The Windows® Azure™ Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Windows Azure Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

Who Benefits From the Windows Azure Platform?

The Windows Azure Platform is designed to help developers easily create applications for the web and connected devices. The services platform offers the greatest flexibility, choice, and control in reaching users and customers while using existing skills.

Easy developer on-ramp to the cloud – Millions of developers worldwide already use the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio development environment. Utilize those same skills to create cloud-enabled applications that can be written, tested, and deployed all from Visual Studio. In the near future developers will be able to deploy applications written on Rubyon Rails and Python as well.

Enables Agile & Rapid Results – Applications can be deployed to the Windows Azure Platform with the click of a button. Changes can be made quickly and without downtime, making it an ideal platform for affordably experimenting and trying new ideas.

Imagine and Create New User Experiences – The Windows Azure Platform enables you to create web, mobile, or hybrid-applications that use the cloud with on-premises applications. Combined with Live Services ability to reach over 400 million Live users, new opportunities exist to interact and reach users in new ways.

Standards-Based Compatibility – The services platform supports industry-standard protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, RSS, and AtomPub, for consuming, exposing, and integrating with third-party services. You can easily integrate applications built on a variety of different technologies and operating systems.

Benefits for Business

he Windows Azure Platform offers a range of businesses flexibility, control, and an affordable solution for running Web-scale applications. The services reduce tedious and expensive infrastructure management and planning and are built with security and reliability in mind, along with the option of a pay-as-you-go model.

Whether you’re a software vendor, corporate IT group, or a start-up, by using the services platform you can focus on your business and the needs of your customers.

Simplify Capacity Planning – Additional computing and services capacity can be available for your needs, eliminating the need for planning, purchasing, and provisioning expensive hardware to meet unpredictable spikes in usage.

Simple Infrastructure Management – The services platform manages critical operating system updates and management tasks, giving you control of the environment while letting you focus on the needs of your users.

Give New Life To Existing Investments – The services platform can be used to provide new capabilities to existing on-premises and Web applications. The Windows Azure Platform can be integrated into existing applications or used to expose on-premises application services to consumers, business partners, or other organizations.

I’ve worked with osCommerce and its derivatives for quite some time now. So had the architects of the Magento shopping cart before they came up with the idea of building a completely new Open Source shop cart. Given that osCommerce is widely considered to be the most popular Open Source cart, and that it has at last count 4766 community contributions from its 178,210 members you might wonder why they felt the need for a new cart. It is a good question, and here are my comments on one aspect of the question.

osCommerce has a very minimal release schedule. The Open Source philosophy of “Release Early, Release Often” is just not on the agenda. The last few releases have been backports of new code with minimal impact in terms of business features available in the cart.

Magento has, thus far, offered frequent releases offering significant new functionality long requested by members of the osCommerce community. Data export tools and a much improved backend are only the beginning – the difference is just huge. osCommerce is rather undocumented – and certainly so in terms of official documentation released by the designer. It has a person (one) responsible for developing or leading development of documentation – but little if any cohesive information pertinent to the current release. osCommerce does have established (if poorly understood) API’s for module development and a large body of shipping, payment and order total modules exists.

Magento has selected a professional PHP development framework on which to base development – offloading part of the development and documentation cost while taking advantage of organizations known for excellence in training. Varien has made an effort to get documentation in place with a wiki which, if not regularly maintained, does offer documentation by development team members which can be used to build shipping and payment modules. These are certainly very reasonable areas of focus for a project in this stage of its life cycle, and the practice bodes well for the future.

The osCommerce website features an active community forum with many involved community members. Quite a few of those members are technically accomplished and offer willing assistance. But there is little to no participation from the project members – announcements are few and far between and while many fans of the project constantly urge new members to wait for the 3.0 release of osCommerce – the 3 year wait for a release strains their credibility to the breaking point. If not further.

The Magento website encourages participation and has many actively involved members from both the community AND the project. The rapid move from the 0.7 release to a full 1.0 release is a welcome change. While it has resulted in some lag between semi-official Wiki postings on the APIs intermittent postings and updates by official developers offers a new hope that finally some balance between progress and stability will be available in an Open Source eCommerce project.

By now, the picture should be clear. You could say that the single biggest problem faced by the osCommerce community is the lack of an osCommerce project. Lacking this challenge, even the technical difficulties related to an EAV based database management scheme and the high demand for buzzword compliance placed on Magento coders is unlikely to hold this new kid on the block back for long.