Microsoft Shows off Cloud Computing With Azure at TechEd Conference

ORLANDO, Fla.—More than 10,000 people showed up for Microsoft’s sold out TechEd conference in Orlando, which lasted from June 11 to June 14. The annual technology conference for IT professionals and developers took an interesting course this year, honing in on mobile computing, OS Windows 8, and cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a broad term describing Web-based services. Traditionally, most corporations have data centers that house physical mainframes and servers that keep their own networks running.

Yet, with corporations trying to cut costs, cloud computing is drawing more interest. The IT evolution has taken us from the traditional in-house computers, to virtualization, to the private cloud, and now to the public cloud.

At the TechEd conference, Microsoft had many presentations, lectures, and workshops on its public cloud product, Windows Azure 2012. With Azure you can have virtualization, websites, and databases all on the cloud for a monthly fee. It also supports .Net, PHP, Java.

Azure is also scalable. For a retail store, for example, having its applications in Azure’s cloud would free up computing resources during the busy holiday season. It would also let its applications handle more transactions and take on heavier traffic. After the holiday rush, the business could scale back and choose lighter options with Azure to reduce its monthly fees.

Data stored in the cloud can also be accessed through most devices—using the Web browser on a computer or smartphone. This means companies don’t have to own and maintain servers to house these systems.

Data in the cloud is almost always kept secure through encryption, and the keys to encrypt and decrypt data are kept in a separate location, which alleviates some concerns over data security. Responsibility of encrypting and decrypting data falls on the application, not Microsoft, which merely provides the Azure platform as an infrastructure for your application.

The public cloud seems to play out well with businesses that use Microsoft products, since they can leverage their current applications. Once they’re on the cloud, they can start saving on IT costs. Microsoft is also coaxing companies with a three-month free trial of Azure.

Swee Sim has a MS in Computer Science and has worked as an IT consultant for 25 years.

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