Microsoft: Skype now runs on Windows Azure; SkyDrive moving to Azure soon

Microsoft is not only offering the use of its Windows Azure cloud-based server service to other companies but is using it more and more for its own products and services. In a new interview, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft"s vice president for Windows Azure, confirms that Skype operations are now based on Azure servers.

In a chat with The Register, Guthrie states, "Skype, a lot of which is built here in our London developer centre, is also now running on Azure." Office 365 authentication and security goes through Azure servers, and the back end for Xbox Live and the new Xbox One console is "heavily" based on Azure as well, according to Guthrie.

And what about SkyDrive, Microsoft"s consumer cloud data storage service? As it turns out, it is in the middle of a transition to Azure. Guthrie states, "SkyDrive, they are in the process of decommissioning their old servers and moving everything onto Azure. All new storage on SkyDrive now goes to Azure."

Not every online service from Microsoft will switch to Azure. ZDNet reports that Bing, Outlook/Hotmail and parts of Xbox Live will still be run on old-fashioned dedicated servers placed inside data centers.

Guthrie also talked about the reliability of Azure servers, which have experienced a few outages in the past 12 months, including one in February that affected all regions due to an expired HTTPS certificate. Guthrie said, "From a general availability and reliability perspective I feel pretty good that our systems are better than pretty much every customer system I have met."

Source: The Register via ZDNet | Image via Microsoft

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