"Now that the initial Microsoft PDC pixie dust has settled, developers are trying to digest exactly what Microsoft’s cloud platform is. Here’s my attempt to explain it.

Microsoft layed out its “Azure” foundational infrastructure for the cloud during the keynote kick-off on day one of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) here in Los Angeles. The goal of Azure is to provide developers who want to write applications that run partially and/or entirely in a remote datacenter with a platform and set of tools."

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform: A guide for the perplexed | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com