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At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft introduced the world to Windows Azure, the "OS for the Cloud". Just like a desktop operating system abstracts from a developer concerns such as hard drive access, networking, device i/o, and other functionality developers take for granted, Windows Azure does all of that and includes other abstractions to enable scalable applications in the Cloud.
Windows Azure forms the foundation for the Azure Services Platform, which includes:
The primary benefit of Cloud Computing is that it enables what the industry calls Utility Computing, where a company pays for IT on a metered basis instead of having to invest heavily in upfront infrastructure cost.
Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform provides the added advantage of using existing knowledge of the .NET Framework technologies including WCF, WF, and ASP.NET to bring applications to the Cloud