Earlier today Ray Ozzie, announced Microsoft's initiative on cloud computing: Windows Azure. In a nutshell, Azure is an OS for the cloud. Yes very buzz wordy, but it is technically true. Azure will take care of all the management task associated with publishing, managing, upgrading applications and resource consumption in the cloud.
So far 5 different families of services have been announced:
- Live Services
- .Net Services (which is an evolution of the previously announced BizTalk .NET)
- SQL Services
- SharePoint Servces
- Dynamic CRM Services
During the CTP period, which starts today, the first three will be available in one form or another. In the upcoming months more features will be activated. Microsoft is planning a rapid evolution of the services, with several incremental releases instead of one major upgrade to Beta or RTM.
For more information go to Azure.com and MSDN