in case you were not paying attention, during the opening keynote at pdc ray ozzie announced our cloud services platform, azure services platform (formerly codenamed “strata”). i am super excited about this since i have been making the speaking tour on the windows live platform. azure takes this to a new level with a comprehensive development service, consistent programming model on-premises and in the cloud, a familiar development environment, and control and customizability. azure does all this and does this well.
windows azure is a component of the azure services platform that extends the windows environment to the cloud for developers who want service hosting, scalable storage, and automated service management of their software applications.
pay attention to more announcements from pdc to see where we are taking azure now and into the future.

update. mary jo just posted an in-depth look at what azure is. check it out here: blogs.zdnet.com/…/microsoft