Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Programming for the Cloud

In This Chapter

• Figuring out what cloud computing is

• Using Visual Studio 2010 for cloud computing

• Creating applications for the cloud with Windows Azure

• Providing you application's services from the cloud

Many small and medium-sized organizations resist purchasing the software they need to enhance their productivity for the reason that the software requires a significant investment in computer hardware and personnel to administer and deploy the software. For many organizations, these costs are prohibitive. Also, if their organization grows, your customers will need more computer hardware and more personnel to manage their software deployments.

But what if your customers could use the software they need and not have to worry about managing hardware and personnel or scaling their software upward as their organization grows? In this chapter, you discover how Microsoft's Windows Azure platform lets you create your applications and deploy them on their cloud platform freeing your customers from cost-prohibitive deployment and scalability issues. With Windows Azure, your applications execute in Microsoft's data centers, and your customers use your software across the Internet.

Reaping the Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is all the rage in application development today. Everywhere you turn, people in the software industry are all talking about the cloud and how they can make their software ready for the cloud. But what is cloud computing?

Simply ...