Posted on 06/29/2020 9:02:21 AM PDT by dayglored
I have a Surface and its one of the best hardware buys I’ve ever made. It combines what I want in a laptop and a notepad. I stuck with MS primarily because the engineering & scientific software I used professionally was almost exclusively on MS. That’s not the case now but I’m basically retired and see no reason to change. Also I’ve had very little trouble with Windows once it got past 98 & NT.
“Re-imagined” strikes me as a nice, PC way of saying “re-purposed”.
“Offshored to Lahore”
Did Microsoft stores have “Geniuses”?
Good question. I've never lived anywhere that was close enough to one of the MS stores to make it worth the long travel, so I can't speak from personal experience. And to be honest, the same is nearly true of the Apple Stores, although I did visit one during a rare "Big City" adventure many years ago.
Surely MS had customer service personnel available in their stores. Whether they were geniuses, either in the Apple sense, or the dictionary sense, is not known to me.
Microsoft certainly got that JEDI contract; whether it represents a total commitment on the part of the DoD or not has yet to be determined. I hope Azure continues to do well.
> Gov Cloud and Secured Gov Cloud are all Azure.
Well, no.... My employer is a defense contractor (among other things), and we're currently using Amazon's AWS GovCloud for gov contract work, and all indications are that we'll continue doing so with full knowledge and encouragement from the contracting agencies. That includes the use of sensitive data (NIST 800-171 / DFARS defined CUI).
“we’re currently using Amazon’s AWS GovCloud for gov contract work,”
It was, but all future effort are being concentrated on Azure.
They went from 135 to 200 in a blink. wow.
I think that is the reason.
Well, that will make for interesting times ahead.
Did Trump's animus toward Bezos really have that much of an effect? :-)
It’s a puzzle. We liked AWS better because it was more mature, but then Azure started making promises of cost controls and improved security. Fortune 50 companies started using Azure over AWS even though they spent plenty on AWS. Before that they bought into the AT&T cloud and IBM’s cloud. So, go figure. All I know is the deputy directors of the Air Force have decided Azure is the future.
I understand that they sold several units per year at each location.
Yeah, with Fry’s dying, we need MicroCenter or someone to fill the brick and mortar void. Need something better than Best Buy with their 59IQ seat sniffers. [eyeroll]
The Fry’s about a mile from me here in AZ and my former favorite stop for some memory or a mouse or whatever, I was in there not long ago, and not only is there no inventory and surly staff, but they’re even breaking down a lot of the shelving. RIP Fry’s.
Why on earth would defense contractors and the military outsource data storage???? The Chinese haven't been able to hack into the normal secured servers?
"The cloud" is just a term for "somebody else's datacenter", and it's filled with honkin' big compute resources as well as data storage.
Some of the contract work we and other defense contractors do requires compute resources beyond those we can readily place on-premises and maintain in a cost-effective way for short-term use (a 1-yr contract for example). So we make use of AWS GovCloud compute capabilities. Some data storage is involved, of course, but it's typically just that which is directly tied to the compute instance.
The security aspects of any datacenter are real, and nothing is absolutely, perfectly secure, but the concerns are adequately addressed by both Amazon's (AWS) and Microsoft's (Azure) datacenters, at least to the government's satisfaction, and thus to ours.
Among many other things, the "GovCloud" datacenters are manned entirely and exclusively by U.S. citizens who are thoroughly vetted. The physical access and network security surrounding those datacenters is outstanding.
That’s reassuring, thanks!
Wait, Microsoft had actual stores?
When I worked at Microsoft in the 90’s they had their first retail store on the main campus (building 14) along with The Microsoft Museum. I wonder if they killed them off too?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.