Open in the Cloud: Windows Azure Update

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Posted by Colette Stallbaumer
Director, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

This week’s Windows Azure update highlighted Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability and an enhanced developer experience on its cloud platform. Josette Rigsby at CMSWire dubbed this “a friendlier, more open Azure,” noting the long list of updates that improve support for open source development on Azure. Here are the highlights:

  • Access to Windows Azure libraries for .NET, Java, and Node.js now available under the Apache 2 open source license and hosted on GitHub. The new Windows Azure SDK for Node.js makes Windows Azure a first-class environment for Node applications. This represents Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to provide an experience where developers can build applications on Windows Azure using the languages and frameworks they already know, making it easier for customers to get started and use cloud computing on their terms.
  • More support for customers with “big data” needs. In October, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Ted Kummert announced that Microsoft planned to deliver enterprise class Apache Hadoop based solutions on both Windows Server and Windows Azure as part of Microsoft’s “big data” roadmap. This week’s Azure update furthered this commitment, announcing a limited customer preview of the Apache Hadoop based distribution, which enables Hadoop apps to be deployed in hours instead of days. 

For more technical detail on this week’s open source updates to Azure, please see the Port25 blog by Gianugo Rabellino, Microsoft's Senior Director of Open Source Communities.