Red Dog becomes Windows Azure - Microsoft answers Google and Amazon with its own cloud computing platform
More big news out of Microsoft's PDC. You may have already been tracking Microsoft's Red Dog project. Today, Microsoft has officially renamed Red Dog and released Windows Azure as a Community Technology Preview (CTP). I recently posted that Amazon's EC2 platform has announced beta support for Microsoft Windows and SQL Server. I am excited about Windows Azure because - as a Microsoft shop - we can be somewhat confident that our platform will port more easily to a Microsoft cloud than Amazon's offering. The benefits of cloud computing are several, from lower expenses initially to endless top side. In concept, the potential is huge. And given Azure's tight integration with Visual Studio and technologies we're already familiar with, the learning curve could be easily achievable. Very interesting stuff.
You can read more about Windows Azure on this dedicated Microsoft site.Here's a longish video that dives into more detail on Azure from a developer perspective.
