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Microsoft delays Azure updates so you can catch up with the cloud

It turns out some of you are happy running legacy cloud services Redmond wants killed

In the cloud, we're constantly told, we won't have to bother about staying up to date with new versions of stuff. Our service providers will make non-disruptive upgrades for which we'll be non-disruptively grateful.

Except when we're not, as Microsoft has just found out with two cloud service upgrades it has had to delay because users aren't ready.

Earlier this week Redmond revealed a rollover of certificates for Azure Active Directory has been delayed. Microsoft pushed back the rollover date due to “feedback from the community asking for more time to get ready for this event, and our strong desire to avoid any customer downtime”.

Now Microsoft has also delayed the deprecation of older versions of Azure Storage Service. Redmond's rationale for the delay is “to provide more time for customers to upgrade.” Microsoft hoped to kill off the old versions of the service on August 1st, 2016. Now they'll run indefinitely and Microsoft has promised a whole year of warning before it knocks off any other Azure services.

In both cases, this looks a lot like Microsoft's customers just aren't ready to move at the same pace as the Azure team. Which ought not to surprise because decades of IT experience tells us that it is hard to resist tight coupling between applications and infrastructure. And that change for its own sake is often just not possible, no matter what advances are on offer.

So while Microsoft is probably right in retiring versions of Azure Storage it first fired up in 2009, customers are telling it that cloud is not immune to old ways of getting stuff done in IT. ®

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