Service Providers and their Services

The two primary cloud service providers available at this time are Amazon and Microsoft.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

• SimpleDB

Amazon SimpleDB is a web service providing the core database functions of data indexing and querying. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud, making web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

• Simple Storage Service (S3)

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

• CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content delivery. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services to give developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.

• Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) offers a reliable, highly scalable, hosted queue for storing messages as they travel between computers. By using Amazon SQS, developers can simply move data between distributed components of their applications that perform different tasks, without losing messages or requiring each component to be always available. Amazon SQS makes it easy to build an automated workflow, working in close conjunction with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and the other AWS infrastructure web services.

Microsoft Azure Services Platform

• Azure

The Azure™ Services Platform is designed to help developers quickly and easily create, deploy, manage, and distribute web services and applications on the Internet. Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

• .NET Services

Microsoft .NET Services are a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks required by many cloud-based and cloud-aware applications. Much like the .NET Framework provides higher-level class libraries that make developers more productive, .NET Services enables a developer to focus on their application logic rather than building and deploying their own cloud-based infrastructure services.

• Access Control

The Microsoft .NET Access Control Service provides an easy way to control web applications and services while integrating with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories and web identity systems such as Windows Live ID. Authorization decisions can be pulled out of the application and into a set of declarative rules that can transform incoming security claims into claims that applications understand.

• Service Bus

The Microsoft .NET Service Bus makes it easy to connect applications together over the Internet. Services that register on the Bus can easily be discovered and accessed, across any network topology. The Service Bus provides the familiar Enterprise Service Bus application pattern, while helping to solve some of the hard issues that arise when implementing this pattern across network, security, and organizational boundaries, at Internet-scale.

• Workflow

The Microsoft .NET Workflow Service is a high-scale host for running workflows in the cloud. It provides a set of activities optimized for sending, receiving, and manipulating HTTP and Service Bus messages; a set of hosted tools to deploy, manage and track the execution of workflow instances; and a set of management API’s. Workflows can be constructed using the familiar Visual Studio 2008 Workflow Designer.

• SQL Services

Microsoft® SQL Services delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. SQL Services will deliver a rich set of integrated services that you can use to perform relational queries, search, reporting, analytics, integration and synchronize data with mobile users, remote offices and business partners. Currently, SQL Services offers relational database service called Microsoft® SQL Data Services. Other services will be available in future.

• Live Services

Live Services is a set of building blocks within the Azure Services Platform for handling user data and application resources. Live Services provides developers with an easy on-ramp to build rich social applications and experiences, across a range of digital devices that can connect with one of the largest audiences on the Web.

• Sharepoint Services

In the future, developers will have access to functionality from Microsoft SharePoint® Services in the Azure Services Platform. With the flexibility to use familiar developer tools like Microsoft Visual Studio, developers will be able to rapidly build applications that use SharePoint capabilities as building blocks for their own applications. Developers can expect a breadth of SharePoint capabilities across the spectrum of on-premises and online applications using the Azure Services Platform.

• Dynamic CRM

In the future, developers will have access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionality in the Azure Services Platform. With the flexibility to use familiar developer tools like Visual Studio, developers will be able to rapidly build applications that use Microsoft Dynamics CRM capabilities as building blocks for their own applications. Developers can expect a breadth of Microsoft Dynamics CRM capabilities across the spectrum of on-premises and online applications using the Azure Services Platform.