Oct 27, 2008 : Microsoft Launches Azure Cloud OS

📅 October 27, 2008 - Microsoft (microsoft.com) announced on Monday it has launched Windows Azure, a cloud services operating system that acts as the development, Web hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform.

Earlier this month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer first revealed the company would be launching Azure, which was then unofficially named "Windows Cloud".

Microsoft's Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand computing and storage capabilities to host, scale, and manage Web applications online through Microsoft data centers.

Announced Monday at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, called the Azure platform a "game-changing set of technologies that will bring new opportunities to Web developers and business developers alike."

Ozzie added that his team began working on Azure just prior to Amazon's August 2006 launch of its own cloud hosting platform, Elastic Compute Cloud.

The cloud hosting market has grown significantly within the past couple years, as users are continually looking for ways to reduce complexities and administrative costs.

Several new cloud platforms from been launched by both large enterprises and small startups. In addition to Amazon EC2, which currently has a dominant share of the market, Azure will also compete against cloud offerings from IBM and Mosso's The Hosting Cloud.

Though the software giant did not mention pricing details for the Windows Azure services, it did released a 31-page white paper that outlines the finer details of the new cloud platform.

Other questions and concerns can be addressed in the operating system's FAQ section here.

According to Microsoft, the new Windows Azure platform will enable users to add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications; build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources; perform services off premises; create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively; reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources; and lower the effort and costs of IT management.

The new operating system will also include a range of new Microsoft technologies, including SQL Services, .Net Services, and Live Services, as well as being fully integrated with the Visual Studio development toolset.

Azure is designed to support several software standards, including SOAP, REST, and XML, that are compatible with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies, as well as with third-party development languages.

The company says it will soon launch a community technology preview of Windows Azure, where members of Microsoft's professional developers' organization will be able to build applications and host them on Microsoft's servers for free. The company will then began charging for the service as soon as it finalizes the features and fully readies the service for business applications.

Microsoft is currently offering a free download of the Windows Azure Software Development Kit.

Reads: 2018 | Category: General | Source: TheWHIR : Web Host Industry Reviews
URL source: http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/102708_Microsoft_Launches_Azure_Cloud_OS.cfm
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