Windows Azure Compute

Abstract

Enterprises today run on several flavors of operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, and mainframes. As businesses grow, enterprises have to expand their data and processing capacities by buying more servers and operating systems to support the new capacity. Typically, businesses have to plan for growth well in advance to budget the expenses. The tipping point, where investments in new server systems may not justify the value they provide to the business, is not far away. This is because server systems are expensive to provision and maintain, and they become obsolete before they provide any return on investment (ROI) to the business. As a result, IT managers face constant struggle in justifying server upgrades. On the other hand, businesses should also plan for shrinking capacity and should be able to quickly reduce costs and expenses to compete better in the marketplace.