Introductory Special to the Windows Azure Platform

The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. No need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t.

Reading about the Windows Azure Platform is one thing, building and deploying your first application onto the platform is a different thing. As such we have created a small roadmap or instruction set if you want in explaining and helping you with just doing that. Follow below steps in learning, creating and deploying your first application onto the Windows Azure Platform, in an easy and free of charge way:

1. Download the Tools:

Get Visual Studio Express and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio to start building and debugging applications for the Windows Azure Platform https://tinyurl.com/learnaboutazure . If you have already Visual Studio installed you can download the tools directly from https://tinyurl.com/toolsforazure .

2. Setup an Account:

Set up an account and obtain a free subscription for accessing the online portals for Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Azure AppFabric. You can learn more about the accounts https://tinyurl.com/getazureaccount or you can sign up directly https://tinyurl.com/signupazureaccount .

3. Create your First application and Deploy it on the Windows Azure Platform:

First learn how to create a simple ASP.NET application in Visual Studio for Windows Azure on your local machine https://tinyurl.com/localazureapplication . Once successfully created, learn how to deploy this application on the Windows Azure Platform https://tinyurl.com/deployazureapplication .

When all steps are executed successfully you should have running your first application on the Windows Azure Platform!