consumer computer
users life?
>> Ray: Well, all of these are real, they're, ya know, they're real code that people are using and the Azure things that you've seen
today are community technology previews, which is really the first light for developers, the first time they get to see it. The next
stage with our services tends to be Beta, which is it's getting closer to launch and, ya know, so it's fairly locked down, ya know,
we want people testing it more and then finally things release. I would say Windows Azure is the lowest level is not going to be
commercially released, certainly in '08 and over the course of '09 we'll be seeing what the feedback is like from developers. In
terms of the other things we were talking about in terms of PC Phone Web, Live services as delivered by Live Mesh is going into
broader Beta from community technology preview starting tomorrow.
>> Ian: Thanks, I've been joined by Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect from Los Angeles and CNET News, I'm Ina Fried.
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