About the Reviewers

Harsh works as a software engineer for Microsoft. He has worked on quite a few things and he feels that it still hasn't been enough for his exploration and he should keep trying new technologies and keep learning.

Besides his interest in cloud computing (read Azure) and programming in general, he likes reading and fiddling with CTF questions and ciphers. He started the HackCon (Build the Shield) event in Microsoft, which is Microsoft's version of Capture the Flag events. He is also a moody blogger and tries to keep his portfolio up to date. You can find him at http://hars.in.

I would like to thank my friends and colleagues from whom I learn every day.

Alon Fliess is the chief architect and founder of CodeValue. He got his BSc degree in electrical and computer engineering from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. He is also recognized as a Microsoft Regional Director (MRD). He is an expert in many technologies, be it Windows internals, C++ Windows programming (Win32/WinRT), .NET with C#, Windows Azure Cloud Computing, or Internet of Things (hardware and software).

Alon spends his time doing many interesting tasks such as software architecting, designing, mentoring, and programming. He is the author and technical reviewer of several computing books. Alon is an active member of several Patterns & Practices councils, among them is project Hilo—a Windows Store Application in C++/CX and XAML.

He is one of the experts in the Microsoft Israel community. He helps Microsoft clients in many technological aspects. He gives lectures at Israeli and international conferences, such as NDC, CVCon, TechEd, and more.

To Deepti Thore, who gave me the chance to review this book, and to Milton Dsouza, who had the patience to wait for me to complete the review—thank you both.

To my beloved wife, Liat, and my three children, Yarden, Saar, and Adva, thank you for all your understanding and support.

Harshwardhan Joshi lives and works in Pune and loves spending time with his wife, and pet cat named "Hulk". He calls himself "a Cloud engineer who writes APIs for a living". He has been passionately working on several Microsoft technologies from .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight, WF, and WCF to Microsoft Azure for the last 7 years and has worked on creating several exciting products. He has been working on Microsoft Azure since its inception. He currently works with RapidCircle as a Cloud Consultant. In his previous stint with Icertis, he was one of the core members responsible for building highly scalable, always available, and high performance APIs on Microsoft Azure.

You can meet him at events organized by the Pune User Group, a group for avid developers in Microsoft Technologies in Pune. He stays updated on the latest cars and engines hitting the market. He is a regular contributor to the Team-BHP forum. He can also be found on Twitter at @hjoshi.

Thanks to Packt Publishing for this amazing opportunity to review this book on Microsoft Azure. I hope you all enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed working on it. I would also like to thank my family and friends for being extremely supportive.