Windows Azure – Helping to save lives
I’ve been watching all the buzz around Windows Azure since the we announced this at PDC on Monday – and trying to talk about what it is – in simple terms and what it will mean to ordinary people - not developers, software houses and hosters – but the software really making a difference. So I was really touched when I saw one of the UK case studies that was used in the PDC keynote this week.
When I worked at sea, the words everyone used to really dread were the words “Man Overboard”. Even if you actually saw the person go over the side – the chances of recovery in the North Atlantic were really slim. I once spent 4 harrowing hours searching for a man overboard in the Bay of Biscay and the feeling of despair when we decided to call off the search was immense. UK seafarers feel a real affinity and try to support the charity that operates around the coast of the UK - the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, all staffed by volunteers that go to the aid of people and ships in distress around our coastline.
So what is Azure? Well it’s our Cloud based operating system , the Azure Services platform extends that operating system with a set of services that developers can utilise to both build new applications and extend existing applications to run in the cloud.
Over the past few weeks in the UK We’ve been working with a number of customers and partners with the Azure Services Platform, one such partner is Active Web Solutions. AWS are the creators of the (RNLIs) MOB Guardian system.
MOB Guardian is an award winning sea safety system that provides fishermen and other seafarers with a simple to use GPS based alarm system that enables the RNLI to know if vessels or their crew members get into difficulty whilst at sea.
We have worked with AWS and RNLI to explore the impact that the Azure Services Platform could have on a system such as MOB Guardian, you can find a video explaining the motivations and experiences here and above – there’s also a more detailed technical discussion of some of the issues faced during this exercise on Channel 9.
So something that appears to be just a concept – a cloud operating system – actually helping to save real lives, turns our vision and strategy into a worthwhile example of the value of this concept.
And that’s really worth taking a look at…
