There’s been tons of blog posts, articles, video interviews and general opinion on Azure this week. And understandably so, since this will likely be looked back on as one of the biggest turning points for Microsoft in their entire history.

An interesting point to note in the posts has been how so many have written about their understanding of what Azure is, without taking the time to actually read up on it. So, we’ve seen videos with people being interviewed about their reactions and thoughts on what it will include, how it might be applied, and how to use it. This is very strange. Why? Because everything you need to know is clearly articulated here on the Azure site. There’s even a whitepaper covering all the minute details.

We’re going to dive into it a little in this post, but as a general community service here’s the links you need to read:

• What is Azure?
• Why use Azure?
• Azure and Software plus Services
• Pricing and Licensing

You’ll notice that all four of these links come from Microsoft’s own Azure site. Amazing! Microsoft actually explaining what they are are doing. Who’d have thought?

Well, us actually. But apparently not most of the journalists and prominent commentators. But enough of our complaining.

Digging into Azure

If you are too lazy or time poor to read through the site (even the FAQ) then here’s the essentials you need to know.

Here’s the pretty diagram everyone has been using (straight from the Azure site)

Obviously the first thing you notice is that there is an operating system component – called Windows Azure – and a bunch of services. The combination of the services and the operating system are collectively referred to as the Azure Services Platform or more simply just: Azure.

Azure is all hosted in Microsoft’s data centers and is their cloud offering. It’s basically a cloud services platform. It’s reasonably open in the protocols it supports, and whilst initially targeting .NET and Microsoft developers, is designed to support other platforms in the future (eg Ruby and PHP).

Windows Azure – the operating system part – is what was referred to last month as Microsoft’s Cloud OS (and even Windows Strata for a time). It is all the glue that manages resources in the cloud.

The rest are the services. Live Services is a growing area, and one that will become prevalent on all devices. The .NET services and SQL services are no real surprise to watchers of the space. Even SharePoint services is an understandable offering since Microsoft is pushing SharePoint big time these days.

The one that caught us by surprise was the inclusion of Microsoft CRM in Azure collection.

Yes, hosted CRM is here and logical, but adding a complete service component for CRM in the Azure space is interesting. It shows that Microsoft is placing a big bet on CRM – a component that has had numerous adoption problems in the corporate space. Perhaps this will be its break out opportunity. We know many companies have changed their strategy on CRM in the last week, from having it as a minor piece of their consulting work, to now being an important strategic practice.

Our opinion: Microsoft has changed the game completely. This is a revolution. Amazon and others have been providing excellent token offerings (eg with EC2) leading up to this point in time. But now Microsoft has come in and demonstrated they have the vision, capability and passion to completely dominate the cloud. They’ve been at it for a while, and now its time to get on board. We are in awe.