Introduction As a follow-up to my March 1 posting, I want to share the findings of our root cause analysis of the service disruption of February 29th. We know that many of our customers were impacted by this event and we want to be transparent about...

Looking for the free version of the SQL Server Management Studio that works directly with SQL Azure?  You need SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 Express Edition.  Use this link to download and choose Management Tools only.

“Hybrid cloud” – the use and building of applications that connect to data and services across a mix of datacenters – is the reality for cloud computing today. Your businesses and applications will move to the cloud in their own...

I lead the engineering organization responsible for the Windows Azure service and I want to update you on the service disruption we had over the past day. First let me apologize for any inconvenience this disruption has caused our customers. Our focus...

Today we are announcing multiple updates to Windows Azure that improve ease of use, interoperability, and overall value. Key Highlights: New Developer Experience and Enhanced Interoperability —Access to Windows Azure libraries for .NET...

Announcing Infrastructure Services GA and New Price Commitment Today is an exciting day for Microsoft, Windows Azure and all of our customers around the world. I am very pleased to announce the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services...

Today, during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 we announced the business and partner model for the Windows Azure platform including service level agreements and support programs. Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services will be commercially...

Editor’s Note : Today’s guest post comes from Nick Floyd , Senior Engineer at New Relic, which provides all-in-one web application performance tool that lets companies see performance from the end user experience, through servers, and down...

To meet evolving customer needs across both ends of the database size spectrum, we are lowering the price of SQL Azure and introducing a 100MB database option. Customers will realize 48% to 75% savings for databases larger than 1GB. The 100MB DB option...

As part of the Windows Azure CTP, we are announcing the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver Windows Azure Blob content. Windows Azure CDN offers developers a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content. Windows Azure CDN...

Today we announced the details of our plans to accelerate the delivery of core relational database features as part of SDS. There has been quite a bit of buzz about SDS over the past couple weeks and it is great to be able to share the details more broadly...

Today we are happy to announce another price reduction for Windows Azure Storage by as much as 28%, effective on December 12 th . This follows our March 8 th 2012 reduction of 12% furthering our commitment to best overall value in the industry. Reducing...

Today we are excited to announce the Developer Preview of Windows Azure Active Directory. As John Shewchuk discussed in his blog post Reimagining Active Directory for the Social Enterprise , Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) is a cloud identity management...

On February 14, 2012 we announced significant price reductions and a new entry level database option to meet customer needs on both ends of the database spectrum. Today we are passing along additional savings to compute and storage customers. Here are...

Earlier this year, we deployed a flat network for Windows Azure across all of our datacenters to create Flat Network Storage (FNS) for Windows Azure Storage. We used a flat network design in order to provide very high bandwidth network connectivity for...

Today we are announcing multiple updates to Windows Azure that improve ease of use, interoperability, and overall value. Key Highlights: New Developer Experience and Enhanced Interoperability —Access to Windows Azure libraries for .NET...

Announcing Infrastructure Services GA and New Price Commitment Today is an exciting day for Microsoft, Windows Azure and all of our customers around the world. I am very pleased to announce the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services...

Editor’s Note : Today’s guest post comes from Nick Floyd , Senior Engineer at New Relic, which provides all-in-one web application performance tool that lets companies see performance from the end user experience, through servers, and down...

Last March we released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 , which provided a set of generic services for Windows Azure. This toolkit was the first step in enabling developers to build native experiences on multiple platforms using Windows...

After working pretty quietly for the last several years on Windows Azure Active Directory—the Microsoft identity management service for organizations—we are excited about the opportunity to start sharing more information about what our team...

Today we are simplifying the development experience on Windows Azure with three updates—a new version of the Windows Azure SDK, a new Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK, and an updated Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. Whether you are already using...

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Guy Bowerman and Karthika Raman from the Microsoft Data Platform team. SQL Server 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 2 includes enhancements to SQL Server native backup that simplifies backup and restore...

Today we are providing access to a beta release of Windows Azure Drive (announced as XDrive at PDC 2009). Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Windows NTFS...

We are very pleased to announce that we are lowering the price of Windows Azure SQL Reporting by up to 82%! The price change is effective today and is applicable to everyone currently using the service as well as new customers. To ensure the service...

The Windows Azure Service Bus Community Technology Preview (CTP), which was released in May 2011, first introduced queues and topics. At that time, the Windows Azure Management Portal didn’t provide a user interface to administer, create and delete...

Announcing Infrastructure Services GA and New Price Commitment Today is an exciting day for Microsoft, Windows Azure and all of our customers around the world. I am very pleased to announce the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services...

Today we are happy to announce another price reduction for Windows Azure Storage by as much as 28%, effective on December 12 th . This follows our March 8 th 2012 reduction of 12% furthering our commitment to best overall value in the industry. Reducing...

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Tony Petrossian , Principal Group Program Manager in the SQL Server & Windows Azure SQL Database team. This post provides an overview of the fault tolerance features of Windows Azure SQL Database...

Security is often reported as one of the top concerns or barriers to cloud adoption for businesses. To help dispel this perception, today Microsoft released r esearch that shows that small and medium sized businesses (SMB) are gaining significant IT security...

Editor’s Note : Today’s post comes from Sidney Higa , Principal Programming Writer in our Customer Experience team. This post provides an overview of a very useful paper about assessing costs associated with using Windows Azure for your applications...

As part of our ongoing exercise of making details about the SQL Azure service more transparent by increasing customer awareness, we have updated the Causes of Connection Termination section on the Connection Management for SQL Azure wiki page on TechNet...

Windows Azure must provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer data, while also enabling transparent accountability. To help customers better understand the array of security controls implemented within Windows Azure from both...

Recent updates to the Windows Azure Marketplace promise to make things a little bit easier for publishers, developers and their customers. First, we’ve introduced promotion codes! Publishers can now create special discounted offers for their...

In my role on the Windows Azure team, I get two questions all the time from our enterprise IT customers. For the ones who haven’t gotten comfortable with the cloud yet, they ask “why do I want this?” For those who have, they ask “but...

If you weren't able to attend the Strata Conference last week in Santa Clara, CA, you can still catch SQL Azure and Middleware General Manager Zane Adam's keynote, "Data Everywhere: There Ought to be a Marketplace For It" on demand. In this keynote...

Chris Auld is a Microsoft MVP , the CTO at Intergen Limited and a director of Locum Jobs Startup MedRecruit . Trained as an attorney, Chris chose to pursue a career with emerging technologies instead of practicing law. He is widely known for his...

Jonathan Boutelle is cofounder and CTO of Slideshare, a site for the online social sharing of slideshows. A software engineer by training, his interests lie at the intersection of technology, business, and customer experience. He studied computer science...

Scott Morehouse was involved in the early development of GIS (geographic information system) in the Harvard Graphics Lab and is now director of software development for Esri . He was responsible for the initial design and architecture of Esri's ARC...

The London Olympics were a massive orchestration of 302 gold medal events squeezed into just 19 days. Multiple heats or rounds, often happening simultaneously, across 32 sports, challenged content providers to deliver flexibility to viewers in just about...

Rob Gillen is researching cloud computing technology for the government at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He also works for Planet Technologies, which recently launched a new cloud practice to assist government and public sector organizations with cloud...

Jason Bloomberg is managing partner and senior analyst at the enterprise architecture advisory firm ZapThink LLC. He is a thought leader in the areas of enterprise architecture and service-oriented architecture, and he helps organizations around the...

Olivier Mangelschots is Managing Director at Orbit One Internet Solutions , a systems integrator based in Belgium that is deeply involved in Microsoft technology. In this interview we cover: Identity management in hybrid environments ...

Editor's Note: Today's post comes from Jamin Spitzer , Senior Director, Platform Strategy at Microsoft. Directions on Microsoft recently published a new report entitled “ What Windows Azure Means to Software ISVs ”. It represents an excellent...

Jared Wray is the CTO and architect of the Tier 3’s Enterprise Cloud Platform. Wray founded Tier 3 in 2006 to address the emerging need for enterprise on-demand services. Wray oversees the company’s development, support and operations teams...

Jonathan Ellis chairs the Cassandra project at the Apache Software Foundation and is the co-founder of Riptano, a commercial entity that provides software, support, and training for Cassandra. Prior to the founding of Riptano in the spring of 2010, Jonathan...

“Hybrid cloud” – the use and building of applications that connect to data and services across a mix of datacenters – is the reality for cloud computing today. Your businesses and applications will move to the cloud in their own...

Today we are announcing multiple updates to Windows Azure that improve ease of use, interoperability, and overall value. Key Highlights: New Developer Experience and Enhanced Interoperability —Access to Windows Azure libraries for .NET...

Today, during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 we announced the business and partner model for the Windows Azure platform including service level agreements and support programs. Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services will be commercially...

To meet evolving customer needs across both ends of the database size spectrum, we are lowering the price of SQL Azure and introducing a 100MB database option. Customers will realize 48% to 75% savings for databases larger than 1GB. The 100MB DB option...

As part of the Windows Azure CTP, we are announcing the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver Windows Azure Blob content. Windows Azure CDN offers developers a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content. Windows Azure CDN...

Today we are happy to announce another price reduction for Windows Azure Storage by as much as 28%, effective on December 12 th . This follows our March 8 th 2012 reduction of 12% furthering our commitment to best overall value in the industry. Reducing...

Today we are excited to announce the Developer Preview of Windows Azure Active Directory. As John Shewchuk discussed in his blog post Reimagining Active Directory for the Social Enterprise , Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) is a cloud identity management...

On February 14, 2012 we announced significant price reductions and a new entry level database option to meet customer needs on both ends of the database spectrum. Today we are passing along additional savings to compute and storage customers. Here are...

Earlier this year, we deployed a flat network for Windows Azure across all of our datacenters to create Flat Network Storage (FNS) for Windows Azure Storage. We used a flat network design in order to provide very high bandwidth network connectivity for...

Last March we released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 , which provided a set of generic services for Windows Azure. This toolkit was the first step in enabling developers to build native experiences on multiple platforms using Windows...