In other words, Microsoft is not willing to sacrifice the Azure platform by digging their heads in the sand and pretending they are a server monopoly. Not allowing Linux is a major disadvantage even to Windows shops (Stack Overflow runs Redis on a Linux box, for instance).
I think this is fantastic news. AWS needs serious competition from industry titans. It doesn't matter if a startup charges half the price if it might not be around in a year or two. Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft.
Somewhat off-topic, but I hate this quote. Replace Microsoft /w IBM/Oracle/etc and it's still a straw man argument.
I recently worked for someone who came on to replace the CTO of Java-shop, brought in a number of Microsoft developers, and was unceremoniously fired after less than 2 years.
There's a very real truth to it, even if it is an exaggeration; large companies are not worried whether MS will be in business in 10 years.
Your example has the CTO coming in and changing one industry standard technology over another due to personal preference, and that's the reason he got fired. The story could just as easily been the other way around.
If a startup like Heroku comes along that's a more direct customer to AWS, despite being the darling of a site like this (myself included), nobody in enterprise land is going to touch it with a 10 foot pole. MS could compete toe to toe with Amazon for this business, and that's my point.
IMHO it shows me they're in it to win it and willing to bend to market forces and support what their customers want. To me that is the biggest message here.
I would say it is not about "bending" so much as just solving customers' (not consumers' ) problems. It is, in my opinion, a mistake to attribute Microsoft's motivations as being ideologically driven in the way that those of the FOSS movement may often be.
At their core, Microsoft tends to be very practical when it comes to B2B relationships.
I think this is fantastic news. AWS needs serious competition from industry titans. It doesn't matter if a startup charges half the price if it might not be around in a year or two. Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft.