So what is Windows Azure?

Everybody asked me this question last week at TechEd Los Angeles, even at customs before my flight, and at registration, hotel, … (I wore an Azure Tshirt).

Windows Azure is the central piece of the cloud computing offering from Microsoft. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage their web applications in the cloud (Microsoft data centers worldwide). It is part of the Azure Services Platform and acts as a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment.

On top of this base infrastructure, you’ll find several services helping you to build apps for Azure:
Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, SharePoint Services, Dynamics CRM Services.

Read more on the Azure Services Platform:
http://www.microsoft.com/azure/whatisazure.mspx

The platform is currently (may 2009) on Tech Preview and should be released at the end of the year.

Pricing will be announced this summer.

Try it!
Go to www.azure.com and log in with your Live ID to create your first solution.

Download the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (which includes the Azure SDK) now and try it for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b44c10e8-425c-417f-af10-3d2839a5a362&displaylang=en

Watch some Azure videos:
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/archive/2009/05/07/windows-azure-videos.aspx