WordPress and Windows Azure
This week I had a unique opportunity to appear at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, to demo four open source technologies — WordPress, Apache, MySQL, PHP — running on Microsoft's new EC2 competitor called Azure.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft is preparing Azure for a Jan. 1, 2010 commercial opening, after earlier coverage raised questions about the platform's purpose and differentiation. The PDC demonstration answers part of that question by putting a widely used open-source web stack on the service rather than limiting its appeal to Microsoft-specific development tools.
First-order effects
- Microsoft can show developers that Azure supports WordPress, Apache, MySQL, and PHP workloads, widening its immediate pitch beyond Windows-centric applications.
- WordPress publishers and PHP developers gain a demonstrated Azure deployment option as they assess cloud infrastructure alongside EC2.
Second-order effects
- EC2 faces a more direct comparison for open-source web workloads, while Azure must prove that the conference demonstration can translate into a practical production deployment path.
- Apache, MySQL, and PHP developers become an important adoption channel for Azure: their tooling and operational compatibility will shape whether the demonstration changes platform choice.
Third-order effects
- If Azure continues to accommodate established open-source stacks, cloud competition shifts toward operational compatibility and deployment experience rather than attachment to a single vendor's software ecosystem.
The trend: Cloud platforms are competing to attract existing application stacks, making ecosystem interoperability a central route to developer adoption.