

Dan'l Lewin, Microsoft Silicon ValleyMicrosoft

Here at LeWeb, we just met up with Dan'l Lewin, who runs all of Microsoft's operations in Silicon Valley, and is in charge of relations with startups, VCs and "strategic industry partners".

A big part of Microsoft's relationship with startups is through the BizSpark program, which gives startups free Microsoft software for three years, and after that a perpetual license (they only have to pay for maintenance). 

In turn, a big part of the Microsoft stack that these startups turn to is Azure, Microsoft's suite of cloud services, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. 

After Lewin rattled off the many cool things Microsoft does for startups, we asked him point blank: why would a startup use Azure instead of Amazon? Is it just because it's free? 

He said something that rang true to us because it wasn't overly bombastic, which is that increasingly Azure "hits a sweet spot" for many companies that have specific needs.

Microsoft is building everything it does in its Servers business, meaning the many layers of the stack from the OS to databases to everything else, in the cloud through Azure. On Azure, Lewin says, you can run everything from passé (but still widely used in many big companies) languages like COBOL and Fortran to Hadoop, the fashionable open source framework that runs Facebook

He pointed to a startup like Lokad, based in France, which runs very sophisticated algorithms in the cloud to help companies analyze their supply chain operations, which runs on Azure because it solves their specific needs. Another startup, LiquidSpace, based in the Valley and backed by top-tier VC Greylock Partners, uses Azure because it's less work to do maintenance on it than on Amazon, Lewin says. 

"We've got a long way to go to compete effectively with Amazon because they're doing a great job," Lewin admits, but "we'll be making lots more noises in the next 6 to 12 months."

This is something we can believe: while Microsoft has been an also-ran on the cloud, it is never to be underestimated and is devoting tons of resources to it. Microsoft shouldn't be written off there yet.


  • Even though for most startups Amazon is still the preferred cloud solution, Azure increasingly hits "sweet spots" for startups with specific needs. So it's a contender.
  • Microsoft is investing a lot in Azure and expects to be a lot more competitive in 6-12 months. 

DON'T MISS: Our Q&A With Lewin On Everything Going On In Silicon Valley →

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