Microsoft first announced Windows Azure to the developer audience at the Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles in November, 2008. Windows Azure is a set of services that is available for users, IT administrators, and developers. What's interesting about Azure is that it is cloud based. But, unlike competing solutions from other vendors, Microsoft has taken care to design Azure to be more than just a hosted application platform "somewhere out there."
But, if you are happy developing applications for the Windows platform today, why should you spend your time learning about a high-flying technique such as cloud computing? And, what does all this have to do with clouds in the sky?
As you will learn later on, cloud computing can have many benefits. However, it should be mentioned right away that cloud computing or Windows Azure won't be replacing traditional Windows development anytime soon. That is, cloud computing should be thought of as a complementary technology for developing and running your applications.
One of the biggest benefits of cloud-based computing is that the end user doesn't necessarily need to maintain a server farm to run their applications. It is relatively easy to build a small application and serve it to five or ten users, but things get considerably more difficult if you multiply the number of users by one hundred or one thousand. In a cloud, you have more or less endless computing power (at least while your wallet is thick enough). In Azure, supporting more users merely requires changing a configuration setting.
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