Microsoft and the era of the cloud OS
Built on decades of experience gleaned from running massive datacenters at scale, Windows Server 2012 is the cloud-optimized server OS for customers of all sizes, and Windows Azure, updated with new services and features, delivers both infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service capabilities.
Built to complement each other with consistent development, management and identity, they make it easier to create, migrate, deploy and manage applications across public, private and hybrid clouds.
To ease customers’ transitions to the cloud, Microsoft underscored the release candidate of Windows Server 2012, recent updates to Windows Azure and the release of Windows Intune. Together, these new releases make it even easier for customers to leverage one modern operating system across public, private and hybrid clouds and manage a multitude of devices connected to those clouds.
Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC). Released May 31, 2012, the Windows Server 2012 RC is available for customers to download and evaluate today. Advancements in storage, networking and scalability have been drawn from Microsoft’s experience running public cloud services.
Windows Azure. Windows Azure is newly updated with preview support for Virtual Machine and Virtual Network, support for Windows and Linux images, and additional support for Java and Python.
Windows Intune. The next release of Windows Intune includes expanded management and security benefits through mobile device management and adds people-centric management capabilities and upgrade rights to the latest version of Windows.
Enabling developers with cloud tools
To streamline and accelerate application development and deployment, Microsoft Team Foundation Service, an application lifecycle management tool hosted on Windows Azure, is now even easier for teams to integrate into their development process.
Team Foundation Service features collaboration tools, a code repository, and powerful reporting and traceability tools to help teams more effectively manage software development. Beginning today, a public preview of Team Foundation Service is available here.
To help developers and IT professionals build immersive experiences that scale across devices and the cloud, the company announced that Microsoft LightSwitch, an easy-to-use development tool for quickly building applications, will now render HTML5. Integrating HTML5 into LightSwitch will enable developers using the tool to target any device or platform supporting HTML5.