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Michael Collier is a Windows Azure MVP and serves as a National Architect for Neudesic, a Microsoft SI partner that specializes in Windows Azure. He has nearly 11 years of experience building Microsoft-based applications for a wide range of clients. Michael spends his days serving as a developer or architect – helping clients succeed with the Microsoft development platform. He also enjoys speaking about Windows Azure at local user groups, as well as regional and national conferences. Michael is also the founder of the Central Ohio Cloud Computing User Group in Columbus, OH. You can follow Michael on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MichaelCollier and on his blog at www.MichaelSCollier.com. Michael has posted 16 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website. View Full User Profile

Here's Why Developers Should be Interested in Windows Azure

04.03.2012
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The building block services for Windows Azure are Access Control Services (ACS), Caching, and Service Bus.  These are incredibly powerful services available as part of Windows Azure.  You can use them on their own*, outside of any Windows Azure hosted applications, to enhance your existing or new applications.  They’re also great for enhancing developer productivity – because not many people want to write their own identity management, caching, or messaging layer.  These just let you consume the service and focus on your core application.

You can view the full webcast at http://www.neudesic.com/media/webcasts/20120307/20120307.wmv.

I’m making the slides available as well.

 

Windows Azure for Developers - Building Block Services
View more PowerPoint from Michael Collier

 

At the end of the webcast, a few questions came up that I mentioned I would try to provide some answers for on my blog.

Q: How to use ACS from a Silverlight application?

A: I haven’t personally tried this yet, but it seems others have.  Here are a few resources I would recommend to learn more

Q: How to use ACS with Active Directory?

A: Have a look at the “Single Sign-On from Active Directory to a Windows Azure Application Whitepaper”.

* I wouldn’t necessarily recommend using the cache service outside of Windows Azure as the network latency (going over the internet) would likely reduce any benefit of caching.

 

Published at DZone with permission of its author, Michael Collier. (source)

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