Microsof Cloud Os, Azure, reaches general availability stage.

Hi.
Finally, I've finished my term exams and ready to start blogging again. And it's about Azure, its 1st show up and and its general availability stage now.
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First Show Up of Azure

For the 1st time, in October 28th, Microsoft launched Windows Azure for Cloud at Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
As what they discussed there, Azure is a platform for developers, Windows Azure plays host to the .Net Framework, SQL Server, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, and an offering called Live Services, which, according to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, will extend Azure services "outward" to connect with locally running Microsoft software. Using this rich environment, developers will be able to build and deploy Web applications and services running on Microsoft's worldwide infrastructure of datacenters.
Windows Azure "is a scalable hosting environment for you to deploy your apps in our cloud," said Microsoft corporate vice president Amitabh Srivastava, one of the key players behind the platform.

"Windows Azure is a new Windows offering at the Web tier of computing," Ozzie said. "This represents a significant extension" of the Windows computing platform, he said.

Windows Azure serves as the underlying foundation of the Azure Services Platform, which helps developers build applications spanning from the cloud to the datacenter and PCs, the Web, and phones, Microsoft said.

Cloud-based developer capabilities are combined with storage, computational, and network infrastructure services. A limited Community Technology Preview of the Azure Services Platform is being made available at PDC. A road map for Azure is set to be revealed in 2009.

Click on the picture for larger view

Key components of Azure Services Platform include the following:

-- Windows Azure, for service hosting and management and low-level scalable storage, computation, and networking.
-- Microsoft SQL Services, for database services and reporting.
-- Microsoft .Net Services, which are service-based implementations of .Net Framework concepts such as workflow. .Net Services previously was called BizTalk Services. "The services themselves, we found, were actually more identifiable to the .Net community than BizTalk," said Steve Martin, Microsoft senior product management director in the company’s Connected Systems Division.
-- Live Services, for sharing, storing, and synchronizing documents, photos, and files across PCs, phones, PC applications, and Web sites.
-- Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration, and solution development in the cloud.

Azure was compared to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) services platform by a PDC attendee interviewed after the morning presentations.

"I think it's certainly Microsoft's answer to Amazon's EC2 platform," said Joshua Lane, software developer at InRule Technology. "Amazon just announced that they’re going to be able to host Windows in the cloud and that sort of thing so this is Microsoft's answer to that."

Another attendee, Suhas Mallya, data architect at Aztecsoft, said Azure "looks impressive."

"First of all, it builds on something that people are already familiar with," the Windows platform, said Mallya.

He did add it was a little too early to determine whether Microsoft can succeed with Azure. "I found the demos a little slow," Mallya said.

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General Availability Stage of Azure

Windows Azure, Microsoft's public cloud computing platform, became generally available in 21 countries on Monday, Microsoft bloggers said. SQL Azure, offering cloud-based relational database capabilities, also became available.
"Since January 2010, thousands of customers have moved from CTP to production and partners like Origin Digital, GXS, tradefacilitate and 3M are actively building and deploying solutions to the Windows Azure platform. Starting today, they, along with all of our partners, will be able to begin selling their solutions to their customers, ultimately enabling them to reach new markets and increase their revenue," the Azure blog said.
Customers who have not yet upgraded Windows Azure CTP accounts to paid commercial subscriptions will have service disabled and their data on Windows Azure Storage will be made read-only. SQL Azure CTP customers who have not yet upgraded can keep using existing databases but cannot create new ones. On March 1, SQL Azure CTP accounts that have not been upgraded will be deleted. Windows Azure Storage CTP accounts that have not been upgraded will be deleted on April 1.
Windows Azure features compute, storage, hosting, and management capabilities.The platform has been available in a Community Technology Preview phase. As of 12 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Feb. 2, Microsoft begins charging for Azure, the Azure Team blog said.