Introduction
This article is a part of the Windows Azure Developer Challenge, which is a competition with five challenges (or rounds). The challenges involve different Azure technologies that are relevant for very broad audience, from the hobbyist to the enterprise.
The challenges are:
- Getting Started - Not much is required here, just signing up for Azure and writing and article (the one you are reading now.).
- Build a website - Get a website running on Azure.
- Using SQL on Azure - Use the SQL Azure database in a project.
- Virtual Machines - Use Azure VM(s) in a project (both Linux and Windows VMs are available in Azure).
- Mobile access - Use Azures Mobile Services to make a project rule on mobile platforms.
What can Azure do for me?
The greatest benefit of Azure as opposed to classic webhosting is that I don't have to buy/rent what I (might) need on beforehand. I can just spin up, spin down, add service, remove service as I go and deployment is just really easy.
The Next Steps
- For the "Build a Website" challenge I will not actually build a new web site. In stead I will show you how easy it is to move an existing WordPress blog from a classical host setup to an Azure website.
- For the "using SQL on Azure" challenge I will build a data driven application in LightSwitch. I will use Azure websites (also used in the "Build a Website" challenge) for the hosting the client part of the application.
- For the "Virtual Machines" challenge I will a VM to bring spatial data (geo-data) into an application.
- For the "Mobile access" challenge I will spatial data with push notification in Azure mobile services.
History
2013 April 23rd - Created article with content for the first challenge.
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