About this Book
This book will teach you about Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. We’ll cover all aspects and components of Windows Azure from a developer’s point of view.
The book is written from the perspective of a .NET developer who’s using C#. We feel that most developers using Azure will be using .NET. Everything in this book applies to any platform that uses Azure. You’ll need to use the appropriate SDK for your development tools and platform of choice.
You should be fairly familiar with .NET, but you don’t have to be an expert. We expect a developer with a few years of experience to be able to get the most out of this book. Someone new to development, or perhaps even a manager, can still read the book to get a grasp of the broad concepts of Azure. If that’s your situation, skip over the code samples and try to understand what the moving parts are.
This book is broken into six parts, each with its own focus.
Part 1 is titled “Welcome to the cloud” and that’s exactly what it is: a welcome to the world of cloud computing. Chapters 1 and 2 explain what cloud computing is, and what the big moving parts of Windows Azure are. You’ll build and deploy some simple applications in this part, just to whet your appetite.
Part 2 is called “Understanding the Azure service model.” Chapter 3 gives you a peek behind the curtain and shows you how Azure works. Chapters 4 and 5 cover how to run and configure your applications in Azure.