A Look at Microsoft Azure and BPOS

Cloud computing is a hot topic, but the cloud takes many forms and cloud offerings differ from each other. This Redmond Mag articles takes a closer look at Microsoft's cloud offerings; the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and the Windows Azure Platform.

"Dharmesh Singh, a principal program manager on the Microsoft BPOS team, explains, 'BPOS is a licensing suite, a set of collaborative end-user services that runs on Windows Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server -- the same products that are available for use inside an organization.' The cloud aspect, Singh continues, is that these products are 'running in a data center on a shared, multi-tenant architecture.'

"So BPOS is a licensing package that provides the infrastructure plumbing to keep information workers productive. Windows Azure represents a different type of plumbing. It's a platform, and as such, by Singh's definition, consists of 'the foundational elements for any application stack: the operating system Windows Azure, the development framework Windows Azure Platform AppFabric [formerly known as .NET Services for Azure], and the relational SQL Azure Database service.' Singh says, 'Windows Azure is a development platform for ISVs to build applications on.' The OS component of Windows Azure is what provides the plumbing for development, service hosting and service management."

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