Windows Azure

Windows Azure is a set of services that enables the enterprises to create scalable, fault-tolerant web applications that are hosted within the owned datacenters and operated by Microsoft. Microsoft abstracts the infrastructure for hosting the applications, so that you can focus on your application and features. The Windows Azure platform provides on-demand compute, storage, and middleware services that can be used to host, scale, and manage web applications.

The web applications hosted by Azure can be public-facing websites, secured enterprise applications, or any other standard application that would be hosted in a datacenter. Microsoft hosts datacenters at different strategic locations around the world. Offering a range of hosted datacenters across the world allows the enterprises to deploy their applications to geolocations that are physically close to their expected users, lowering latency.

Windows Azure automates the allocation and usage of the underlying hardware resources...