“Open, Flexible and Solid” Cloud Offering from Microsoft – Windows Azure

Introduction

Cloud Computing has been a ‘HOT’ topic of the IT industry for quite a few years now. And Microsoft is no new player in this category. Microsoft’s cloud history dates back to October 2008 when it announced the first CTP of Windows Azure.

Initially Windows Azure was primarily ‘Platform-as-a-Service‘ meant mainly for building & running apps and storing data in the cloud. It would run IIS like web servers with .NET. It worked great as long as developers were coding on .NET as there were fewer restriction on deployment. But when it came to using native code like Java, PHP, deployment was a concern. They had to be deployed without an installation process. And deployment was just one of the concerns / restrictions. And so developers had to stick to .NET for using cloud or in other words Windows Azure was largely used by .NET developers.

But Microsoft wanted to change this perception and since then has been working to improve Windows Azure. Today Windows Azure provides all types of cloud services like IaaS, PaaS, web hosting and is Open, Flexible and Solid as Microsoft calls it. I would also add the word ‘SIMPLE‘ to it. It has embraced open source development platforms like Node.Js, Java, Python, PHP; Big Data platforms like Hadoop and open source Operating System virtual machines like SUSE, Ubuntu & CentOS. It offers solid scalability of your apps to any size based on needs automatically. And lastly it provides a flexible platform for any type of app requirement. It lets you build, deploy and manage reliable, scalable and low cost solutions.

To learn more about Windows Azure, its capabilities and how it can unlock unlimited possibilities for your IT infrastructure consider attending the 2 Day Level-2 Windows Azure Course at CloudThat.

Microsoft also offers a 90 day free trial to try out their offerings.