Windows Azure platform: AppFabric

AppFabric is another part of Azure with "fabric" in its name. AppFabric was originally known as BizTalk Services, and then later as .NET Services. Unlike the Azure Fabric or the Azure Fabric Agent, AppFabric is not a low-level controller/manager of the virtual machines. Instead, AppFabric provides the Service Bus, Access Control services, and connection components.

The Service Bus is the functionality that serves as a bridge between on-premises applications and Windows Azure. The Service Bus also facilitates bidirectional communication between two non-Azure applications.

Bridging local and Azure applications is useful in certain cases such as if there is information in our local warehouse management system (WMS) we want to make visible to our clients via an Azure-based portal we develop. If our WMS has an API we'd like to manifest directly to our partners, we can also use the Service Bus to abstract the WMS API. In this case, we'd register our WMS's endpoint...