Microsoft Azure is the number two cloud service provider, just behind AWS. But, until 2015, they hadn't provided API services, but they were excelling in other cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud Functions. Then, eventually, they decided to invest in functions. So, Azure Functions is the answer to AWS Lambda, but the underlying technology is different, which we will cover in upcoming chapters. Azure Functions sit on top of the Azure app service and WebJobs SDK. Azure Functions support a lot of languages like F#, Python, Batch, PHP, and PowerShell, but C# and Node.js are officially supported. We will be using Node.js for all our tutorials throughout this chapter and more details on the Azure Functions can be found on Microsoft link: https:/ / msdn. microsoft. com/ en- us/ magazine/ mt793269. aspx.
In this chapter, we...
