Book Image

Windows Azure programming patterns for Start-ups

By : Riccardo Becker
Book Image

Windows Azure programming patterns for Start-ups

By: Riccardo Becker

Overview of this book

Leverage different Windows Azure components together with your existing Microsoft .NET skills to fully take advantage of the power of Windows Azure. Use this book to start small and end big by creating and using storage, cloud services, sql databases, networking, caching and other innovative technology to realize your first top-class Windows Azure service! "Windows Azure for Start-ups" is an incremental guide that will take you from the essentials of the Windows Azure platform up to the realization of your own cloud services running on the platform. You will learn how to apply different technologies of the Windows Azure platform with the help of examples all focusing on one single fictitious start-up scenario. This book is centred around a fictitious company called Geotopia that wants to build a brand new social network by using the Windows Azure platform. It will take the reader from the theory and rationale behind Windows Azure right to building services and coding C#. The books starts by outlining the concepts of Windows Azure. It then demonstrates how to set up a development environment and how to build your application by using different storage mechanisms, applying different features from the Windows Azure platform and ending with the newest features explained from the latest release. Windows Azure for Startups will help you take full advantage of the Windows Azure platform and bring your new service online as quickly as possible.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Windows Azure Programming Patterns for Start-ups
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Red Dog


Ray Ozzie arrived at Microsoft in 2005 and stated that survival of the company hinged on a shift to cloud computing. He wrote a manifesto called The Internet Services Disruption in which he stated that there are three tenets that dramatically shift the whole landscape around computing. From his point of view, it was essential to embrace those tenets in Microsoft's products and services. These tenets are as follows:

  • Advertisement-supported economic models

  • New delivery and adoption model

  • Demand for user experience that "just works"

    The essence of this manifesto is that he emphasized that the world was changing, the demands of customers were changing, and technology was changing. It was the beginning of a process that finally resulted in the Windows Azure platform.

    Note

    Cloud computing enabled a move from packaged solutions with fixed license-based models to resilient services with flexible payment options.

After the release of Vista and the new Office suite, a project group was formed with top engineers, and Ray Ozzie asked Amitabh Srivastava to lead the project. Also, David Cutler (writer of VMS and leader of the Windows NT team) was involved with this revolutionary initiative. The codename of Windows Azure used to be Red Dog. Virtual machines on Windows Azure are still named with the prefix Red Dog (RD).

Windows Azure announcement

On October 27, 2008, at the Professional Developers Conference, Ray Ozzie announced Windows Azure and highlighted its capability in delivering services. The first commercially available release in 2010 of the platform contained:

  • The Cloud OS (confusingly also called Windows Azure) that offers service management and provisioning, storage, computing power, and networking capabilities

  • SQL Azure, offering a Database-as-a-Service (currently known as SQL Database)

  • Microsoft .NET Services, containing features such as workflow and access control (currently known as Windows Azure Service Bus, formerly known as AppFabric)

It was the start of a new era that brought us all into the world of services, agility, faster time to market, new ways of monetizing IT assets, operational expenses versus capital expenses and more. Ever since, Windows Azure has evolved into the mature, enterprise-ready platform it is right now, offering more services, with time.