Seems that Microsoft is suddenly surprisingly extremely open on how they design and run their datacenters. Not only we have a write up by Michael Manos on their Generation 4 datacenter architecture (and a great concept video), but even more surprisingly James Hamilton is giving us a spreadsheet of their datacenter expense structure!

Can you find information like that for Google or Amazon? The answer is no. Because the way they run their datacenters is a part of their competitive edge – especially for Amazon who compete at the infrastructure level where low pricing is important so efficiency is paramount.

Why would Microsoft do that? Apparently these blog posts are not just something individuals put out but a concerted move by the company. My guess is that there’s not much they loose now by giving away that information: after all they are not really a player in that space today (Live is way behind Google and Windows Azure is at a very early stage), and even a smaller vendor going after Microsoft would like to mimic their approach achieving the same economy of scale and competing against Microsoft is not going to be that easy.

However, the posts intent to help establish Microsoft’s credibility in the space (despite Hotmail success and a lot of other online efforts, the software giant is not really viewed as a web 2.0+ company). The message is: we are very serious about this market and this transition, and we are innovating and leading the industry to some kind of next generation approach leaving others behind.

We’ll see how this all plays out. Meanwhile do check out the links if you have not done so yet:

• Microsoft Generation 4 datacenter
• Concept video
• Datacenter cost structure

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Cloud Computing, Datacenter, efficiency, Google, Microsoft
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