Microsoft Launches Windows Azure, New Free OS

From DailyTech: Well for a limited time, developers will get to use and test a unique new OS from Microsoft -- Windows Azure -- entirely for free. The new OS marks the release of Microsoft's long awaited cloud computing operating system.

For those in the dark about cloud computing, you're not alone -- the abstract concept is a new one and very challenging to developers. In basic principle, it’s the concept of offloading tasks from workstations to cloud clusters -- high powered groups of servers. This setup leverages modern high-speed internet connections to deliver data storage, applications hosting and more.

Cloud computing is tremendously popular, as it is widely viewed as the future of web hosting. One key reason for this is that cloud computing allows applications to easily scale to match rising or falling demand, without shifting local hardware. In order to deliver increasingly rich applications over an internet interface, moving to a cloud computing architecture becomes increasingly necessary. However, until now cloud computing lacked a single iconic operating system specially designed for it.

That has all changed with the release of Microsoft's Azure. The new OS is a community preview, available free to any developers. This is a slight departure from Microsoft's RM/Beta/Alpha sequence typical to many of its operating systems, though it has done community previews of other releases before.

"How long until the OS hits the market," is one question many will ask. Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie was on hand to answer questions about the new OS, and he fielded this one. He stated, "Well, when we finally determine that it achieves the objectives from a completeness perspective and a reliability perspective that our customers would expect of us, then we'll go commercial. And when it does, it will be profitable from birth because we're going to price it to be that way."

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