Microsoft Azure (formerly called Windows Azure) is the cloud service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing web applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. It provides SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. All the examples in this book are developed in a virtual machine (VM) hosted in Azure. Since we also needed a Linux VM to demonstrate ASP.NET Core 2.0 cross-platform support, the Linux VM is also created and hosted in Azure. This is the best example to demonstrate how flexible and easy it is for developers to embrace and use Azure.
An obvious question that may come to your mind is: why use Azure and not Amazon's AWS or Google Cloud? Fair enough, I am completely biased on this one and I strongly believe Microsoft Azure is way ahead of its competitors in numerous parameters...