News from PDC10: Muglia announced Windows Azure Virtual Machine role

Last week was PDC for 2010. In Friday’s keynote, Bob Muglia announced a range of new services in the Windows Azure platform, part of which include the new Windows Azure Virtual Machine role.  This functionality does the obvious thing – it allows developers and IT professionals to move existing Windows Server 2008 R2 applications to Windows Azure by deploying a VHD (virtual hard disk) to both Windows Azure and on-premises data centers. The VM role eases the migration of existing Windows Server applications to Windows Azure by eliminating the need to make costly application changes and enables customers to quickly access their existing business data from the cloud.

Seven Martin wrote a blog on this  to talk about what this means for licensing, which we think the hosting community will be especially interested in understanding.

If you aren’t familiar with the PDC, it is focused on the next wave of technologies and the strategic direction of the Microsoft platform and goes for two days. This year Steve Ballmer and Bob Muglia are keynoting. In addition to live streaming the keynote and – for the first time – live streaming all PDC10 sessions, we have made all PDC10 content available on-demand at www.microsoftpdc.com.