Windows Azure is an excellent cloud platform released by Microsoft in 2010. Azure provides both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) for building modern web applications and services. This means that it provides you the access directly to virtual machines within which you can deploy any operating system or software of your choice. This is known as IaaS. Azure also provides multiple platforms for building applications, such as Azure Web Apps or SQL Azure. These platforms are known as PaaS, since you deploy your software at a high level and do not have to deal directly with virtual machines or manage software upgrades.
Let's go over the following more common services provided by Windows Azure:
Virtual Machines: Azure provides you the access to virtual machines of all sizes. You can install practically any operating system of your choice; there are many premade distributions to choose from within Azure's gallery.
Web Apps: You can deploy...
