What is the Windows Azure platform?

The Windows Azure platform is nothing but Microsoft’s cloud computing services platform. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform. Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific set of services to end users.

Key Components:

·         Windows Azure Compute: Windows Azure compute service enables developers to run any applications starting from .NET, Java, PHP etc… In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines.  Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

·      Windows Azure Storage: The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure

·         Microsoft SQL Azure: Provides relational cloud database solution

·         Windows Azure platform Services (Connectivity, Identiry and Perforamance) : It includes services like: AppFabric Access Control, AppFabric Service Bus, CDN and AppFabric Caching Service.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure