Introduction
Windows Azure is a cloud Computing based
platform for building scalable applications .So before going deep into azure
let us understand what does cloud computing means?
According to Wikipedia, Cloud computing is the use of computing resources
(hardware and software) which are available in a remote location and accessible
over a network (typically the Internet).
Problem solved By Cloud
Imagine a scenario in a company for hosting your application you have to buy
Hardware like servers, routers etc and software license like OS license, SQL,
Sharepoint etc and hosting bandwidth from datacenter and moreover the company
need to hire IT Professionals for managing these Infrastructure. If your
application succeed and your app have got more load then estimated so you need
to scale your application and to do that you need to spend again a lot on
hardware ,software and skilled IT Professional to do that. But With Cloud
Computing the company can scale the application with just few clicks and its
work on PAY PER USE model which means that you don't have to pay for the
infrastructure instead you just have to pay according to the consumption.
It means that paying only what you use and when you use it. Its Like traveling
in a public bus and paying only your seats rather than renting the whole bus.
So cloud does the following things:
- Reduce capital and operational costs
- Simplify application deployment and
management
- Cost effectively handles peak load
- Simplify scaling to internet scale
- Focus on new functionality and not
infrastructure.
Understanding Azure
"Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud
platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications
across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build
applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your
public cloud applications with your existing IT Environment " sourceswindowsazure.com
It is designed for true internet scale. It supports the "Scale Fast Fail Fast"
model. which means easy scalability.
It allow developer to apply their existing skills on cloud as it supports many
languages like .Net, Ruby, PHP, Java and most importantly its Interoperability
with any platform, tools or technology.
More articles following this for understanding the azure platform and all its
services is coming up..