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Working at Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, is exciting; especially if you get a chance to work on one of the hottest projects which is supposed to shape the future of computing: Cloud Computing.
In this page, I give some background and references about Cloud Computing, Microsoft Cloud offering and the project I am personally involved in.
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Cloud Computing |
Cloud computing is a model of computing in which programs run remotely in a data center consisting of many computers. In this model, a company of a department within a company is in charge of running programs owned by others.
The charge in this model is usually based on the amount of usage. In this regard, you can compare a cloud computing data center with a power generator.
There are several benefits in Cloud Computing which I enumerate a few here:
1. Reliability: Companies which offer Cloud Computing have a team of IT professionals as well as hardware and software resources to guarantee a high up time. Also, they provide data redundancy and backup which are crucial to a reliable service.
2. Scalability: You can run your programs in large scale in Cloud. Data centers with large number of servers can run numerous copies of your service.
3. Elasticity: Some of the Cloud offers enable to change the size of your service on demand. That is you can increase the power of your service in occasions where you or your customers need it more. In a non-Cloud model, you need to buy new servers to achieve this goal and once it is done, it is hard to down-size again. In a Cloud approach, this could be just a matter of configuration change.
4. Cost Saving: In non-Cloud world, running a service with above specifications is highly expensive. You need to hire a large operations team and pay a lot to buy hardware and software. This is not usually affordable by small companies. Also, large companies may prefer to delegate all the complications around running such a service to another company and instead focus on their core business. Therefore, Cloud Computing can be a desirable model for both small and large venues.
Some field experts believe that as Microprocessors and PCs, and Computer Networks and Internet, Cloud Computing is another breakthrough in computer industry. For more information, refer to the following references:
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| Wikipedia | We're all in |
Windows Azure Platform |
Being the most well-known in the computer software industry and having enormous amount of resources and technology, it is no surprise that Microsoft is one of the key players in the area of Cloud Computing. As explained in its dedicated website for the cloud,
Microsoft has taken a comprehensive approach to the cloud. Many of its products such as Exchange, Sharepoint, Office and Dynamic CRM already have Cloud offering and the others are actively working on it. But, the most important Microsoft offering in the cloud is with its Windows Azure platform:
A set of platform technologies to enable companies and individuals to put their own services on the Cloud.
The Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.
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| Windows Azure Platform | Microsoft Exchange Online | Microsoft SharePoint Online |
| Microsoft Online Services | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |
Windows Azure |
Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters.
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| Windows Azure |
Sql Azure |
Microsoft SQL Azure Database is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required.
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| Sql Azure |
Azure Platform AppFabric |
Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric enable users to build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud.
Windows Azure platform AppFabric, formerly called ".NET Services", helps developers connect applications and services in the cloud or on-premises. This includes applications running on Windows Azure, Windows Server and a number of other platforms including Java, Ruby, PHP and others. It provides a Service Bus for connectivity across network and organizational boundaries, and Access Control for federated authorization as a service.
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| Windows Azure AppFabric |
Access Control Service |
Access Control Service (ACS) which is the service I am personally involved in creating is used to secure web services. It provides federated authorization for resources on the web.
A service owner configures Access Control via Management Service API or command-line tool. Configuration includes defining a set of rules which map user's input claims into ACS issued output claims. In fact, ACS is a claim-based authorization service for third-party services and applications so called Relying Party.
Once ACS is configured, users can go to the Token Service (STS) endpoint and present a token including a set of input claims. STS will then verifies the Issuer of the token and maps claims. The result will be another token which can be sent to the Relying Party.
ACS currently supports a REST based protocol so called as OAUTH WRAP as well as SAML. The next versions of ACS will support SOAP based protocols such as WS_Federation and WS_Trust.
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Service Bus |
Service Bus helps to provide secure connectivity between loosely-coupled services and applications, enabling them to navigate firewalls or network boundaries and to use a variety of communication patterns. Services that register on Service Bus can easily be discovered and accessed, across any network topology.
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