Microsoft's Ray Ozzie presented further plans for Windows Azure platform.
Microsoft's chief technology officer, Ray Ozzie, focused as expected on the company Cloud Sky platform, Windows Azure, the main speech during the first day of Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC), held this week.
Ozzie had more news to announce, but no real launch of Windows Azure platform did not happen. Instead, it was confirmed that Cloud sky Services will be production-ready on the 1st January 2010, but until a month later, Microsoft will begin to charge.
Ozzie started the rest of his speech by telling that Microsoft is planning to come with developer-oriented announcements about Windows Live and Windows Mobile 7 in the spring.
Then he announced that it will be offered Azure tool that makes it easier to develop possible solutions for Windows Azure based partly on Java, Eclipse, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Windows Azure will run from three pairs of data centers. Currently, one pair located in the United States. In 2010 opened a few in Asia and a similar couple in Europe. The European data centers will be located in, respectively, Dublin and Amsterdam.
Ozzie introduced in the speech also news related to the Microsoft Pinpoint, a service where Microsoft partners can provide services and applications.
The main novelty is called preliminary Microsoft Code Name "Dallas". This is an information service based on Windows Azure, where developers can access various data sets, both public and commercial. Data sets will be offered in a consistent manner, including when it comes to licensing. Dallas also has a self-service model, so that developers do not need to know how to parse the data.
Currently, Dallas is only available in a closed trial (CTP). There is now data sets from including Associated Press, FBI, UN, Navteq, Nasa, National Geographic and the Obama administration Data.gov, such as image material from Mars and the average flight times in the United States.
- But the data does no good unless we innovate around them, "said Ozzie.
Microsoft also announced that the company is planning a new application server. This will come in both a standard version of Windows and an Azure version.
Currently, Windows Server AppFabric, which is called the application server, available in a beta version. It will be released during 2010. A beta version of Azure comes in the course of next year.
Application Server will include making it easier to deploy and manage applications spanning both public servers and network cloud. The product combines the management and monitoring technology that has previously been known under the code name "Dublin" and caching technology that have previously been called "Velocity" with Windows Azure-platforms AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control. The latter has previously been referred to as. NET Services.
AppFabric will also be able to take care of functionality such as failover, availability and scalability.
During his part of the main speech, said Bob Muglia, head of
Microsoft's server and tools division, the Sydney Project, which will be released in 2010. This is a tool that makes it possible to establish a secure connection between the customer's local server and Windows Azure,
Muglia also mentions that Microsoft is planning to make it possible to offer support for virtual machines with Windows Server Windows Azure. This will happen during the next year.
Microsoft announced also that the Windows Identity Foundation is ready for launch. This is an extension of. NET Framework to help developers to provide safer and easier access to both cloud sky based and local drifted applications with the "claim"-based identification.
