Microsoft Delivers Beta of Azure Services

Microsoft is moving ahead with plans to add some of its new Windows Azure services to Windows Server 2012, announcing the beta release of those services on October 8. In server and Cloud Blog post officials said that their plan is to deliver the final versions of these services, which include virtual machine hosting and Web-site hosting for Windows Server, by early 2013.

Microsoft delivered a Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of these Azure services for Windows Server in July at the Worldwide Partner Conference. The coming services are aimed at service providers and hosting partners. At some point Microsoft might expand the target audience to other customers, but for now, that's the core audience. The CTPs are versions of four of the same new services that Microsoft announced in June as part of its Azure spring updates:

• Hosted virtual machines
• High-density Web Sites (the complement of Windows Azure Web Sites, codenamed "Antares")
• Service Management Portal
• Service Management application programming interface (codenamed Katal)