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So… we’re back to Microsoft’s venture into the world of Cloud Computing. In the space of a couple of month’s the project has gone from being called Windows Strata to Windows Cloud to Windows Azure (Azure Services Platform).

Inevitably the official announcement at the PDC2008 (Professional Developers Conference) created an influx of blog activity on TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, WebMonkey and Wired… amongst numerous others.

I’ve written about cloud computing a few times but here’s a summary of how it works in principle…
The ‘Cloud’ is an abstract representation of the infrastructure, hardware and networks that ‘are’ the internet/web. Cloud computing allows companies, developers, and startups to utilise and harness existing data storage and processors by tapping into them via the web. The likes of Amazon Web Services (along with S3 and EC2) and Google’s App Services have been providing cloud computing services for several months now (in Amazon’s case for a couple of years now). Even SalesForce offers PAAP (Platform As A Service) through it’s Force.com platform. Using Amazon, Google and SalesForce data centers, hardware and processing power makes it much easier for start ups and developers to build, develop and host applications on the web. Most importantly they are dirt cheap and rely on a very basic pay-as-you-go model (although in Google’s case it’s free for first 500MB). Amazon recently announced some significant changes to their AWS platform including compatibility for MS Windows and SQL licenses, which will further encourage the shift from traditional hosting into the cloud.

Microsoft’s entry into this paradigm highlights both the competitive concern they have and the potential they see in this model. On the storage side Azure will be providing the Azure Storage services that include 3 components; Blob: for named files and file metadata, Table: Structured storage (not relational though), Queue: Storage and delivery of messages.

Image courtesy of azurejournal.com

You can already download some Service Management Tools for Azure… here… and this blog post highlights some of the terminology that’s going to be key to understand for this platform.

It’s clear that this is not a miniscule project for Microsoft and it’ll be good to monitor and observe the actual usage of these services. I have high hopes for Cloud computing and this entry is very significant as it moves Microsoft from a Software company to a Software + Services company. Watch this space…

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azure, cloud computing, Microsoft, windows azure