Today is the first day at PDC ’09 and lots of talk about Windows Azure. Being a Cloud focused blog, I thought Cloud Ave should do some coverage here. Unfortunately, none of us are attending the event but I am catching up with their video. If you want to watch the video, feel free to jump in using this link. For those who want to grab a quick bite on what is going on, I will list some of the interesting titbits regarding cloud computing in this post.
- Windows Azure will go to production level on 1st Jan 2010. The users will have one month till February before the billing system kicks in
- Ray Ozzie acknowledged that they were not very clear about their priorities during last year’s PDC. He says they are all set to go in full swing now.
- He announced the support for MySQL, Java, Eclipse, PHP, Zend, etc.. (even though it is not a news for most of us in the field)
- Matt Mullenweg showed how one can run WordPress on Azure. With the support for PHP and MySQL on Azure, this is a no brainer but it is nice to know that Matt has crossed over to the dark side
- They showed off many apps on Azure including the apps that make use of data from Data.gov
- An interesting announcement, from my point of view, is the release of App Fabric, an application server framework for building scale out high tier services
- When asked about compliance, they once again talked about how businesses should take these things into their own hands (See my post critical on this hands off approach)
- When queried about the 10GB limit on the Azure SQL Business Edition, they announced that it is not the upper limit. Rather, it is the minimum limit with which one can start using Azure SQL. Hopefully, we will see more options in the future.
- When asked to talk about the differentiator from other cloud services, they highlighted the high level of automation available with Azure compared to other services
For those who are curious about Azure and want to know how much it could cost for their organization, they have a TCO calculator. For those developers who want an head start with Windows Azure, they have online training courses too.
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