Taking the Bus to the next stop... Why you, Dev and IT, should be looking at the Windows Azure Pack.

In the Cloud - What’s New in 2012 R2: Enabling Modern Apps with the Windows Azure Pack

Don’t let the title fool you – this post is critically important for Developers and IT pros.

The reason I call out this warning up front is that often, when I’m speaking at conferences around the world, as soon as I start to discuss the developer perspective and developer tools, many IT Pros in the room starts playing Angry Birds while they wait for the developer section to be over.

Why is it so important for IT Pros to understand how modern applications are built? The answer is simple: IT Pros are the ones who build and operate the infrastructure that hosts these applications, and, the more you know about how these applications are built, the better you will understand their platform requirements.

That’s the tactical reason. There is also a strategic reason.

If your organization is not already in the process of defining it’s cloud strategy – it soon will be. You need to be a contributor and leader in these conversations. By mastering today’s topics, you can become a part of the conversation and define the long-term solution, rather than someone who is simply reacting to decisions they were not a part of making.

The future of the IT Pro role will require you to know how applications are built for the cloud, as well as the cloud infrastructures where these apps operate, is something every IT Pro needs in order to be a voice in the meetings that will define an organization’s cloud strategy. IT pros are also going to need to know how their team fits in this cloud-centric model, as well as how to proactively drive these discussions.

These R2 posts will get you what you need, and this “Enable Modern Business Apps” pillar will be particularly helpful.

Throughout the posts in this series we have spoken about the importance of consistency across private, hosted and public clouds, and we’ve examined how Microsoft is unique in its vision and execution of delivering consistent clouds. The Windows Azure Pack is a wonderful example of Microsoft innovating in the public cloud and then bringing the benefits of that innovation to your datacenter.

The Windows Azure Pack is – literally speaking – a set of capabilities that we have battle-hardened and proven in our public cloud. These capabilities are now made available for you to enhance your cloud and ensure that “consistency across clouds” that we believe is so important.

A major benefit of the Windows Azure Pack is the ability to build an application once and then deploy and operate it in any Microsoft Cloud – private, hosted or public.

This kind of flexibility means that you can build an application, initially deploy it in your private cloud, and then, if you want to move that app to a Service Provider or Azure in the future, you can do it without having to modify the application. Making tasks like this simple is a major part of our promise around cloud consistency, and it is something only Microsoft (not VMware, not AWS) can deliver.

This ability to migrate an app between these environments means that your apps and your data are never locked in to a single cloud. This allows you to easily adjust as your organization’s needs, regulatory requirements, or any operational conditions change.

A big part of this consistency and connection is the Windows Azure Service Bus which will be a major focus of today’s post.

The Windows Azure Service Bus has been a big part of Windows Azure since 2010. I don’t want to overstate this, but Service Bus has been battle-hardened in Azure for more than 3 years, and now we are delivering it to you to run in your datacenters. To give you a quick idea of how critical Service Bus is for Microsoft, consider this: Service Bus is used in all the billing for Windows Azure, and it is responsible for gathering and posting all the scoring and achievement data to the Halo 4 leaderboards (now that is really, really important – just ask my sons!). It goes without saying that the people in charge of Azure billing and the hardcore gamers are not going to tolerate any latency or downtime getting to their data.

With today’s topic, take the time to really appreciate the app development and app platform functionality in this R2 wave. I think you’ll be really excited about how you can plug into this process and lead your organization.

This post, written by Bradley Bartz, a Principal Program Manager from Windows Azure, will get deep into these new features and the amazing scenarios that the Windows Azure Pack and Windows Azure Service Bus enable. As always in this 2012 R2 series, check out the “Next Steps” at the bottom of this for links to additional information about the topics covered in this post.\

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We’ve listened closely to our customers and focused on improving the following 3 core scenarios with the Service Bus 1.1 for Windows Server and the Windows Azure Pack:

Application Messaging Patterns with Service Bus
With Service Bus we support basic as well as advanced messaging patterns for use in modern applications. With this release we’ve also added new messaging capabilities, additional protocols, and simplified APIs to enable developers to write better applications faster.

Manage Messaging entities across clouds
Whether you’re developing for the public cloud, private cloud, or a hosted cloud (with your service provider), developers will be able to write applications once and then use it anywhere within these clouds – without needing to recompile. This can be done by simply changing an entry in the configuration file.

Offering Alternatives with Service Bus
Whether you are an Independent Software Vendor developing software and services for others, an enterprise which deploys home-grown applications, or a developer looking for an easy to deploy messaging component, you can use Service Bus in your topology. With this release we’ve improved the hosting capabilities for enterprises and service providers enabling new hosting topologies.

Don't usually see this kind of dev depth on TechNet. And also since it's on one o f my favorite topic's, Private Clouds, couldn't resist... If you're build LOB app's, take a peek at this article. It's take the bus to the next stop... (title!)