Considering Microsoft’s history of exclusivity to its own ecosystem, it’s still a little weird to see the company releasing products for Android and iOS, but this most recent move is practically inconceivably. The company actually has a new operating system that isn’t Windows 10, and it’s Linux-based. That’s right, Linux-based. To be fair, Microsoft has had some pretty significant contributions to the Linux community over the years, and this new Linux-based operating system is designed for data centers, not regular users, but it’s still odd.
Sitting down? Nothing in your mouth? Microsoft has developed its own Linux distribution. And Azure runs it to do networking. Redmond’s revealed that it’s built something called Azure Cloud Switch (ACS), describing it as “a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux” and “our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches.” Kamala Subramanian, Redmond’s principal architect for Azure Networking, writes that: “At Microsoft, we believe there are many excellent switch hardware platforms available on the market, with healthy competition between many vendors driving innovation, speed increases, and cost reductions.” “However, what the cloud and enterprise networks find challenging is integrating the radically different software running on each different type of switch into a cloud-wide network management platform. Ideally, we would like all the benefits of the features we have implemented and the bugs we have fixed to stay with us, even as we ride the tide of newer switch hardware innovation.”
