Microsoft enters 2010 with the launch of its cloud operating environment. The chief software architect of Microsoft talked about Windows Azure at an event for programmers and developers conducted by the company in the United States.

Scheduled for release in January 2010, the new system will be the most scalable ever released by the company and enable individuals and companies to create cloud services.

For Microsoft, Windows Azure will serve as a development environment, hosting and management services for the Azure Services Platform. He developers to ensure on-demand computing capacity to host, scale and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data center.

To build these applications and services, professionals may use their expertise in Visual Studio 2008. In addition, the new system will support popular standards and protocols such as SOAP, REST and XML.

Windows Azure is an open platform that will support Microsoft languages ​​and environments and non-Microsoft.

Windows azure may be used for, among other things:

- Add service capabilities of existing Internet applications

- Create, modify and distribute applications on the Internet

- Create, test and distribute Web services quickly and without high costs.

See here more details on Windows Azure .