14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft announced a couple of months ago that it wanted Skype to become a cloud service, but no other details were provided afterwards, even though the VoIP platform has become an essential product in its lineup.
And still, Skype has already been moved to the cloud, so it’s now running on Windows Azure, a company employee said in an interview with The Register.
“Every Office 365 customer has a Windows Azure Active Directory login,” Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie said.
“All authentication, all security, all access control for Office 365 goes through Windows Azure. Xbox Live and Xbox One heavily use Windows Azure on the back end. Skype, a lot of which is built here in our London developer centre, is also now running on Azure. SkyDrive, they are in the process of decommissioning their old servers and moving everything onto Azure. All new storage on SkyDrive now goes to Azure.”
While this is an important step towards enhanced reliability, it could also be another attempt to block any government programs from wiretapping users’ conversations, as Microsoft has pledged to do more in this regard.
The company will move to 2048-bit encryption by the end of 2014 and, just like some other tech giants on the market, including Google and Facebook, it’s calling for greater transparency from the US government.
“Microsoft remains committed to respecting human rights, free expression, and individual privacy. We seek to operate all of the services we own in a manner that’s consistent with our Global Human Rights Statement and responsibilities as a member of the Global Network Initiative,” the company said, explaining that in the first six months of the year it received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies impacting 66,539 accounts.
In 2012, the number of requests received from the government totaled 75,378, with no less than 137,424 user accounts involved.