Windows Azure Commercial Release this year!

After conferring with several Microsoft Windows Azure Speakers and Azure Project Managers at TechEd last week, I was able to ferret out a tentative release schedule for Windows Azure.

• Azure Platform and Services – Commercial Release on track for PDC this year (Nov 2009)
• Visual Studio 2010 – On track to be released at PDC this year.  (Nov 2009)
• Window Azure pricing and Service Level Agreements on track for a July 2009 announcement.
• SQL Server Data Services Relational Data  – Beta this summer, release expected by the end of 2009.
• Visual Studio 2010 Public Beta – Available in the next couple of weeks.

This is good news.  In just a couple of months we’ll have a good idea of what “Cloud Services” will cost and this will determine it’s viability for Small, Medium and Enterprise customers.  Without this information, it becomes impossible to plan ahead or convince potential customers to invest in Cloud Services development.   Also,  with a release date in sight and, hopefully, a stabilization of features, we can focus the the potential uses for this new technology instead of looking into the ever changing feature list.

Keep in mind that these dates are speculative and may change depending on bug feedback to Microsoft.  However,  each Speaker or Project Manager that would give me a timeline stated that Azure and VS 2010 was on track for release around PDC this year.

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