As Azure gets closer to its release date of 01 January 2010 – the biggest question is what kind of support can you get for open source systems or programs like PHP. With AWS (Amazon Web Services) you can get Linux and native PHP support, and you can do the same with Rack Space Cloud computing. Microsoft though is still focusing on the core windows systems with Azure and the Azure platform, but has added a specific series of SDK’s and modules to help Ruby, PHP and Java communicate with the Azure platform.
Azure is Microsoft’s big foray into Cloud Computing, and it is worth paying attention to not because it is novel, but that it leverages the Windows ecosystem and programmers. People will go to AWS or Rack Space because those systems exist already, making Azure a critical must win or at least get decent market share to be considered successful. One of the earliest issues I had with Azure was the lack of open source support for PHP and other systems. The release of language specific SDK’s for PHP, Ruby, Java and Eclipse helps provide support for those companies that have made the investment in something other than dot net.