Download Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1

Microsoft’s Cloud strategy spans well beyond Windows Azure, and the company made this abundantly clear during the opening keynote address at the Professional Developers Conference 2009 in Los Angeles. In addition to providing the Cloud platform, Microsoft is also offering developers the tools necessary to streamline the migration of applications to private, hosted and public Clouds. But in addition to the migration process, the software giant is allowing companies to expand their apps with services, an evolution which is designed to take full advantage of what Cloud computing has to offer. In this regard, after announcing the release of Windows Azure, Microsoft also revealed that Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 was available for download.

Windows Server AppFabric, accompanied by the Windows Azure platform AppFabric, is set up to provide devs with a collection of integrated, high-level application services. The Redmond company built a variety of technologies into AppFabric, leveraging hosting and caching technologies code-named “Dublin” and code-named “Velocity,” in combination with the Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control (formerly .NET Services).

“So as we think about building scale-out, highly available applications, one of the key things is to have in pace an application platform, an app server that can simplify that process. And today what I'm pleased to do is announce a new application server that Microsoft will be making available. It's in beta immediately on Windows Server starting today, and will be in beta next year on Windows Azure, and we call that applications AppFabric. And what AppFabric will do is it will take and extend the environment that you're very familiar with with IIS, and provide you with a platform for building scale-out, highly available, middle-tier services such as WCF-based services and Windows Workflow-based services,” explained Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business.

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 is available for download today from Microsoft, and developers can start to test drive a solution that is designed to simplify the management and deployment of server-side and Cloud-based applications, namely apps that run both on top of Windows Server and in the Cloud, on Windows Azure, via Windows Azure platform AppFabric. Microsoft currently plans to deliver the finalized version of Windows Server AppFabric in 2010. However, the company promised that on its way to wrapping up the solution, it will make available multiple CTPs of Windows Azure platform AppFabric technologies, starting next year.

“Our goal is to help customers spend less time worrying about building infrastructure, and help them focus on building great applications. AppFabric delivers on this goal by providing pre-integrated, higher-level application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage composite applications and services spanning server and cloud,” noted Abhay Parasnis, general manager of Microsoft’s Application Server Group.

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 is available for download here.