My question is if google spent 21 billion, why did microsoft spend > 15 billion on its datacenters. How much datacenter resources is each microsoft customer using? It can't be from just office 365, Azure, and Bing. So is the majority from just software updates/downloads?
Yeah... but a datacenter is more than just servers right? You need a building, infrastructure (cooling, electric bill, efficient designing and engineering etc), development. These costs get big. fast.
Microsoft has been incentivizing its internal divisions to shift from legacy data center space to Azure. So some of that spending is for new servers and data center space to in-source services hosted by third-party providers. Or, in some cases, older Microsoft data centers. More here: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/01/at-mi...
I would guess they are trying to build up their cloud business. They have lots of cash, and they want a successful business. It's easy to justify a large buildout in that case, with the belief that the revenue will come. This is a common trap for innovators: you have to spend a lot just to stay in the game, while also preparing for the future. MSFT missed a lot of opportunities over the past few years due to their focus on Windows and Office (as Ballmer admitted recently) and now they have to play catchup.
Yeah Microsoft went all in on the "living room computer" with the Xbox and Xbox 360 which made sense at the time of the original Xbox however the vision they had wasn't what came to fruition. What did we get instead? Well we are still in the middle of the transition but it is most certainly away from super powerful set to boxes and more towards things like the Apple TV and Chromecast with powerful tablet computers doing most of the work and just pushing the output over wireless to the little receiver.
Now obviously MS saw this which is why we have things like Surface now but I am really surprised that they decided to kill off the Media Center Extender platform they had. They could have easily taken that and built a device similar to the Chomecast/Apple TV for dirt cheap and had a decent head start.
Their plans for Xbox One are interesting with all of the TV features and HDMI pass through but the Xbox One is seriously expensive so it still only really appeals to pretty committed console gamers.
With Ballmer leaving in the next year I hope Microsoft bring in a decent tech-oriented CEO although I have a feeling they will go for another business guy who will do similar to what Ballmer did. Not to say Ballmer did a bad job. Sure he had some duds but he wasn't an awful CEO. I am going pretty left field here but I would love to see J Allard come back but I don't know if he is really MS CEO material. He certainly has a good image though and is respected by most of the tech community and I could see him being a Steve Jobs type figure head for MS if they played it right.
Then again I am just some random guy on the internet who hacks code for fun so I am probably totally wrong about it all but you have to agree seeing Allard back would be pretty interesting :)
Don't forget Sharepoint services for large companies too.
Skydrive and Hotmail are some of the services much larger than people realize. Hotmail gives you very large inboxes, like Gmail, and Skydrive backs cloud storage and backup for most Windows devices.
I often wonder what the bandwidth for Windows Update (and MS Download Center for OS patches) is. I would love to see some details on it if it has ever been discussed by MS engineers?
Comments
My question is if google spent 21 billion, why did microsoft spend > 15 billion on its datacenters. How much datacenter resources is each microsoft customer using? It can't be from just office 365, Azure, and Bing. So is the majority from just software updates/downloads?
Don't forget about Xbox Live and Skype data centers. I'm guessing that those might be contributing a nontrivial percentage.
Ahh forgot about Xbox Live. I know they recently announced having 300,000 servers: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/microsoft-updates-xbox-li...
Mind you, 300,000 * 3k per server is still only 900 million.
Yeah... but a datacenter is more than just servers right? You need a building, infrastructure (cooling, electric bill, efficient designing and engineering etc), development. These costs get big. fast.
I wonder if they included their own software license cost... One division billing another division.
Microsoft has been incentivizing its internal divisions to shift from legacy data center space to Azure. So some of that spending is for new servers and data center space to in-source services hosted by third-party providers. Or, in some cases, older Microsoft data centers. More here: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/01/at-mi...
I would guess they are trying to build up their cloud business. They have lots of cash, and they want a successful business. It's easy to justify a large buildout in that case, with the belief that the revenue will come. This is a common trap for innovators: you have to spend a lot just to stay in the game, while also preparing for the future. MSFT missed a lot of opportunities over the past few years due to their focus on Windows and Office (as Ballmer admitted recently) and now they have to play catchup.
Yeah Microsoft went all in on the "living room computer" with the Xbox and Xbox 360 which made sense at the time of the original Xbox however the vision they had wasn't what came to fruition. What did we get instead? Well we are still in the middle of the transition but it is most certainly away from super powerful set to boxes and more towards things like the Apple TV and Chromecast with powerful tablet computers doing most of the work and just pushing the output over wireless to the little receiver.
Now obviously MS saw this which is why we have things like Surface now but I am really surprised that they decided to kill off the Media Center Extender platform they had. They could have easily taken that and built a device similar to the Chomecast/Apple TV for dirt cheap and had a decent head start.
Their plans for Xbox One are interesting with all of the TV features and HDMI pass through but the Xbox One is seriously expensive so it still only really appeals to pretty committed console gamers.
With Ballmer leaving in the next year I hope Microsoft bring in a decent tech-oriented CEO although I have a feeling they will go for another business guy who will do similar to what Ballmer did. Not to say Ballmer did a bad job. Sure he had some duds but he wasn't an awful CEO. I am going pretty left field here but I would love to see J Allard come back but I don't know if he is really MS CEO material. He certainly has a good image though and is respected by most of the tech community and I could see him being a Steve Jobs type figure head for MS if they played it right.
Then again I am just some random guy on the internet who hacks code for fun so I am probably totally wrong about it all but you have to agree seeing Allard back would be pretty interesting :)
Technet, Windows Update, Xbox Live, Hotmail, Bing, Skydrive and so on.
Don't forget Sharepoint services for large companies too.
Skydrive and Hotmail are some of the services much larger than people realize. Hotmail gives you very large inboxes, like Gmail, and Skydrive backs cloud storage and backup for most Windows devices.
I often wonder what the bandwidth for Windows Update (and MS Download Center for OS patches) is. I would love to see some details on it if it has ever been discussed by MS engineers?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc627316.aspx gives 500 Gbps for Windows Update in 2008. (2008 announcement: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mscom/archive/2008/04/11/announci...) I can't find recent update.
Thanks!
There's also Dynamics CRM online (Salesforce competitor), Sql DB as a service and some windows phone services