Microsoft Azure tutorial: A look at the cloud platform

Microsoft Azure has become the company's flagship cloud service. Designed to lead the predicted rise in Platform as a Service (PaaS), Azure lets users store data, write applications directly onto invisible virtual machines and control those machines directly, all on Microsoft’s next-gen data center. The company even uses Azure for some of its own internal projects, but the platform is so new that even its proud papa doesn’t quite know what to do with it. In just over a year, Microsoft's deep pockets and stated commitment to cloud strategies have helped establish Azure as a major player in the cloud development world. Microsoft is also fast adding infrastructure-themed features and new services in an attempt to keep Azure competitive with market leaders like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Rackspace Cloud. This tutorial presents, through news and technical tips, an overview of everything on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.