“Windows Azure for Start-ups” is an incremental guide that will take you from the essentials of the Windows Azure platform up to the realization of your own cloud services running on the platform. You will learn how to apply different technologies of the Windows Azure platform with the help of examples all focusing on one single fictitious start-up scenario.

This book is centred around a fictitious company called Geotopia that wants to build a brand new social network by using the Windows Azure platform. It will take the reader from the theory and rationale behind Windows Azure right to building services and coding C#.

The books starts by outlining the concepts of Windows Azure. It then demonstrates how to set up a development environment and how to build your application by using different storage mechanisms, applying different features from the Windows Azure platform and ending with the newest features explained from the latest release.

Windows Azure for Startups will help you take full advantage of the Windows Azure platform and bring your new service online as quickly as possible.

What you will learn from this book

Understand all the concepts and features of Windows Azure
Prepare your Visual Studio environment for building Windows Azure services
Learn to use Windows Azure storage like Blobs, Tables and Queues
Integrate your services with popular identity providers like Facebook
Leverage the power of Service Bus technology into your own service
Implement common scenarios such as supporting existing user stores, user sign up, and supporting AJAX requests
Learn the billing principles behind the different features of Windows Azure and how to keep track of the bill
Understand SQL Database and bring the power of a relational database to the cloud

Approach
This book follows a step-by-step approach with clear transparent instructions, screenshots and code samples.

Who this book is written for
This book is intended for Microsoft .NET developers who want to leverage the power of cloud and build a brand new service from scratch; it assumes a basic understanding of the .NET framework and C#.