Cloud computing is about providing computing, storage and networking capacities on demand. It is a fresh but very compelling concept for solving some specific tasks, for example:
- Running CPU heavy computations
- Having a scalable storage system for raw data
- Scaling realtime services up to the customer demand as it goes up and down.
I’m mainly working with Microsoft stack, which helps a lot in delivering complex enterprise applications. Yet, cloud computing offering for .NET is somewhat behind the market. Amd the only provider is Microsoft, any way (Windows Azure).
Do you think there will be any diversity in .NET cloud providers any time soon? How many players, do you think will be on the market, and what could be the pricing (considering that .NET could be run on Linux which should makes things a little cheaper )?
Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) service now supports Windows:
http://aws.amazon.com/windows/
On the same page you’ll find pricing. Amazon is always trending towards lower and lower prices for it’s services, so you should find them to be VERY competitive.
Here’s another provider that provides cloud computing for the Microsoft Stack:
Mosso