Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud platform. It was unveiled on October 27, 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) in Los Angeles, where chief software architect Ray Ozzie announced it under the name “Windows Azure” as the foundation of a broader “Azure Services Platform.” Microsoft’s own announcement described it as the “bedrock underneath all of Microsoft’s service offerings for consumers and business alike,” combining hosted compute, scalable storage, and networking with database, identity, and developer services.
At launch Windows Azure was part of a wider platform that bundled Microsoft SQL Services, .NET Services, Live Services, and SharePoint and Dynamics CRM Services. From the start it was designed to let developers deploy applications either in the cloud or on-premises using existing Microsoft tools such as the .NET Framework and Visual Studio, as well as open-source technologies.
Following a community technology preview, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Azure and SQL Azure on February 1, 2010 in 21 countries. The official blog post described the date as “a significant milestone” and noted that thousands of customers had moved from preview to production with full service-level agreements, citing early adopters such as the forecasting startup Lokad. The platform was later renamed Microsoft Azure.
Today Azure is the second-largest public cloud provider after Amazon Web Services. Its close integration with Windows Server, Active Directory, SQL Server, and the .NET stack has made it a default choice for many enterprises already invested in Microsoft software, while also offering Linux, open-source, and container workloads.