Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Phone 7 at TechEd 2010

Here is the summary of the announcements made at TechEd 2010:

SQL Azure

50 GB database option will be available on June 28th; until now only 1 GB and 10GB
SQL Azure Development Accelerator Core subscription allows 50GB databases at 25% discount; this 6 month offer will be available on August 1st
SQL Azure support for Spatial Data types like Geography and Geometry and Spatial Data queries within T-SQL query language. This will be available at the next service upgrade which will happen in a few weeks.
Data Sync Service for SQL Azure allows the synchronization of distributed data across multiple data centers. This is available as a CTP at https://www.sqlazurelabs.com.
Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager(SSWM) is a web based database management tool that will be available as a CTP in summer 2010
Access 10 connectivity support for natively connecting to cloud based SQL Azure

Windows Azure

New Windows Azure Tools + SDK

Full support for Visual Studio 2010 RTM
.NET 4 support
Cloud Storage Explorer to display read-only view of Azure Storage from within Visual Studio Server Explorer
Deploy Azure applications directly from Visual Studio
Service monitoring to track the state of deployed services from the Visual Studio Server Explorer
IntelliTrace support for services running in the cloud to simplify the process of debugging. More details at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jnak/archive/2010/05/27/using-intellitrace-to-debug-windows-azure-cloud-services.aspx

Production launch of Windows Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Azure CDN is available in 19 locations globally – United States, Europe, Asia, and North American Locations
Supports public web content (e.g. images, javascript files, downloadable media clips, etc.) caching at the edge locations. Only progressive downloads and no streaming media in this version
Billing starts on July 1st and the following are the pricing details:

Windows Azure OS Auto-upgrade Feature

Service developers and operators now can configure for auto-upgrade to the latest OS version. See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee924680%28v=MSDN.10%29.aspx for list of Azure guest OS versions.
The upgrades are done in place and does it according to the “upgrade domain” concept. It doesn’t do all services instance VMs at once
The guest OS version can be configured on the Azure portal or through <ServiceConfigiration> supplied during deployment. More details at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee758710(v=MSDN.10).aspx

Windows Phone 7

In addition to reaffirming the Windows Phone 7 strategy Microsoft announced the following enterprise features:

Integrates with SharePoint through the SharePoint Workspace client
Windows Phone 7 supports IT managed EAS policies such asRequire Password, Password Strength, Remote Wipe and Reset to Factory Settings with multiple failed unlock attempts.
Supports secure access to on-premise applications and network resources using Forefront Universal Access Gateway (UAG).
Support mobile access to BPOS from Outlook Mobile and the Office Hub

Hope this helps.

- Hanu

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