Windows Azure Appliance – Your private corner of the Microsoft cloud

The “private cloud” concept (i.e. the idea of running the cloud-designed applications on your premises) can be implemented in a variety of ways. Not surprisingly, each cloud vendor also provides its own notion of “private cloud”. Now Microsoft adds yet another approach to the mix by launching Windows Azure Appliance.
Before looking into the appliance [...]

July 13, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Cloud, Windows IT  One Comment

Windows Azure CDN now priced and available!

Last November, Microsoft rolled out Windows Azure Content Delivery Network, allowing you to cache your blobs near your users. It was in free CTP for a while, but starting in July, there will be official support – and a price tag attached.
In a recent post on the Windows Azure team blog, the team laid out [...]

June 2, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Cloud, Web  No Comments

Get your Azure ideas out (and vote for Mini-Azure)

The Azure team launched a new product feedback site, and I’m lobbying for one idea on it: Give me mini-sites at a mini-price.
www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com
A few days ago the director of Windows Azure Planning, Mike Wickstrand, posted about the launch of a new feedback site with a slightly odd name but with quite a decent purpose: www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com. [...]

November 27, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Cloud, Web  4 Comments

Summary of PDC09 announcements

The two keynote days of PDC09 are behind, and the crowd has mixed reactions. At any rate, the most substantial launches seem to be over now, so it’s a safe time to write up some quick notes. Later on, it’ll be time to delve into each of these in more detail. The following list is [...]

November 19, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: .NET, Cloud, Web, Windows IT  2 Comments

Windows Azure Content Delivery Network announced

Of the recent cloud news, I want to pick one item to highlight: The Windows Azure Content Delivery Network as announced by the Azure team on Thursday.
I recently blogged about the Microsoft Ajax CDN being able to handle the distribution of your JavaScript. Microsoft certainly didn’t setup all that CDN infrastructure with no plan for [...]

November 9, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Cloud  One Comment

The death of Live Services – what to expect?

By now the Windows Live oriented people have probably heard the news: the Live Services infrastructure, including Live Framework, is shutting down on next Tuesday. Live Mesh will stay online, but the developer CTP version will be discontinued – until it is merged with the Windows Live offering.

A short history
Announced in PDC 2008, Live Framework [...]

September 4, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Cloud  5 Comments

Windows Azure vs. Amazon cloud pricing

Day 2 keynote of WPC wasn’t as thrilling as the first one, but we got what we wanted: Windows Azure pricing. Plus a free few months, starting now. How’s that?
The most important things first: The prices are available in Windows Azure team blog. There are also a few words on the Service Level Agreement (in [...]

July 14, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Cloud  10 Comments