Windows Azure Platform Appliance

Delivering the power of the Windows Azure Platform to your datacenter.

Windows Azure™ platform appliance is a turnkey cloud platform that customers can deploy in their own datacenter, across hundreds to thousands of servers. The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware. This hardware will be delivered by a variety of partners.

The appliance is designed for service providers, large enterprises and governments and provides a proven cloud platform that delivers breakthrough datacenter efficiency through innovative power, cooling and automation technologies.

WASHINGTON — July 12, 2010 — During its annual Worldwide Partner Conference, top executives from Microsoft Corp. talked with more than 14,000 attendees about the impact of cloud computing and the myriad of ways it will enable partners to deliver compelling new services to their customers. The company made several announcements, including the introduction of the Windows Azure platform appliance, the first turnkey cloud services platform for deployment in customer and service provider datacenters. Dell Inc., eBay Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and HP are early adopters of a limited production release of the appliance.

#Azure #privatecloud coming to your datacenter

[…] Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates suggested during a television interview that rumors of the company's death in the tablet PC space were, at best, premature. His comments followed a week in which Microsoft announced the death of its long-rumored Courier project, which centered on a dual-touch-screen device in a folding book-like format, and in which further scuttlebutt had it that Hewlett-Packard had decided to eliminate a Windows 7-powered "Slate" tablet PC from its upcoming lineup. "Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we're pursuing," Gates said, according to a Fox Business Network transcript quoted by TechFlash. "We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also [use to] create documents at the same time." […]

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