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Glassboard is a mobile service for sharing privately with groups. With Glassboard, you create 'boards' which are groups of people around a common interest where you can share messages, comments, photos, videos, and even your location (when appropriate).
When the Glassboard team was developing Glassboard, they looked for a platform that offered scale, worry-free operation, replicated data, and privacy for their apps on Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and Office 365. The Glassboard team chose the Windows Azure platform for these capabilities.
This article provides and overall architecture of the Glassboard backend in Azure.
Writing an application is one thing. Your application has been designed, built, and tested. Yet deploying the application can be an adventure in its own right. Successful ISVs build and deploy often, sometimes continuously. And then run tests to be sure the application functions as expected and runs at as expected at scale.
Windows Azure provides proven methods for moving your application from the developer, into a testing environment in the cloud, and then switching it live for your users.
You are able to provision the required components in the Windows Azure Management Portal, upload the service package, and configuring the service. You test your application in a staging environment and then promote it to production once you are satisfied that it is operating according to your expectations.