Microsoft means business with Azure

Windows Azure, the cloud-based operating system that Microsoft announced just last year, is coming.  Impossible to fathom just a couple of years back, Microsoft says Azure will be ready for enterprise consumption come January 1, 2010.  And for these itching to give it a spin, the platform will be free the first month; customers will be billed only beginning February 2010.

At the PDC 2009, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie said, "We're moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the Web, and that are delivered from datacenters we refer to as private clouds and public clouds. Built specifically for this era of cloud computing, Windows Azure and SQL Azure will give developers what they need to build great applications and profitable businesses."

To chain together the various services in the Azure cloud, AppFabric will provide the requisite Access Controls for developers to seamlessly manage both local and Azure-based services.  Another project, codenamed "Sydney" will eventually allow customers to connect their own servers with Windows Azure-based data and services, though this is in development and will only go into beta in 2010. 

The servers for Azure will be hosted in three regional pairs of data centers, geographically separated for resiliency in the event of a catastrophe.  It is not known whether more such data centers will eventually be set up around the world.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at PC World

- check out this article at Network World