Hi,
The answers may be out there but I could not find them in the first few minutes of searching.
1) about SaaS, I am thinking of offering a complex Desktop Application as-a-service (it is not out of the question that it will offer an HTML5 frontend, not yet sure how that meshes with Windows 8 apps and Azure). I don't know if I`ve missed something basic, but it looks like a couple of companies I know of at Amazon AWS went for the following model: you the customer setup an Amazon account, you pay Amazon, if you also pay us our License server we allow your images to run our software. I wanted to have "simplified billing", you pay me, I serve you my image via RDP or whatever, I pay Microsoft. Is there some major stumbling block somewhere in there? Is the scripting interface for Azure, or the provisioning API, mature enough for this to work? I cannot make up my mind if there is a case for Microsoft to attempt to block this business model or not. It is imaginable MS would like only Azure Partners to do such things.
2) Is Infiniband kinda "in there" already and free/cheap and easy, or are there considerable barriers or caveats? I am looking into Azure clusters, but only just have started looking.
Thanks!