Hi bsg75 !,

i simply can get no version <1800 word, that gives the barely cursory depth i think adequate to answer you other than trivially, and hence without much value. Three takes, three emphases. But it is a important question to answer, and indivisible from my own judgement as of now, and historically.

So my attempts - 3 each clean typed in a flow, i always write the same way - will end up combined, at my repo, https://github.com/amygdyl in a hour i guess from now, after dinner:

But in short,

yes, Stack is for one box. The "retail" on prem, is 4, IIRC, bit worried April was the last "unofficial" promise from HPE... The datacenter nodes are 800+ servers a piece.

I'm not writing atop Azure, per se. Azure Functions can call COM+ wrappers.... My relevant history starts early 90s, when I remember being gobsmacked Microsoft Transaction Server was bundled with NT 3.5.1. CICS interop. That excited a young me. This was BigTime facility. MTS is still one of the few external dependencies of SQLServer. It was cross platform, hence SQLServer / Linux.

www.clear.bank is the first UK clearing bank, so fully patched into the economy, this is who fintech might use, or smaller thrifts... and runs "on Azure".

Hmm "runs on Azure"?

My money is going on a core runtime... to me Azure is a delivery mechanism... CICS is a great conceptual model for Azure, if Azure delivers on prem properly... the network design and architecture related CICS to Azure far better than all the mainframe hegemony which was okay for text and book buying, but misapplied... I do not care for much the way cloud is done, but i do care for cloud as a idea, because it is tome, not as Larry Ellison mocked, dialing into servers, but more intelligent distribute computing. Functions, which are almost uunresticted, use many more languages, compared with AWS Lambda, are the means to enable a far more distributed (not mega CD to mega DC, but truly disperse) computing future.

So I think Azure ha real legs as a design.

And, well I joked when Azure was more PR than real, that it was Don Box's revenge. Well, Azure really is DCOM and AD retaking the world. Or Zombie CORBAclypse... Not without reason is David Cutler another Azure lead... take the encumbrance of Win32 emu, hardware compatibility off of NT, this past 2 years. That is what Azure is. So it is VMS, basically! Well, a better remake.

Now, if I told you this new bank connected into the UK economy, had chosen OpenVMS, to be safe when starting processing ppayroll and fintech demand... would you be worried?

If I said, this is OpenVMS v 10, Core Super Legere, Could Version?

Well, once you checked out VMS a moment, you probably would not be much troubled by the news, in any event.

Same news.

(Incidentally, another thousand words later, I finished writing my appreciation of the tremendous and significant things I have managed to learn, since engaging on this site, only days ago. Those, too, i'll add to the repo. I was really, truly, surprised. An I am absolutely .. it is good, i think if you read my piece on what affected me, the fact it is good transpires self evidently. I hope if nothing else, you'll take a look at that. You asked the best question, re Azure. Almost half my reply, responds to a second question: why should Azure survive, c.p. regardless whether it can do so economically, i.e. what real reason should it not cease to be one day, and the world be no poorer. This as a cool writing excercise, I got to question myself more than I everr imagined, right down to why my take on the GitLab / Ceph debacle do distorted my own insights, throwing actual insight right away. One part, beginning that, was how hard it is to gain exposure to "enterprise" type engineering, how really hard it is to "go buy a Hitachi array" (ten years in business, IME!) and how only by accident could our then growing company, even get a salesman to quote us SUN servers...But I missed the value, and was - am - quite deeply affected, all result of here.

I really should have added a little, about the interesting bits of Azure, far more on what I hint at, about Azure being NT and AD unleashed, and i go on., about how i think Azure means we'll deliver "windows desktop shrink wrap" to linux clients, sooner than later, despite AWOL dot net core graphics libraries. I think Azure is inherently more open, thn "crude mainframe" deals, and meanwhile Apple will enter eventually, with some means to leverage their amazing silicon. And integrate so iOS native apps you write, automatically integrate with Office 365, so you deliver native first, desktop speed, on iOS, and they can have my whole wallet, checkbook and cards already if they do that, and i believe they will. There is something fishy, about how only mature industry races to the bottom on price, yet cloud services are so new... so numbers or other data are not right. Azure does on prem, some front end disty, maybe full f/e even, but the hybrid strength make them the IBM of a future middle scale business world. Apple i think must ... iOS is .. if they host the "missing" bits, the things we cannot port from OSX, if we even only can run thoes eon their cloud, but Apple make compiling to get that peak perf out of their silicon? Heaven. IBM Bluemix / Softlayer, might be the bare metal kings. Plus very targeted competition for SQLServer, and DB/2, you have to wade thru many brochures, but the tech pushed down relentlessly to even free licenses, is remarkable. DB/2 explains SQLServer feature/pricing moves. (When IBM let a puny little business, writeCOBOL and validate their CICS runtime against megacorpmainframe EDS/EDI, but they will not, you feel the brick wall of "CICS is the same, even totally erroneously "DB/2 is the same" as a mantra, a force field, long before, that pushes product halo down to small systems). AWS - gotta be forever startupville. AWS's breahthrough wil lbe when they realize just how valuable their support backing is, if they can provide the service contracts a real Tier 1 likeIBM (theoretically) can, tostartups, because so many startups build product to deliver what a big customer needs. AWS could transform SV here. Also imagine if AWS, keen to land a big nines SLA contract if a GitLab type customer is acquired, fielded real impartial advice? Right now, Hitachi HDS data protection suites will use S3.... there need be no loss of face, or data sales, for Amazon. The could provision and lend some HDS kit., arrange via their own channels, a most prominent customer to resoundingly endorse their "insurance grade DR solution Gitlab Engineered, and are making available across their customers from today, until a full review establishes root causes and solutions are in place"... Who else are there... But i can see differentiation, I forgot Google, somehow I think Google will not get the love they want. Google are the Emperor's clothes... the public has felt the missing .. they feel something is missing, with Google. I think FB ought to stopadvertising on their pages, and become the world's biuggest advertisign broker. That way they totally invert everyone's concerns. Adverts cost at most 40% what people pay. That is trillions in dollars of waste solved, enough to kickstart the entire global; economy. Hundreds of billions each and every year. FB profits can triple, quadruple, still vast shot to the arm. People will communicate freely, then send their brand / business / even personal ad messages, through massively invigorated, diverse, media, print included. That not only should happen, it could happen. This is the one thing I would ever trade my proverbial right arm to get chance top speak with MZ about anything. That guy could change the global; economy, in one fell swoop. S'long as I get the print trade magazines... Nope, nah, no way, no i would be a terrible tycoon, a worse accidental undeserving one. I don't even want to have my on business, I just want a better advertising business, and better publishing business, and a new actually real market where there never was one... in this millennium no real market for the most vital industry maybe of all...? I am certain this is why MZ look and sounds not quite right, because that industry goes against everything he ever thought was right, bet you my last breath I am correct on that. Unproveable, but if true very unproveable.

for bsg75 - i only hope one can in future host other's Azure apps, with your local cloud kit... that may take a awful lot of things to get done right, by who has Azure on prem... but if they can do this, if my ... if I can have a rack or two, and it is just a hop away, i used to be line of sight to customers long ago... so optical beat our leased line.. if i could be local proxy / edge... then this entire distributed cloud idea begins to really work.