Official release of Windows Azure Mobile service and Windows Azure Web site

We strive to innovate and provide developers with a diverse platform to build the best cloud applications and provide them to customers around the world at the first time. Many new applications are "modern applications" that are always web-based and can be accessed through a variety of mobile devices. Today, with the official release of the Windows Azure Mobile service and the Windows Azure Web site (GA), we have taken a big step towards that goal.

Windows Azure Mobile Services

Mobile services speed up and simplify the process of creating a mobile backend for a variety of devices. Mobile services simplify user authentication, push notifications, server-side data, and business logic, so you can quickly push your mobile applications to market. Mobile services provide the Native SDK and REST APIs for Windows Store, Windows Phone, Android, IOS, and HTML5.

From today, the mobile service is officially released (GA), offering three versions-free, standard and advanced. Standard and advanced editions are measured by the number of API calls, and these two versions of the monthly SLA are up to 99.9%, allowing you to avoid worries. You can click here to view the full details of the new pricing. The three versions of mobile services are available free of charge before August 1, 2013, in order to make it easier for customers to choose the version that suits their applications. During this time, the SQL database and storage will still be billed separately.

In addition, with Best-in-class support for mobile services with the Visual Studio 2013 preview, building a Windows 8.1 application to connect to mobile services has become ever simpler, and customers can also enable Gzip compression between services and clients.

Companies such as Yatterbox, Sly Fox, Verdens Gang, Redbit, and TalkTalk Business have started building applications that distribute content across a variety of devices and provide the latest information.

Developers can also combine the use of Windows Azure Mobile services with Third-party services provided by their favorite partners, such as New Relic, SendGrid, Twilio, and Xamarin.

Windows Azure Web site

Windows Azure Web site is the quickest way to build, scale, and manage enterprise-class WEB applications. Windows Azure is open and flexible, supporting multiple languages and frameworks (including ASP.net, PHP, node.js, and Python), multiple open source applications (including WordPress and Drupal) and even multiple databases. ASP.net developers can easily create new Web sites or move existing sites directly from within Visual Studio to Windows Azure.

In addition, we are very pleased to announce the official release (GA) standard version of Windows Azure website (formerly known as the reserved edition) and the Free edition. The standard version of the month SA up to 99.9%, so you get rid of worries. The trial version of the 33% discount offered on the standard Windows Azure Web site expires on August 1, 2013. The web site that runs on the shared version is still in beta, without any changes. Please visit our Pricing page to fully understand all pricing changes.

Service updates for the standard version of Windows Azure Web site include:

Continue to promote innovation in existing services

Automatic scaling, alerting and monitoring preview version

Windows Azure now offers a number of features that help you better understand the health of your application. With these features available in the preview, you can monitor the health and availability of your applications, receive notifications when service availability changes, perform event-based events, and scale automatically according to your current needs.

The preview version provides the availability, monitoring, automatic scaling, and alerting of Windows Azure Web sites, cloud services, and virtual machines. The preview version provides alert and monitoring capabilities for mobile services. The use of these features during the trial period is not an additional charge.

Provides a new Windows Azure virtual machine image

SQL Server 2014 and Windows server R2 preview images are available in the virtual Machine mirroring Library. Windows Server R2 is the core of Microsoft's vision for cloud operating systems, offering a number of new features and enhancements in storage, networking, access, and information protection. You can start using Windows server R2 and SQL Server 2014 by simply configuring a preset image from the Mirror library. During the preview version, these images can enjoy a 33% discount. You only need to pay for the time (in minutes) that you use.

Windows Azure Active Directory preemptive

Scott Guthrie first revealed the future enhancements of Windows Azure Active Directory in a keynote address to//build today. We are collaborating with third parties, such as Box, so that they can use Windows Azure Active Directory to provide a single sign-on (SSO) experience for their users. If you need a higher level of security, you can use Active authentication for multiple authentication. If you are an ISV and want to integrate with Windows Azure Active Directory for SSO, please fill out a short questionnaire to tell us.

MSDN subscribers do not need to provide credit cards

Windows Azure is an important development and testing platform that provides developers with computing power that may not be available in an internal deployment. Previously, at the TechEd conference in 2013, we announced a new Windows Azure MSDN policy, such as currency credit, price reduction, and the use of MSDN software on Windows Server without charge, and so on. Now, most MSDN customers can activate their Windows Azure offers in an enterprise account without having to enter a credit card number, so getting this offer is easier.

Today's announcement further confirms our commitment to developers to help build modern applications through continuous platform and infrastructure service innovation. We expect to see more of our new features and exciting updates in the near future, but at the same time we encourage you to participate and build, watch//build/meetings live, and in Windows Azure forums and Stack Overflow to find the answer to the question.

Steven Martin

Windows Azure

Manager