&quot;Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure&quot; free ebook and code (RC)

Bruno Terkaly - Developer Evangelist - bterkaly@microsoft.com - Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure–Guidance

patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance - WAAG - Part 3 - Release Candidate 2012-02-15

Snap of the cover (of the 354 page PDF);

And some snips from the Preface;

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For example, a typical application may use web and worker roles running in Windows Azure, store its data in SQL Azure, and connect to third-party services that perform tasks such as authenticating users or delivering goods to customers. However, it is not uncommon for an application to also make use of services exposed by partner organizations, or services and components that reside inside the corporate network which, for a variety of reasons, cannot be migrated to the cloud.

Applications such as this are often referred to as hybrid applications. The issues you encounter when building them, or when migrating parts of existing on-premises applications to the cloud, prompt questions such as “How can I integrate the various parts across network boundaries and domains so that all of the parts can work together to implement the complete application?” and “How do I maximize performance and availability when some parts of the application are located in the cloud?”

This guide focuses on the common issues you will encounter when building applications that run partly in the cloud and partly on-premises, or when you decide to migrate some or all elements of an existing on-premises application to the cloud. It focuses on using Windows Azure as the host environment, and shows how you can take advantage of the many features of this platform, together with SQL Azure, to simplify and speed the development of these kinds of applications.

Windows Azure provides a set of infrastructure services that can help you to build hybrid applications. These services, such as Service Bus Security, Messaging, Caching, Traffic Manager, and Azure Connect, are the main topics of this guide. The guide demonstrates scenarios where these services are useful, and shows how you can apply them in your own applications.
This guide is based on the experiences of a fictitious corporation named Trey Research who evolved their existing on-premises application to take advantage of Windows Azure. The guide does not cover the individual migration tasks, but instead focuses on the way that Trey Research utilizes the services exposed by Windows Azure and SQL Azure to manage interoperability, process control, performance, management, data synchronization, and security.

Who This Book Is For
This book is the third volume in a series Windows Azure. Volume 1, Moving Applications to the Cloud on Windows Azure, provides an introduction to Windows Azure, discusses the cost model and application life cycle management for cloud-based applications, and describes how to migrate an existing ASP.NET application to the cloud. Volume 2, Developing Applications for the Cloud on Windows Azure, discusses the design considerations and implementation details of applications that are designed from the beginning to run in the cloud. It also extends many of the areas covered in Volume 1 to provide information about more advanced techniques that you can apply in Windows Azure applications.

This third volume in the series demonstrates how you can use the powerful infrastructure services that are part of Windows Azure to simplify development; integrate the component parts of a hybrid application across the cloud, on-premises, and third-party boundaries; and maximize security, performance scalability, and availability.

This guide is intended for architects, developers, and information technology (IT) professionals who design, build, or operate applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Although applications do not need to be based on the Microsoft® Windows® operating system to operate in Windows Azure, this book is written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, the Microsoft Visual Studio® development system, ASP.NET MVC, and the Microsoft Visual C#® development language.

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For corporations, I think it's going to be Private, or at best Hybrid, Clouds that end up getting built in the coming decade. Put the private, scary stuff inside and the other out... (or primary inside and HA/DR stuff out, etc). Then again, I could be smoke crack too... :/