24 Nov 2008

Microsoft Azure 'provides new opportunities for IT firms'

A leading IT industry official has praised the impact of Microsoft's new Azure operating system in removing the barriers of entry for businesses looking to enter the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market.

Dan Scarfe, chief executive officer of UK software development company Dot Net Solutions, said the launch of Azure means that any firm is capable of writing a SaaS application and running it in the cloud, where Microsoft can scale it appropriately.

"That could potentially give a whole new range of businesses the opportunity to start new online services that otherwise they wouldn't have been able to," he commented.

Hosting and management services, .NET services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM services are included in the Azure operating system, details of which were presented by Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference held in Los Angeles last month.

PC or iPhone users can run software linked up to Microsoft's large cloud servers, which fulfils Microsoft's rhetoric about rich devices linking up to global services, Mr Scarfe suggested.