Cloud Computing with the Windows® Azure™ Platform

Introduction

Cloud computing became a hot topic in mid-2008 and, by mid-2009, had achieved top buzzword status. As proof of its popularity, a mid-August 2009 search on Bing.com for "cloud computing" returned 92 million hits. Hardly a week goes by that doesn't include at least one cloud computing conference somewhere around the globe. Mainstream business magazines, such as Forbes and Business Week, regularly run cloud-computing feature articles and comprehensive special reports, such as Business Week's "Cloud Computing's Big Bang for Business" of June 5, 2009, which presented case studies of cloud usage by Serena Software, Optum Health, Genentech, Coca-Cola Enterprises, and Info Tech (http://bit.ly/uecfb, www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/09_24/B4135cloud_computing.htm). Earlier that week, Microsoft CEO Ray Ozzie addressed Silicon Valley's Churchill Club on "The Potential of Cloud Computing" (http://bit.ly/g2wqn, www.churchillclub.org/eventDetail.jsp?EVT_ID=820). TechCrunchIT's Leena Rao quoted Ozzie in a June 4, 2009 post (http://bit.ly/1h01j, www.techcrunchit.com/2009/06/04/liveblogging-microsofts-ray-ozzie-on-the-potential-of-cloud-computing):

In essence, the nature of Windows Azure ... will enable people to wrap existing Windows Server workloads in a way with as little change as possible to move up in a public or private cloud environment. It's laying out program design patterns and infrastructure—this is what an idea[l] cloud computing structure looks like, this is how you build ...