Azure: QuickStarts, Get started with designing cloud based apps

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If you want to prove to yourself that an MSDN subscription is worth the money, then there is no better way than to use the Free Azure Subscription process at Azure.Microsoft.com and get signed up.  At the end of the 30 days, I think you will be pretty certain that the money spend on an MSDN subscription will get you enough benefits to pay back the subscription costs!  Check out the Visual Studio Professional subscription, which at an MSRP of $1199 US might seem high, but what do you get?  Most of all of the things you know about and quite a few that you don’t know about.  For instance: You get up to $150/month access to Azure (it may vary upward, but that is quite a bit of Azure), that is worth $1500 a year, so you get a payback right there! 

Now let’s say you want to see what it takes to be a hard core Azure programmer, and these jobs are in demand right now.  So let’s get you started:

Download and install Visual Studio Community 2013 or 2015, VS 2015 is interesting as it going to support Salesforce Connected Services, which I think is a great example of how Microsoft is working better with other companies!  But for now let’s stay focused on Azure and IOT.  Or for this blog Azure.

When you download the Community 2013/15 version of VS you get a number of QuickStart project templates that work right out of the box!  This is nice since, I don’t know about you, but often because of changes in one side or the other things break.  With the new process of continuous deployment, these kinds of breakages, hopefully, will end.

So for the series of blogs that I will be writing about Azure you will need to do the following:

  • Get a “Free” Azure account, which means you will also receive 10 free websites that stay active after the end of your free subscription at
  • Get your Community Version of Visual Studio,  for the series I would recommend Visual Studio Community 2013, and get this at:

In my next blog we will discuss how to use the Azure QuickStarts to get started with your new career!