So Ray Ozzie has just announced Windows Azure. Build an ASP.NET Application, WCF Service, Windows Service and host it in the cloud.

This is Microsoft’s new Cloud Services platform and basically wraps up things like:

Sql Data Services
Microsoft .NET Services (Formerly Biztalk Services)
Live Services (Mesh etc…)
SharePoint Services (As web services more than as UI)
Dynamics CRM Services (As web services more than as UI)

Key Strata Themes
A flexible services platform at Internet Scale.
Simple scenarios are simple – Complex scenarios are possible
Hosted in MSFT data centers
Designed for high availability and scalability

Based on Internet Standards
SOAP/REST/ATOMPub/HTTP
This week releasing .NET/Java/Ruby SDKs. More to follow.

Extends Existing Investments
Familiar tooling and standards
Provides choice of on-premise, in cloud or hybrid.
Integrate with existing assets such as AD and on premise applications

Windows Azure Manages the Entire Global Data Center Infrastructure
Primarily containerised data centers.
Spending several hundred million dollars per data center.
Adding thousands of servers per month.

Fabric Controller
Maintains the heart of the service- Fabric controller applies the necessary changes through the cloud.
Manages services and not just the server. No need to think about virtual machines etc… Full abstraction applied.
Developers just think in terms of the same service and interface models we’ve used in the past.
Very different to the whole Rackspace.com/Amazon EC2 model. You are not dealing with physical machines, rather an abstract resource- it’s an Operating System more like a mainframe than like a typical x86 server.

Cloud Simulator
There is a desktop based cloud simulator.

For those of you who remember my Red Shoe Days!

The Azure Team look to be wearing Red Shoes for the event… I’m guessing a nod to the code name for this technology – Red Dog.