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Comment by hitr | Hacker News Reader

I always thought Microsoft/Google or the likes would acquire Joyent as it is good product fit. Microsoft chose linkedin instead :) For Samsung this is all about IoT .Samsung wants to own both the devices and backend. A good move IMHO

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MS already has Azure, with an infrastructure built on their windows core... Not to mention having more services... and while Joyent's Docker story is really nice, MS seems to be heading in a very similar direction with the Windows Subsystem for Linux as Joyent took with SmartOS/Solaris, it's a poor tech fit.

I'm not sure where this will take things with Samsung, likely backend services to support their own "store" on their devices separate from Android. If it's internalized, I only hope they release more of their infrastracture tooling, which is very cool to say the least.

There is a world of difference between a new, untested implementation of Linux system call translation to a _very_ different type of Kernel on a desktop class operating system than the version on Illumos. The best thing Microsoft could do with their cloud is burn it to the ground and start again with Joyent's tech.

The work on desktop Windows and Linux integration is mainly for developer experience and making Windows attractive for non .net devs. Doubtful that it'll have an impact on Azure unless it becomes extremely mature quickly or if that was MS's intentions at all.

I'm ignorant on why Joyent is so superior to Azure. Can you give some reasons? As an outsider, Joyent looks like a small company with unproven (large, successful customers are the main criteria) products that cost more than the comparable solution from AWS, GC, Azure.

Joyent's tech is very good, don't me wrong, but I think this is a bit harsh.

- lx-branded zones and window's new layer are both doing system call translation---you're post doesn't contradict this but doesn't make it clear either.

- At some point lx-branded zones where equally untested.

- "Desktop class" is misleading because NT was designed for servers. Now yes Windows as a whole is hamstrung by a business model putting desktops and backwards-comparability first, but by definition the Linux layer can ignore a lot of Win32 precedent.

- Yes Illumos is Unix and NT isn't, but the difficulty in translating linux systems calls lies not with the ones backing posix-interfaces, but the Linux-specific ones. (Joyent devs can give you some great horror stories here.) It may be a bit harder with NT but it was hard already.

> Joyent as it is good product fit. Microsoft chose linkedin instead

It's a good product fit, but the fit is so good that Microsoft basically built a more-complete competitor in the form of Azure. They built Joyent instead of buying it.

LinkedIn was different because Microsoft could never build LinkedIn itself.

Microsoft has good PaaS story when it comes to .NET stack. Especially product Azure App Service[1].All though it can technically host nodejs,java etc ,it still is based on IIS and windows stack. Joyent has more native offering for nodejs which could have been Paas for nodejs(Azure App Service for nodejs )

[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/web/

As Microsoft becomes the new IBM, except for XBox, their future revenue is firmly from the Global 10000 Enterprise space. LinkedIn gives them the entire database (up to date! SF.com doesn't give you that!) of decision makers in their target market and their web of professional relationships.

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