Could Microsoft be opening up their Azure service to run Linux servers in addition to Windows servers?
It might seem rather odd for Mirosoft to allow Azure customers to run Linux, but it might just make the best business sense. While Windows Azure might be a lucrative offering for those looking for Windows-based cloud platform, it is unlikely that those who have invested in Linux-based solutions will switch to Azure. On the other hand Azure's competitors such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace etc. offer Windows and Linux based cloud solutions, thus making them a lot more lucrative for those seeking Linux-based or hybrid Windows and Linux mixed clouds.
A few years back Microsoft had made a similar shocking move by contributing some code to the Linux kernel -- although it may just have been as the result of a GPL violation. The code would improve the performance of Linux when it was running on Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. Since this made it more feasible to run Linux on Microsoft's Windows servers, it stands to improve the sales of Windows licenses. Similarly now by opening up Azure to Linux servers it stands to make it more lucrative to those who need Linux servers as part of their cloud.
Another barrier to adopting Azure was the lack of support for persistent VMs. VMs being run on Azure had to be stateless since they could be rebooted and reset at any time, thus loosing any data stored on it. This is OK for apps developed to take this into account, but for traditional applications that need persistence, it is a deal-breaker. Microsoft is looking to add support for persistent VMs to Azure as well.
It is expected that these features will be included in a technical preview coming later this year.
