Putting the Squeeze on the IaaS Cloud

Microsoft has clarified their position on third party hosting to start putting the squeeze on the IAAS competition. After the announcement both Rob Eslin from Google and Werner Vogels of Amazon have expressed their dissatisfaction, largely because it is driving up the cost of doing business in their cloud. Prior to this announcement, the public cloud was not really addressed in the documentation and these situations were governed by the phrase of "dedicated hardware". As long as the hardware was dedicated to the client and not a shared/multi-tenant use case, the client could bring perpetual licenses to the provider. With this new move, Microsoft is now requiring Software Assurance which is further driving up the cost of Microsoft solutions in clouds that are not their own. Microsoft started this incremental attack on the competition by first making Windows Server less expensive with the Azure Hybrid Use Right and then followed it up with the SQL Enterprise PAAS benefit. It should be no surprise to anyone that Microsoft will continue to leverage their legacy footprint to drive more business to their cloud future.