Windows Azure

Microsoft Azure is now generally available for our customers in China. This significant milestone makes Microsoft the first global company to make onshore public cloud services available to customers in China, through 21Vianet.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that, effective April 3, Windows Azure will be renamed Microsoft Azure. “This change reflects Microsoft’s strategy and focus on Azure as the public cloud platform for customers as well as for our own services Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Bing, OneDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live,” writes Steven Martin, Windows Azure Marketing & Operations general manager.

Eclipse is a community focused on working together on commercially friendly open source software. At EclipseCon, Microsoft has two sessions scheduled: “Cloud-Powered Apps in Minutes with Azure Mobile Services” and “Eclipse for Java Developers in the cloud – Tips, Tricks and Examples.”

Oracle software is now generally available for Windows Azure, marking “an exciting milestone as we move the partnership with Oracle to the next step,” writes Stephen B. Martin, Windows Azure marketing & operations general manager.

One of the leading tire manufacturers in the world will equip its sales and technical engineers in the field with an agile, secure and intuitive Windows 8-based mobile cloud solution supported by Windows Azure.

The Lombardia region in northern Italy has recently earned a reputation as a leader in Europe’s open data movement, launching dati.lombardia.it. Powered by the Socrata Open Data Portal running on Windows Azure, it hosts more than 430 datasets and visualizations on a range of topics, from museum locations for visitors to government spending information.