Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public by the end of this year, with an imminent announcement at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on November 17, 2009. 

When Steve Ballmer mentioned this February that Windows Azure “will reach fruition with the PDC this year” I didn’t really believed it, considering where the product was and how much we knew about the progress Microsoft was making on delivering Windows Azure and related services. Even TechEd this year was surprisingly quiet about Windows Azure, but this is just the silence before the storm. Microsoft is revving up the software development and marketing machine so at this year’s PDC cloud computing and Windows Azure will take again center stage.

Starting this summer with the 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), New Orleans, July 13-16, we will see more and more announcements about Windows Azure. So what to expect in the next months? Continue reading…

Channel 9 has published a quick chat with Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and talks about the complexities of designing and implementing the Azure Services Platform, his key take-aways from PDC2008 and his guiding architectural principles for Azure.