On February 1st, Microsoft announced the availability of the Azure Cloud Computing platform in 21 countries and declared the testing phase over, therefore no longer free.
| •Austria
• Belgium •Canada • Denmark • Finland |
• France
• Germany • Ireland •India |
• Italy
• Japan • Netherlands • New Zealand |
• Norway
• Portugal •Singapore • Spain |
• Sweden
• Switzerland •UK • United States |
Azure was released in beta to developers in late 2008, now Windows Azure and SQL Azure represent a real choice to the much more experienced platform of Amazon Web Services.
Windows Azure currently provides the following services:
- Windows Azure : Useful for developers who can use Visual Studio to publish their application to the Cloud (see first diagram)
- Windows Azure AppFabric : Still for developers but oriented towards the development of applications both on-premise and in the Cloud (see second diagram )
- SQL Azure: For more information read our old post
- SQL Data Sync: This is an interesting novelty, it allows a bi-directional symmetry between the data published in SQL Azure, therefore in the Cloud and other data hubs such as mobile users, business partners, remote offices and enterprise data source
The services can be summarized in the following official charts:
For those interested in the costs at the following link there is an explanatory table
Windows Azure Platform Offer Comparison Table
2010 will also feature the release of additional services, such as virtual machines, and Project Sydney, a technology based on IPv6 and IPSec that will allow companies to securely connect their internal services and the Cloud. Here are some images from a TechNet blog:
Surely the strength and completeness of Microsoft are scary to the other big names, considering that Microsoft can heavily cover the three layers of the cloud:
IaaS : Microsoft and Linux Virtual Servers, Bandwidth, Storage
PaaS: IIS Web Servers that manage almost the entire development world (.Net, Php, Python etc)
SaaS: There are infinite proprietary platforms that Microsoft could put online according to this paradigm, think of SharePoint, Dynamics, Office, Exchange, etc
This could make us understand VMware’s current intentions in acquiring the players of the different layers, recent examples SpringSource and Zimbra, considering that Paul Moritz before being CEO of VMware was arm in arm with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, that is, he knows well the still unexpressed potential of the Redmond giant