Cloud Computing "Microsoft Azure"

Cloud computing is the set of technologies and infrastructure capabilities being offered in a utility based consumption model. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s Cloud Computing offering to help its customers realize the benefits of cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams.

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing offering for developers to build and deploy applications on a pay-per-use basis.

Azure is a comprehensively managed hosted platform for running application and services.

“ The Windows Azure Platform is an internet scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications with cloud based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web application, application running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.”

Windows Azure provides a scalable infrastructure for customer to run their web services and appications.

Azure provides several Runtimes services like

·         Sandbox VM environment for processing and hosting web applications

·         Storage system for files and structured content

·         Connectivity services for integration with on premise applications

·         SQL server relational capabilities

·         Content delivery network

DESIGN TIME SERVICES FOR AZURE

·         .Net SDK for building application for Azure

·         Visual Studio Tools for packaging application to Azure

·         Eclipse Plug-in for building PHP and Ruby application for Azure

·         Simulation environment for testing Azure application for Azure

Operation Services for Azure

·         Web based console for provisioning and managing Azure accounts

·         Web based console for management and monitoring application

Azure Supports:

Programming languages like .NET, PHP, Java, Ruby

Standards and protocols like SOAP, REST and XML

Development tools like  Visual Studio, Eclipse