Microsoft plans to kick off the year 2010 with the launch of its cloud-computing service, Azure, on January 1.
The news was revealed today by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
“Customers want choice and flexibility in how they develop and deploy applications,” Ozzie said.
The company’s goal is for developers to build applications that can be used across different platforms. Calling it ‘three screens and a cloud’ vision, Microsoft wants applications that can run on Windows desktops, mobile devices and TVs (“three screens”) and on cloud computing (Azure).
“We’re moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the Web, and that are delivered from datacenters we refer to as private clouds and public clouds. Built specifically for this era of cloud computing, Windows Azure and SQL Azure will give developers what they need to build great applications and profitable businesses,” he said.
And to make it more appealing, Azure will be offered for free on the first month. Customers will start to be billed beginning February 1st.
Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20091117/tc_afp/usitcompanyinternetmicrosoftsoftware
