Just in case you haven’t gone through the updates for Windows Azure announced at MIX 11, below is a summary of the new services and functionalities that will be available / is currently available for Azure.

New Services and Functionality

• An update to the Windows Azure SDK that includes a Web Deployment Tool to simplify the migration, management and deployment of IIS Web servers, Web applications and Web sites. This new tool integrates with Visual Studio 2010 and the Web Platform Installer. This update will ship later today.

• Updates to the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control service, which provides a single-sign-on experience to Windows Azure applications by integrating with enterprise directories and Web identities.

• Release of the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service in the next 30 days, which will accelerate the performance of Windows Azure and SQL Azure applications.

• A community technology preview (CTP) of Windows Azure Traffic Manager, a new service that allows Windows Azure customers to more easily balance application performance across multiple geographies.

• A preview of the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming capabilities, which allows developers to upload IIS Smooth Streaming-encoded video to a Windows Azure Storage account and deliver that video to Silverlight, iOS and Android Honeycomb clients. A CTP of this service will be released by the end of this fiscal year.

Windows Azure Platform Offer Changes

• The extension of the expiration date and increases to the amount of free storage, storage transactions and data transfers in the Windows Azure Introductory Special offer. This promotional offer now includes 750 hours of extra-small instances and 25 hours of small instances of the Windows Azure service, 20GB of storage, 50K of storage transactions, and 40GB of data transfers provided each month at no charge until September 30, 2011. More information can be found here.
  • An existing customer who signed up for the original Windows Azure Introductory Special offer will get a free upgrade as of today. An existing customer who signed up for a different offer (other than the Windows Azure Introductory Special) would need to sign up for the updated Windows Azure Introductory Special Offer separately.

• MSDN Ultimate and Premium subscribers will benefit from increased compute, storage and bandwidth benefits for Windows Azure. More information can be found here.

• The Cloud Essentials Pack for Microsoft partners now includes 750 hours of extra-small instances and 25 hours of small instances of the Windows Azure service, 20GB of storage and 50GB of data transfers provided each month at no charge. In addition, the Cloud Essentials Pack also contains other Microsoft cloud services including SQL Azure, Windows Azure AppFabric, Microsoft Office 365, Windows Intune and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. More information can be found here.

The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit April 2011 Update is also updated with new content and resources to support the enhancements listed above. Some of the new/updated content include:

• New HOL for Windows Azure Traffic Manager
• New HOL for SQL Azure Reporting
• New HOL for Windows Phone 7 and the Access Control Service
• Updated HOL for Windows Azure Connect Refresh
• Updated HOL for CDN Refresh
• Updated Access Control HOLs
• Updated Service Bus HOLs for the Service Bus portal update

Personally, I think able to do SSO with ACS is a great feature for building enterprise applications. Just in case you don’t already know, ACS and beer goes very well together .

For partners / MSDN subscribers, please do not hesitate to take advantage of the new offer changes to evaluate building / porting solutions to Azure!

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