Bringing Windows Azure to more devices

More and more applications that are being built today touch the cloud in some way, shape or form. It could be as simple as consuming a service or some data that resides on the cloud. It could be writing parts of the app logic on the cloud. In a world where we believe in a set of connected experiences across a variety of devices, the cloud plays an integral role.

I have been talking for a while now about Windows Azure as a great back-end for application experiences that span multiple platforms and devices. Putting data and logic within Azure services means each device application you write has less unique code so you can reach more consumers, faster.

Today, we’re introducing a set of toolkits to further enable developers to build device applications that take advantage of Windows Azure with the Windows Azure Toolkits for Devices. Windows Azure Toolkits for Devices includes native libraries, samples, and documentation for Windows Phone, iOS, and, coming this summer, Android.

Earlier this year we released Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 to make it easier to build Windows Phone 7 applications that leverage services running in Windows Azure. We continue to iterate on this, and the next release of the toolkit will be available in the coming weeks at TechEd North America 2011. You can learn more about the future plans.

Released today, the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is designed to help developers targeting iOS to use Windows Azure services. It includes an open source Objective-C library to interface with Windows Azure services, documentation, and a sample application using the library. You can download the samples and documentation from github, along with the library and its source, or learn more about the details.

  • Windows Azure Toolkit for Android

Android developers will have their own version of the toolkit available in preview form later this summer.

All the toolkits are free and open source.

Namaste!