Windows Azure AppFabric Goes Commercial April 9

Windows Azure platform AppFabric will be commercially available on a paid and fully SLA-supported basis on April 9.

You can find our pricing for AppFabric here. You can also go to the pricing section of our FAQs for additional information as well as our pricing blog post.

For more information, see Announcing upcoming commercial availability of Windows Azure platform AppFabric.

About Windows Azure AppFabric

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric provides secure connectivity as a service to help developers bridge cloud, on-premises, and hosted deployments. You can use AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control to build distributed and federated applications as well as services that work across network and organizational boundaries.

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.

You can use Service Bus to connect Windows Azure applications and SQL Azure databases with existing applications and databases. It is often used to bridge on and off-premises applications or to create composite applications.

Service Bus lets you expose apps and services through firewalls, NAT gateways, and other problematic network boundaries. So your could connect to an application behind a firewall or one where your customer does not even expose the application as an endpoint. You can use Service Bus to lower barriers to building composite applications by exposing endpoints easily, supporting multiple connection options and publish and subscribe for multicasting. 

Service Bus provides a lightweight, developer-friendly programming model that supports standard protocols and extends similar standard bindings for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) programmers.

It blocks malicious traffic and shields your services from intrusions and denial-of-service attacks.

See Windows Azure platform AppFabric on MSDN.

Access Control

Access Control helps you build federated authorization into your applications and services, without the complicated programming that is normally required to secure applications that extend beyond organizational boundaries. With its support for a simple declarative model of rules and claims, Access Control rules can easily and flexibly be configured to cover a variety of security needs and different identity-management infrastructures.

You can create user accounts that federate a customer's existing identity management system that uses Active Directory service, other directory systems, or any standards-based infrastructure. With Access Control, you exercise complete, customizable control over the level of access that each user and group has within your application. It applies the same level of security and control to Service Bus connections

Identity is federated using access control through rule based authorization that enable your applications to respond as if the user accounts were managed locally. As a developer you use a lightweight developer-friendly programming model based on the Microsoft .NET Framework and Windows Communication Foundation to build the access rules based on your domain knowledge. The flexible standards-based service supports multiple credentials and relying parties.

See more about AppFabric on MSDN.

Resources

• Steps to getting started with Windows Azure App Fabric
• Download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

Whitepapers

• An Introduction to the AppFabric for Developers 
• A Developer’s Guide to Access Control for the Windows Azure platform AppFabric. This whitepaper shows developers how to use a claims-based identity model and Access Control to implement single sign-on, federated identity, and role based access control in Web applications and services.
• A Developer’s Guide to the Service Bus for the Windows Azure platform AppFabric. This whitepaper shows developers how to use the Service Bus to provide a secure, standards-based messaging fabric to connect applications across the internet.

SDK & Toolkits

• AppFabric SDK. The AppFabric SDK for Service Bus and Access Control includes API libraries, tools, samples, and documentation for building connected applications with the .NET platform.
• AppFabric SDK for Java Developers. This an interoperable open source software development kit (SDK) - set of libraries, tools, prescriptive patterns & guidance & real world sample applications that will enhance productivity for Java developers.
• AppFabric SDK for Ruby Developers. AppFabric for Ruby is an open source software development kit (SDK) that helps Ruby programs communicate with Windows Azure platform AppFabric using plain HTTP.
• AppFabric SDK for PHP Developers. AppFabric SDK for PHP Developers is an open source software development kit (SDK) that helps PHP programs communicate with Windows Azure platform AppFabric using RESTful APIs.

PDC09 Videos

• Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform by Manuvir Das
• REST Services Security Using the Microsoft .NET Access Control Service by Justin Smith
• Building Hybrid Cloud Applications with the Microsoft .NET Service Bus by Clemens Vasters
• The EnergyNet and the next Killer App, a Channel 9 interview with Juval Lowy
• Lesson Learned: Building On-Premises and Cloud Applications with the Service Bus and Windows Azure by Todd Holmquist-Sutherland

AppFabric Labs

If you’d like to try out emerging technology try out AppFabric Labs. AppFabric Labs provide a way for customers to test out and play with experimental AppFabric technologies. For more information, see Now Available: The Windows Azure platform AppFabric LABS Environment. Currently the Labs are demonstrating:

• Silverlight support.
• Multicast with Message Buffers.

About Windows Server AppFabric for On-Premises Apps

Windows Azure platform AppFabric and Windows Server AppFabric enable users to build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud. To learn more about Windows Server AppFabric for applications that run on-premises, click here. Windows Server AppFabric provides:

• Caching capabilities, formerly codenamed “Velocity”.
• Workflow and service hosting capabilities, formerly codenamed “Dublin”.

Windows Server AppFabric is available in beta now.

Also see Windows Server AppFabric CTP Updated.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation