Chapter 2. A Startup Scenario

"If there's something you want to build, but the tech isn't there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen."

—Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare

This chapter describes a fictitious company named Geotopia. Geotopia has a totally new idea on how a social network should work. The introduction will describe core user features in detail and the must-have requirements that the final solution should meet. Geotopia plans to launch the new social network as soon as possible and is looking for an online platform that meets its demands. A small survey around different cloud offerings is made.

The chapter also contains a high-level architectural overview of the proposed solution. It maps different Windows Azure concepts to key user features, explaining why they are a good fit. The outlined architecture is the starting point for the rest of the chapters, and every code example will point back to the features described in this chapter.