May 23, 2013 News Thursday: General Availability of AMQP Support in Windows Azure and More Server and Tools News...

by STB Blogger

AMQP 1.0 Support in Windows Azure Service Bus Reaches General Availability

Microsoft demonstrated its commitment to an open, interoperable ecosystem for AMQP, a secure, reliable, and open binary protocol for business messaging, with the transition of AMQP 1.0 support in Windows Azure Service Bus from Preview to General Availability.

The specification received approval as an OASIS Standard last fall and is now being considered for ISO/IECJTC approval, which would make AMQP 1.0 an international standard.

For more information and to learn how you can try AMQP 1.0 with Windows Azure Service Bus, go to Scott Guthrie’s blog.

Millions of Students, Staff Benefit from Windows Azure

Microsoft has entered into new peering agreements with Janet, the UK’s research and education network, and Internet2, the research and education network for the US, to provide a faster and more secure connection for these institutions’ cloud-based IT services. These announcements demonstrate Microsoft’s ongoing relationship with and commitment to the education sector. Using Windows Azure, institutions will now be able to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

For a full list of new capabilities available to Janet and Internet2 students and staff, read the Microsoft Education blog.

Cloud Computing Trends Report: Understanding IT Maturity Patterns and Practices
As cloud computing matures, a growing number of organizations are moving to cloud environments to help lower IT costs, increase efficiencies, and realize greater flexibility.

To help these organizations better understand their current IT state and how they will benefit from adopting a particular cloud service, Microsoft released the Trends in cloud computing report. This report analyzes the results of current IT maturity and adoption practices of organizations worldwide that have used the free Cloud Security Readiness Tool (CSRT). The data is based on approximately 5700 responses from people who used the CSRT over a six-month period between October 2012 and March 2013.

In October 2012, Microsoft released the free Cloud Security Readiness Tool (CSRT) to help organizations assess their IT environment and evaluate the benefits of cloud adoption. Organizations are using the CSRT to better understand their systems, processes, policies, and practices. The tool provides a survey and a custom, noncommercial report to understand and improve an organization’s current IT state, learn about relevant industry regulations, and receive guidance on how to evaluate different cloud options.

Cloud Broiler: Learn What Microsoft has Cooked up with Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V is a key component of Microsoft’s enterprise virtualization and private cloud strategy and is the heart of where many of the improvements in Windows Server 2012 reside. In the first installment of his Cloud Broiler blog series, Jason Perlow, technology solution specialist for Microsoft Partner Hosting & Cloud Services, highlights a few of the many scalability and performance enhancements in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Interested in learning more about what Windows Server 2012 has to offer? Over the coming weeks, Jason will highlight the various features and capabilities of Windows Server 2012 spanning networking, storage, high availability and more. Check out the Server and Cloud blog for future posts.