Azure Platform Appliance

Microsoft recently announced its next move with Azure "Azure Platform Appliance". The idea is to offer Azure platform as an infrastructure that can be used in private clusters. From my perspective, this is somewhat similar to the idea of private clouds (infrastructure services) that one can deploy using runtimes such as Eucalyptus or Nimbus on local clusters. However, since Azure is not an infrastructure service, it will be more flexible for the users. Unlike pure virtual machines, Azure platform appliance will expose most platform services of Azure as well. In addition, the migration between the private Azure and the public Azure will be seamless as well. Overall, I think the biggset advantage of this approach is the piece of mind that the businesses will have "I am in control of my data and it is local".