Windows Azure: A .Net developer’s initial reaction

Today, Microsoft unveiled its new “cloud” OS platform, Windows Azure. Based on the company’s current application server technologies — SQL Server, Hyper-V, and .Net — Windows Azure is slated to provide a seamless migration experience for developers of existing .Net-based Windows applications.

And from where I’m sitting (about five rows back from the stage where a brooding Ray Ozzie is holding court), it looks to me like Microsoft has a winning strategy. That’s because it’s playing smart and leveraging their tried-and-true, “embrace and extend” philosophy to make cloud computing accessible to the Windows developer masses.

[ Keep up with all the developments at Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Developers Conference in InfoWorld’s special report. ]

By integrating Windows Azure directly with Visual Studio 2008 — through new project templates and reusable code objects — Microsoft is making it ridiculously easy to jump into cloud-based development. In fact, anyone even remotely familiar with ASP.Net programming will be able to quickly prototype and deploy a working Windows Azure application. All of your current .Net skill and experience is directly transferrable, including language proficiency and framework familiarity. For anyone in the .Net game, this one’s a no-brainer.

It’s also a smart way to win over hearts and minds. By putting a complex, distributed runtime environment within reach of even casual developers, Microsoft virtually guarantees a deluge of activity in and around the Windows Azure platform. I’m eager to see how Microsoft’s cloud platform might hold up as a replacement for the dedicated server farm we’re currently using to host Windows Sentinel. With the full range of Microsoft technologies available on the back end — including an ASP.Net runtime and SQL Server — I’m guessing that Azure will prove to be an excellent way to expand the scalability and availability of our Sentinel infrastructure.

Of course, the Windows Azure story is still unfolding, and Microsoft will continue to face the same hurdles that cloud computing pioneers like Amazon have been negotiating from day one — namely, the need to reassure customers that the world’s largest software company can be trusted with their applications and data. Until then, Windows Azure will remain more of an interesting academic exercise than a viable product or service.