About Cloud Computing Futures

The Cloud Computing Futures work begins with a key concept: the data center is a computer, and it must be designed and programmed as an integrated system. This means examining all aspects of data centers from first principles.

Microsoft cannot gain a sustainable competitive advantage by incrementally improving the “off-the-shelf design” of existing data center hardware and software. Considering the data center as a single artifact will allow us to re-architect the platform in radical ways. We will gain distinct advantages with a holistic approach to data center design. We must simplify in key areas to eliminate the outdated, redundant designs in today’s one-size-fits-all data centers. We will create new power, cooling, hardware, and software standards to advance simplicity and flexibility and true “lights out” operation. We will unite software flexibility with new hardware designs.

The goal is to design self-adapting systems that respond to diverse workload demands, without increasing system complexity and while lowering costs. We must invent new hardware/software solutions that solve loading, provisioning, performance, and other issues and enable an exciting new generation of applications and services, while maintaining compatibility with legacy APIs and services exposed on the edge. We will pursue invention and innovation that provides a competitive advantage to Microsoft in our data centers. We must reduce the time required to deploy new data center infrastructure, given changing business needs and rapidly evolving application and user expectations. We will explore packaging and delivery options that reduce data center deployment times from 1–2 years to a few months and server deployments to a few days.