In Microsoft's perspective, there is a close correspondence between what the .Net Framework is for the Windows operating systems, and the connection between .NET Services and the Windows Azure Cloud operating system. In this context, the software giant indicated that the .NET Services were nothing more than an integral part of the Azure Services Platform. Designed to deliver no less than three services, namely Access Control Service, Service Bus, and Workflow Service, the .NET Services software development kit is now available for download, after it went live on the Microsoft Download Center at the start of this month.

“Microsoft .NET Services are a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks required by many cloud-based and cloud-aware applications. Much like the .NET Framework provides higher-level class libraries that make developers more productive, Microsoft .NET Services enables a developer to focus on their application logic rather than building and deploying their own cloud-based infrastructure services,” reads the description from Microsoft.

The .NET Services SDK is offered as a Community Technology Preview build supported only on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. In order to get the samples included with the SDK working, testers will need to have Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 installed. At the same time, since Windows Azure and the Azure Platform Services were introduced just a little over a month ago, developers will have to register for the CTP.

“This SDK includes API libraries, samples, and documentation for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP, Atom, and RSS to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients,” Microsoft indicates.

Microsoft .NET Services SDK (December 2008 CTP) is available for download here.

Windows Azure Software Development Kit (October 2008 CTP) can be downloaded from here.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio October 2008 CTP is up for grabs via this link.