Lift Windows 8 Metro Apps in the Cloud

 A new free resource from Microsoft makes it easy for developers to leverage the company’s Cloud platform right in their new Windows 8 Metro apps.

The software giant provided the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 in tandem with the Windows Developer Preview at BUILD last week.

The toolkit is available free of charge via CodePlex, and is an open source project governed by the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).

“The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 is designed to make it easier for developers to create a Windows Metro style application that can harness the power of Windows Azure Compute and Storage,” revealed Nick Harris, a Technical Evangelist for Windows Azure.

The toolkit packs a Windows 8 Cloud Application project template designed to be used with Visual Studio.

By leveraging the template, developers will simplify the work needed to build a Windows 8 Metro style application set up to leverage Windows Azure services.

“This template generates a Windows Azure project, an ASP.NET MVC 3 project, and a Windows Metro style JavaScript application project. Immediately out-of-the-box the client and cloud projects integrate to enable push notifications with the Windows Push Notification Service (WNS). In addition, the Windows Azure project demonstrates how to use the WNS recipe and how to leverage Windows Azure Blob and Table storage,” Harris said.

Developers interested in taking advantage of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 can access a range of additional resources on the tool’s CodePlex site, including documentation and the source code.

“The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 contains a rich set of assets including a Dependency Checker, Windows Push Notification Service recipe, Dev 11 project templates, VS 2010 project templates and Sample Applications,” Harris added.

Early adopters can also download the Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) which is available for free.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 is available for download here.

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.