Windows Azure Tools v1.4

Microsoft has just released the new free Windows Azure Tools v1.4 for Visual Studio 2010.  Windows Azure Tools extends Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Edition to enable you to create, build, debug, run, and package scalable services on Windows Azure.  Key features include:

1. Multiple Service Configurations
2. Profiling Support
3. MVC3 Web Role Support
4. Package Validation

Download Windows Azure Tools v1.4
Features Article on DotNet Spark

Orleans Framework for Cloud Computing

“Client + cloud computing” is a disruptive, new computing platform, combining diverse client devices – PCs, smartphones, sensors, and single-function and embedded devices – with the unlimited, on-demand computation and data storage offered by cloud computing services such as Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Windows Azure.

Orleans is a software framework for building client + cloud applications.  Orleans encourages use of simple concurrency patterns that are easy to understand and implement correctly, building on an actor-like model with declarative specification of persistence, replication, and consistency, and using lightweight transactions to support the development of reliable and scalable client + cloud software.

Orleans is a Microsoft Research project that provides direct support for the .NET programming model, specifically C# today and F# in the future.  Developers declare as class attributes the important properties for cloud applications such as persistence, replication and consistency.

Orleans at Microsoft Research
Orleans White Paper

Windows Azure Free Trial

Microsoft is offering a free access to its Windows Azure cloud computing platform through June 30, 2011.  The free trial includes:

• Compute:
  • 750 hours of an Extra Small Compute Instance
  • 25 hours of a Small Compute Instance
• Storage:
  • 500MB
  • 10K Storage transactions
• Data Transfers:
  • 500MB in / 500MB out
• Relational Database:
  • 1G Web Edition SQLAzure database (for 90 days only)
• Access Control transactions:
  • 100k
• Service Bus connections:
  • 2

Windows Azure Free Trial

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit February 2011 Update

The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit provides hands-on labs (HOLs), presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform.  

The February 2011 update includes several updated HOLs for the Windows Azure AppFabric February CTP, AppFabric Caching, Access Control, and Service Bus portal.  The demo and setup scripts for all HOLs have been updated to support Windows 7 SP1.

Download February 2011 Update
Browse All Azure HOLs
Windows Azure Homepage

Database.com Enterprise Cloud Database

Database.com is the world’s first enterprise database built for the cloud.  It comes with toolkits for connecting apps that run natively on mobile platforms.  It also includes a social data model that makes it easy to build apps with profiles, status updates, news feeds and groups.

Build your apps in any language like C#, Java, Ruby or PHP.  Run them on any platform like Force.com, VMforce, Amazon EC2 or Google AppEngine.  Or run them on any device like the iPhone, the iPad, Android or Blackberry.  They can all securely access Database.com through standards based APIs like REST, SOAP, OAuth and SAML.

Database.com is free to get started with 100,000 records, 50,000 transactions per month, and 3 users.  Additional capacity and users are available for a fee.

Database.com

Lokad.CQRS for Windows Azure

Lokad.CQRS is a C# open-source project that helps to build scalable web apps and enterprise solutions for Windows Azure.  CQRS solutions are:

• Secure and Reliable
• Highly Scalable
• Open for Integration and Extensible
• Cost-Effective
• Focused on business value

Lokad.CQRS on Google Code

Visual Studio LightSwitch

Visual Studio LightSwitch is the simplest way to build business applications for the cloud and the desktop.

LightSwitch provides a variety of pre-built templates and tools to quickly build business applications that target Windows Client or Windows Azure.  LightSwitch creates Silverlight applications that can run in the browser, out-of-the-browser, or in the cloud.  You can also use Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate to extend and customize your application even further.

The first beta of LightSwitch will be publicly available on August 23.

LightSwitch Homepage
Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio July 2009 CTP

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure cloud. Installation includes the Windows Azure SDK.

New for the July 2009 CTP:

• Support for developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service may contain zero or more web roles and zero or more worker roles with a minimum of one role of either type.
• New project creation dialog that supports creating Cloud Services with multiple web and worker roles.
• Ability to associate any ASP.NET Web Application project in a Cloud Service solution as a Web Role
• Support for building Cloud Services from TFS Build
• Enhanced robustness and stability

Note this is a CTP release and should not be used on production systems.

Windows Azure “Cloud” Pricing

Microsoft has announced the business model and pricing for its Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

Windows Azure has a consumption-based pricing model, allowing partners and customers to pay only for the services that they consume.

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