Windows Azure more flexible, open and powerful

Microsoft New Zealand has announced a number of changes and updates to Windows Azure, making the service more flexible, open and powerful.

The new features and updates will be showcased in an interactive training event for New Zealand software developers and IT professionals held at Event Cinemas, Queen Street, Auckland on Thursday 21 June.

International and local speakers at the training event include Ori Amiga, Principal Group Program Manager on the Windows Azure Core Platform Engineering Team; Nick Harris, Senior Technical Evangelist for Windows Azure; and local Azure specialists Ryan CrawCour and Thiago Almeida.

The new features will simplify building applications that span cloud and on-premises servers to help deliver "Hybrid Cloud" solutions. By combining infrastructure and platform services, and adding support for more operating systems and languages, the new capabilities of Windows Azure will give users much greater flexibility.

"Customers can move existing applications or develop new ones using the languages and platforms of their choice, as well as leveraging a flexible, reliable platform in their own datacentre, one of Microsoft's secure globally distributed datacentres or a combination of both," says Scott Wylie, Director of the Developer and Platform Group for Microsoft New Zealand.

The new features such a Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks enhance Windows Azure's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) capabilities, while Windows Azure Web Sites enable developers to quickly and easily deploy websites with support for multiple frameworks and popular Open Source applications.

The new Windows Azure Preview Portal now contains a single, integrated portal to help guide customers toward key tasks and integrated billing information.

Other improvements include interoperability updates, improvements to developer productivity and application services, and Windows Azure SQL Reporting.

New Zealand ticketing company iTICKET is one of the many Windows Azure customers excited about the new features.

“Windows Azure allows iTICKET to handle massive spikes in demand without having to own millions of dollars’ worth of server equipment or employ huge development teams,” says iTICKET Managing Director, Reece Preston.

“It allows us to provide hassle-free online booking, even with large on-sale peaks in demand, something even larger companies are still unable to do. The system will scale to as many servers and databases as necessary to ensure the customer experience is a positive one, whether there is one person online, or 50,000.”

The new features are available from today. To learn more about Windows Azure and sign-up to try it for free visit: http://windowsazure.com.

To register a seat for the Windows Azure DevCamp - Auckland Launch visit: http://aka.ms/devcamp