Microsoft Released its Cloud Computing Platform Windows Azure

  On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that its cloud based platform Windows Azure and SQL Azure will be available in 21 countries including USA. As per the posting at Microsoft blog, companies in those countries will be able to launch Windows Azure and SQL Azure application with full Service Level Agreements (SLAs) support.

Since January 2010, thousands of customers have moved from CTP (Community Technology Preview) to production. Starting today, they, along with all of our partners, will be able to begin selling their solutions to their customers, ultimately enabling them to reach new markets and increase their revenue,” said the blog

Customers need to upgrade their Windows CTP accounts. Otherwise, the service will be disabled and Windows azure storage will be made Read Only. SQL Azure CTP clients also need to upgrade their accounts also. Otherwise, they can keep the existing database, but, will not be able to create new database.

Apart from improved services to the customers, the key benefits of using Azure are development efficiency and reduced IT maintenance costs. Developers will be able to use existing skills to migrate the solution  quickly to Windows Azure. Also, companies don’t have to spend much for infrastructure and costly human resource.