Intro to Windows Azure

Why Azure?

   To answer this question lets look a bit ahead an analyze some question and on the basis of them derive what and why we go for azure.

  What Does it take to run an App on the Web?

So the few major things that decides the working and performance of the app on the web are 

• OS  - How to keep our OS up to date.
• Network - How load balancers,routers and DNS interact with our           system.
• Storage - How to manage the data required and generated by our           application.
• Scale - How to reach to many users who are geographically               distributed.

The two major things which are SO not included in list we just made.

• Everyone has to deal with this no matter what they are building.
• This has NOTHING to do with the application which we are building.

Is there any better way?

yes,there is. There is something which can take care of all the complexities and let us only worry about the Application what we are building.

Here's Azure!

Azure is Microsoft Cloud Computing platform.That means it is a place to run your application on the internet. But there's more, Windows Azure takes an application eccentric view ; which means from the initial design, development and testing  to deploying on the cloud on the touch of a button to monitoring and scaling your application when its running on the internet.And finally, Azure helps you ti understand your application and build a better version and deploy it on the cloud without incurring any downtime.

Azure's Structure

• Fabric : Its the abstract set of compute resources in the data centers.Inside are many systems running windows.
  
• Storage : The storage service is there to give you a reliable experience in a scalable way.
  
• The Developer Experience:The fabric, Storage with all the APIs on the cloud ; integrating them to visual studio and finally is given in the form of an SDK which can be downloaded for free.This means one can build and test apps locally before they can deploy them on the cloud.

The utility Model 

 The utility model is a pay-as-you-use model which means that Azures scales the application that is on the cloud in respect to the usage of resources. It's much like the electric bulb that you turn on and turn off everyday. The electricity you consume, you only pay for that much.This is one of the key features which helps any developer to make use of optimum resources , without wasting them.

This is what Azure in a nutshell and how it can help you building the new coolest thing on the cloud.