I thought I better mention this one as I have heard from a number of acquaintances (no, not Microsoft people!) that Windows 2012 is going to become a dominant “Cloud OS”.

The two principal factors being cited are the scalability and the “always on” reliability.

Well that is all fine and dandy so long as it is running on a platform intended for purpose. I am afraid there is a general culture amongst some significant providers of such solutions to run all this stuff on very cheap-and-cheerful commodity hardware. Big mistake! This year we have seen an unprecedented number of big name system failures which have caused significant dents in the overall quality of service and caused angst to many customers. So ditch the cheap platforms and use a fit-for-purpose ultra-reliable server instead.

PS – please do read the bootnote in this article then you will see where I am coming from.