What is Azure?
Azure is Microsoft's Cloud computing offering to build and deploy applications on a pay-per-use basis. Azure is a comprehensive set of storage, computing and networking infrastructure services that reside in Microsoft's network of datacenters and provides a scalable infrastructure for consumers to run and host web based applications.
Azure provides the following Runtime Services:
- Virtual Machine environment for processing and hosting web applications.
- Storage system for files and structured contents.
- Connectivity Services for integration with on-premise applications.
- Relational database capabilities using SQL Azure.
- Content delivery network.
Design Time Services:
- NET SDK for building applications for Azure.
- Visual Studio tools for packaging and deploying applications to Azure.
- Eclipse Plug-in for building PHP and Ruby applications for Azure.
- Simulation environment for testing Azure applications and storage locally.
Operations Services:
- Web based console for managing azure accounts.
- Web based console for managing and monitoring applications.
Azure supports the following:
- Programming Language: .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby.
- Standards & Protocols: SOAP,REST & XML.
- Development IDE: Visual Studio & Eclipse.