14 DAY TRIAL // One year after it first announced that it was evolving its Software plus Services with the development of a Cloud-based platform, Microsoft officially announced the launch of Windows Azure at this year’s Professional Developer Conference. From all perspectives, Windows Azure is extremely young and yet the Community Technology Preview program that the software giant has been running throughout the development process of the new OS has attracted a consistent number of companies choosing to leverage Microsoft’s databases for their Cloud apps and services, rather than run their solutions on on-premise hardware. Developers that are still raising at least an eyebrow when they hear about Windows Azure can now access an introduction of the Cloud platform put together by Microsoft.
“For most shops, setting up an Internet-facing application requires them to set up a datacenter, hire people to monitor their applications, and acquire the hardware to host the application. Windows Azure was designed to dispense with almost all of that and provide a pay-as-you-go service that provides easy automatically-managed scalability and availability. The Windows Azure hosting platform nearly eliminates this need for hardware and human resource allocations, and instead enables developers to quickly and easily create applications that can run “in the cloud”,” Microsoft explains in the “Introduction to Windows Azure” whitepaper.
And because it is essentially a Microsoft OS, devs need nothing more than their existing skills to start building apps. Windows Azure requires developers to continue relying on the.NET Framework and Visual Studio for building code. In addition, Microsoft’s Cloud platform also streamlines the tasks associated with operating and updating applications, all in all cutting down costs for hosted projects, in comparison to apps that run as on-premise deployments.
But just to be clear, companies won’t be able to build their own Windows Azure Cloud platforms. Microsoft has revealed, ahead of finalizing the platform, that Windows Azure will run exclusively on its own datacenters. Companies looking to build similar offerings will need to leverage Windows Server. However, Windows Azure and Windows Server are in fact closely related, with the Redmond company promising that the two platforms will share similar features and capabilities.
“Windows Azure was designed from the ground-up to provide an open, standards-based and interoperable environment. All communications with Windows Azure support standard internet protocols, including HTTP/HTTPS, REST, SOAP, and XML. Beyond this protocol interoperability, developers can implement their applications using a wide range of technologies including (but not limited to) the Microsoft.NET Framework, Java, and PHP,” the Redmond company added.
Windows Azure will continue to be available in CTP stage until the last day of 2009. Starting with January 1st, 2010, Microsoft will graduate the Cloud platform to the final milestones, but will only start charging customers for usage as of February.