Over the next few days Gene (our VP and Development) and I are in LA for the Microsoft PDC conference. We live mostly in open source land and this conference wouldn’t normally make it on our radar screen, but this year seems different.

The announcement that caught my attention is a new federated identity service called Geneva that may finally allow SaaS providers to integrate with on-premise Active Directory services. We have little use for full user authentication in our products, but every customer I meet tells me that they would love to have information about the identity of the user – roles, privileges, geolocation, food allergies, favorite colors – associated with the log data that we collect.

Geneva sounds like an interesting technology, well worth the trip alone, but Microsoft’s entry into the cloud computing space is the really big story at PDC. At Alert Logic we have been building the types of technologies that serve as the foundation of Microsoft’s new cloud operating system for more than a few years, but it’s fascinating to watch Microsoft throw all of their weight behind something we thought was on the fringes of the computing world.

More thoughts on Azure later, but this seems far more of an ambitious cloud play than any major player on the market, including Amazon, has today. Gene pointed out something perhaps even more important – Azure marks the very first time Microsoft has beaten Google to the market. I am not going to say we are about to witness a fundamental change in the IT landscape just yet, but it’s tempting.

Few images from the first day:

First thing you notice at Microsoft PDC is lack of Apple laptops which dominate the performance computing and security conferences I usually attend. I am a Windows user, but a giant room full of geeks who don’t run OS X or Linux looks about as surreal as Sarah Palin at a G8 summit (or Joe Biden at the Bohemian Grove, just to keep things fair and balanced).  

I did find one guy with a Mac, but he was forced to sit alone by the trash can. 

Actually the Apple void is not exactly the first thing you notice. First you see a not quite subtle banner pushing the “think way outside the box” cloud message.

No one is ever going to watch Ray Ozzie on YouTube, but this was one of the more interesting keynotes I have seen. I can’t shake the feeling that the only reason Microsoft acquired Groove Networks was to get Ozzie. What’s even more surreal is that he was worth the money. Microsoft seems like a radically different company under his direction.

Keynote set from PDC. Slightly reminiscent of Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial.

This may look like a hurricane escape route, but it’s really a stream of Windows developers rushing the ATM machines located in the lobby of the keynote hall to buy their piece of the Microsoft hosted cloudsphere. I get nervous around stampedes and took to higher ground. 

More from PDC tomorrow.