Windows cloud called Azure
Software giant Microsoft has announced Azure, a new "platform" that will see the company renting out space in its datacentres to users.
The cloud computing platform was announced at the Professional Developers Conference, by Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie and ends weeks of speculation that saw code names such as "Strata", "Zurich" and "Red Dog" thrown around.
Microsoft’s entry into the cloud computing space – in which developers are able to build web applications without needing to invest in their own sever farms – pits the Redmond giant against the likes of Amazon and IBM who already have similar services.
The foundation of the new Microsoft platform is Windows Azure, a cloud-based operating system that serves as the development environment. The Web platform will allow developers to use existing Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio to create their applications on the Web-based platform. Essentially Azure extends the existing Windows platform to the Web in a way that is familiar to users.
In a release today Microsoft said that "unlike many of today’s service-based solutions, the Azure Services Platform provides developers with the flexibility and ability to create applications while taking advantage of their existing skills, tools and technologies such as the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Developers also can choose from a broad range of commercial or open source development tools and technologies, and access the Azure Services Platform using a variety of common Internet standards including HTTP, representational state transfer (REST), WS-* and Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub)."
For businesses the Azure promises to offer scalable, flexible services that can adapt to changing needs, as and when they need them.
There are also benefits for consumers who will be able to use features such as Live Mesh to automatically sync and share data across multiple devices.
Layers
The Azure platform has two distinct layers: The base layer – Windows Azure – provides the OS on which Microsoft Services will reside. The second layer is a collection of additional infrastructure services including Microsoft .NET Services and Microsoft SQL Services, as well as services extensions to Live offerings, SharePoint, and Microsoft Dynamics.
Space on the Azure platform will be rented out to users, although Microsoft has not yet announced the cost of this.
To provide the infrastructure necessary for these long term investments, Microsoft says that it has made aggressive investments in datacentre capacity in the United States and across the world. Earlier this year, Microsoft opened major datacentres in Washington, San Antonio, and is planning to open additional centres in Chicago and Dublin in the near future.
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