By Mary Jo Foley

Summary: Microsoft is cutting the name “Azure” out of the branding for its cloud services on its billing portal.

Microsoft is informing customers of its Windows Azure cloud that it is rebranding many, if not all, of the component services in a way that eliminates the “Azure” name on its billing portal.

“Windows Azure Compute” will now be known simply as “Cloud Services,” according to the Microsoft officials. SQL Azure is now known as “SQL Database.” Here’s the full list of what’s being rechristened:

(click on the table above to enlarge)

By Zach Walton

 

 

Microsoft-centric solution provides .NET developers with advanced cloud computing solution and SDK for more profitable and rapid ecommerce deployments

 

Minneapolis, MN., June 29, 2011—Insite Software, a leading provider of B2B and B2C ecommerce platforms and shipping solutions, today announced that Microsoft Corporation has certified InsiteCommerce as one of the first enterprise B2B ecommerce platform powered by Windows Azure for cloud computing. The latest version of InsiteCommerce provides the Microsoft .NET development community and design agencies with advanced cloud deployment and an easy-to-use SDK allowing firms to rapidly develop and deliver scalable, high performing, B2B ecommerce projects for their manufacturing, distribution and retail clients.

 “.NET developers have been looking for a reliable, scalable, ecommerce platform that delivers the B2B capabilities in the cloud, as Microsoft Commerce Server does not currently support the Windows Azure platform,” said Brian Strojny, CEO of Insite Software. “InsiteCommerce is designed for cloud computing and leverages the benefits of Windows Azure to help developers provide faster, scalable and more profitable B2B ecommerce deployments. We are pleased to be one of the first enterprise B2B ecommerce platforms certified by Microsoft and look forward to working more closely with the .NET development community.”

 

by Mary Jo Foley

There were a lot of promised deliverables on the Azure cloud roadmap that Microsoft unveiled at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC)in October 2010. This week, the Redmondians rolled out more of them, including a public beta of the Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role.

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Payment solution provided by NVoicePay is based on Windows Azure platform with Silverlight interface across the Web, PC and phone. �

  REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 16, 2010 — The Dealer Services Group of Automatic Data Processing Inc. has added NVoicePay as a participant to its Third Party Access Program. NVoicePay, a Portland, Ore.-based software provider, helps mutual clients eliminate paper invoices and checks with an integrated electronic payments solution powered by the Windows Azure cloud platform, Microsoft Corp. reported today.

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 By - Charles Arthur

 Putting data in to the 'cloud' suits companies but does not evade political pressures

WikiLeaks showed last week that the premise behind cloud computing began looking a bit creaky. Photograph: Jens B Ttner/ Jens B ttner/dpa/Corbis

Until last week, any computing futurologist would tell you that cloud computing is where it's at. You don't need to know where your data is being stored; it's just on a computer, or more likely computers, Out There On The Internet. Thus Amazon, with its EC2 ("Elastic Cloud Compute") service, or Microsoft with its Azure service, or the most familiar example, Google, with its GoogleMail and Google Docs services, which are used by thousand of companies around the world. (Disclosure: the Guardian uses Google Docs and Mail, and Amazon's EC2 system for its API.)

Indeed, the prestigious Pew Research Center said in June that "solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth future of the internet survey expect that by 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending primarily on tools and information housed on their individual, personal computers" and that "most users will perform most computing and communicating activities through connections to servers operated by outside firms".

We already do, to a large extent: Google's search index lives in the cloud; lastminute.com, TripAdvisor, toptable.com, they're all a "cloud" service. What has been changing in the past few years is that individuals and companies have been able to upload their own content onto those computers – hence the explosion in size of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter, none of which generate their own content. It all lives in the cloud, where one organisation offers the servers and another offers the software that interfaces to the content.

 

My last company was a Gold Certified SI called e.magination (www.emagination.com).  We were primarily a .NET development firm, and the firm grew to about 100 employees before we sold it.  Towards the end of that period, at least 50% of all of our revenue was attributed to our Microsoft Relationship in one way or another, and one thing we did, i believe better than most, was follow Microsoft closely.

So, what does that mean exactly?  Well, what we did was keep our ears to the ground, and listened to as many channels of communication that we could from Microsoft.  We’d weed thru the clutter and try to find a constant theme anywhere we could.  Whenever we notice a topic become constant, repetitive, and persuasive across different Microsoft teams, we took note, even if the topic was outside of our competency or interest. ...

Microsoft SQL Azure Service Update 4 is now live with new support for database copying, an enhanced help system and deployment of Microsoft's "Houston" tool to multiple data centers.

Red Hat announced a strategy for its cloud stack, now called Cloud Foundations Edition One.

It’s about portability and interoperability. In other words it’s about standards. In line with that, Red Hat has submitted its cloud platform as a potential standard for interoperability.

Barring any last minute changes, a Microsoft vendor is poised to win the e-mail hosting contract for the state of California. And Google, which has cried foul over the state’s wording for bids for the contract, is left standing on the sidelines as a big client slips away.

On August 12, Microsoft made available the first version of a tool designed to help customers migrate from MySQL to SQL Server and/or SQL Azure.

Microsoft continues to push its integration plans for Azure with the addition of single sign-on (SSO). AppFabric now has "out of the box" support for Windows Identity Foundation and Active Directory Federation Server.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, open-source customer relationship management (CRM) software developer SugarCRM announced the integration of Sugar 6, the latest edition of its CRM solution, with Microsoft's cloud-based Windows Azure platform.

A Microsoft press release states “The cases have been settled through a patent agreement in which Salesforce.com will receive broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for its products and services as well as its back-end server infrastructure during the term. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft receives coverage under Salesforce.com’s patent portfolio for Microsoft’s products and services.”

Microsoft corporation and eBay have today declared that eBay will be one of the 1st clients of Microsoft’s newly fangled Windows Azure platform based appliance for cloud computing. The partnership is an important articulate technology effort that will brace the creation and ability of the Windows Azure platform based appliance with the technological excellence of eBay’s program — to fork up an automatised, scalable, cost-efficient capacity management solution.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the newest layer for Bing Maps and the newest Bing Map App in the gallery. The map app, dubbed simply, “OpenStreetMap” loads OSM maps as a new map style option.