Having been on vacation the last week, I get a lot of time to think among all the kids and theme parks we visit… It truly makes we belive that we guys are capable of multi tasking… Well enough of that. back to the point!
Thinking back about the development that has been done on Microsoft Azure the last couple of years is truly astonishing, going from a PaaS solution to integrating IaaS features and now having a large Container ecosystem, load balancing, firewalls, a large third party ecosystem, identity management and much more… Just over a couple of years . While on the other hand we have Windows Server, which has a predetermined release cycle, with updates coming with each release, where it seems to be like there is less development done then being on the Azure side of things.
Now in Windows Server 2016, we see that much of the new stuff which is coming is Nework virtualized functions, Enhancements to Storage (Software-defined), enhancements to Hyper-V, DDA, Identity and so on.. Alot of these features are also the same as their counter-parts in Azure. For instance DDA is a new feature which came because of the need of N-series in Azure (or the other way around) but more features are added to remove the dependency on hardware.
Now many conclude with the same fact that most larger organizations will have some form of hybrid IT now or in the future. Because many services are cost-effective and of course the addition that new services are constantly being added that can make buisnesses more agile and effective. While on the same time having their on-premises solutions where they have controll of data and the custom solutions that needs to run locally.
When looking back at the development being done in Windows Server with 2016 it seems like the feature set is mostly ported from Azure. Also with the release coming from Microsoft around Azure Stack it seems to me like they want to have Windows Server look and feel more like Azure as well. Having that consistent platform vision that Microsoft has been speaking so much about over the last couple of years. The only problem with that vision is the feature gap between Windows Server + Azure Stack and Microsoft Azure by alot! and that is not going to change with the development cycle that is being made to Windows Server.
Should Microsoft move away from Windows Server and make their server operatingsystem a portable Azure hypervisor core where their additional services are just addons that can be added on the top?
When Microsoft released Windows 10 they envisioned a common code platform across different devices (Mobile and Desktop) What if Microsoft did the same with Windows Server?
Having the same code base between the infrastructure running on Azure and the same as on-premises, and when the Azure team releases an addon, being able to use it cross cloud from Microsoft and implementing in locally. That would be pure Hybrid Cloud…
Well this was just some random thoughts, it is not something that is easily done because of the way Microsoft is structured and how they have done development so far. They state that Azure runs on Hyper-V but its a long way to go to having that consistent platform vision that they want to have.