Microsoft Azure, Cloud platform, Lisbon

I've been meaning to find out the latest development on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform for a while now, but never got the time, also been meaning to take a break and get away for a few day. So when couple of friends wanted to go on a short break, I decided to mix business with pleasure and book myself into a Microsoft conference, at there Lisbon offices.

I'v been to Lisbon a couple of times, the first time as a young student on a backpacking holiday, I wont say how long it was, but lets say it was a long long time ago, when I thought I was going to change the world, and take on the world. Lisbon never impressed me then. The only notable memory was that of bumping into a whole lot of, Gujarati speaking, Indian market traders. Because of the India Goa connection, when Portugal had an empire and a lot of Hindu Indians emigrated to Portugal, they have been living there for a number of generations now.

The city was typical Mediterranean city with the usual building and family shops, nothing on the scale of the other European city's like Madrid, Berlin or Paris.

So on my recent trip to attend a Microsoft Conference, I was not expecting much, apart from the usual touristic scenery and shopping. Also the usual invasion of the American brands and mirrored shop fronts.

I decided to go on the metro rather than a taxi, which took a while to get used to the colour coded lines, but similar to the London underground.

With the help of a metro assistant, who was clearly drunk on "smoke", but a happy chap, I managed to get to the metro station where the Microsoft offices are. This is where the resemblance of Lisbon I thought I new came to an end.

...Sorry, forgot this was about Microsoft Azure. Well what can I say about Azure cloud development. Azure has various development tools like .NET service to help create applications. The other one being Microsoft SQL Azure which allows you to take advantage of the Live Service and Server data service.

Good thing about Azure is its access and compatibility with Microsoft Net SDK and Visual Studios. This makes easy work for people who have prior knowledge of Visual studios. Microsoft has also been giving away their Visual studio code, which is similar to the Github Electron, this is to encourage developers to build service apps for the Azure platform. With the release of their Project Springfield it should be easier for developers to debug their code.

I can't but help thinking that it's a good time to be a cloud platform developer, with all the big boys giving stuff for free and going out of their way to help you develop and test. All they now need to do is provide free pizza deliver service, and strong coffee's on tap.

Overall Azure is a very good cloud platform, but with Google catching up fast in the Mid size business market, it's difficult to see how Microsoft can keep ahead. Google is currently targeting the small businesses, but these businesses will grow and get bigger, and I can't see them moving platform.

Now I just need to book my next trip, wish some developer would develop a flight price comparison site which would compare all the airline prices...