Microsoft: Azure not pie in the sky

From CNET News.com: The software maker unveiled Windows Azure at its Professional Developers Conference in October. Since then, the company has said that pieces of Azure will be ready in final form by the end of the year, but the company has been rather quiet about how Azure is doing.

In a phone interview last week, Microsoft senior director Steven Martin said that Microsoft has been adding more users to Azure every day, though he won't say how many people are using the service at this point.

"We are approving more and more developers every day," Martin said.

The company has also made changes to its storage model and pledged to expand the set of database services it will offer to include relational capabilities. An update to the Azure code was released in January and the company is set to give more details on its plans at next week's Mix conference in Las Vegas.

One of the things that makes Azure tricky is that it is just hard to wrap one's head around.

"We are at the point where a lot of people understand what they announced," said Gartner analyst David Smith. "It took weeks to understand that."

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