Thursday, January 22, 2009

Microsoft blows into town with Azure cloud computing show

By Rodney Brown

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Microsoft Corp. has been taking its cloud computing road show around the country, and today it reaches Boston, where local software developers will learn about the Redmond, Wash.-based giant’s latest over-arching product, the Azure cloud operating system.

The Sheraton Boston is the site of a day-long Developer’s Conference put on by the Microsoft Developer’s Network so that local coders can learn how to write for MIcrosoft’s entry into the increasingly popular cloud computing space. Cloud computing refers to the use of remote servers both to run applications and store data, accessed through various means such as the Internet or mobile devices.

According to Bob Familiar, architect/evangelist for Microsoft in its Waltham offices, Azure is a new operating system that runs in the cloud and can be scaled to the Internet.

“We want to take Internet computing and turn that into a utility so that you can build an application that you can deploy to the desktop, to the enterprise or to the cloud,” Familiar said.

Developers will be able to write applications in any tool they are already familiar with, according to Familiar, such as VisualStudio or .Net, and Azure will simply be one extra choice for how they deploy the application. Users will then be able to access the application in the cloud through whatever device the developer ports it for — rich client on a desktop, a web browser or a mobile device — or any combination the developer’s client needs.

Microsoft hopes that these stops on its road show will help them fine-tune how it rolls out Azure and its cloud computing efforts. Familiar said.

“We’ve only rolled out a certain number of capabilities for this cloud OS, and we have put out the roadmap of things we plan to put out,” he said. “We want (developers) to tell us if these items on the roadmap are the right priorities.”