What is Windows Azure?
Windows Azure is Microsoft’s operating system for cloud computing. As with other technologies for cloud computing, Windows Azure is intended to simplify IT management and minimize up-front and ongoing expenses. To this end, Azure was designed to facilitate the management of scalable Web applications over the Internet. The hosting and management environment is maintained at Microsoft data centers. Windows Azure can be used to create, distribute and upgrade Web applications without the need to maintain expensive, often underutilized resources onsite. New Web services and applications can be written and debugged with a minimum of overhead and personnel expense. New capabilities can be added “on the fly” to existing packaged applications. The Azure operating system is the central component of the company’s Azure Services Platform, which also includes separate application, security, storage and virtualization service layers and a desktop development environment. A feature called Automated S
