The Windows Azure Platform allows ISV’s to run their applications and store their data in Microsoft Datacentres rather than in their customer’s premises, their own datacentre or in a hoster. This brings with it many benefits:

An application running in the Windows Azure Platform will get by default:

• High availability of the application and the data – minimal effort to ISV, big benefit to customer
• Rapid provisioning of the application to new customers – ISV can allow customers to trial their application easily and can sell additional services quickly
• Flexibility to support small to the very largest of customers – Azure can scale an application from running on one machine to hundreds
• Avoids upfront costs of purchasing hardware and software licenses. Microsoft charges monthly based on “how much an ISV used”
• Vastly reduced administration burden on the ISV and customer – Microsoft worry about security patches, Denial of Service attacks etc
• Simplified version updates for the ISV – ISV can always “get to” their application running in the Windows Azure Platform and update it, with all customers getting the benefits immediately
• It may simply be cheaper for the customer – we have a tool to calculate the saving

What is involved to get an existing ISV application on the Windows Azure Platform? Some applications can be made to work in a matter of hours, some would need massive changes measured in man-months/man-years. A small % would not be possible to move to the Windows Azure Platform right now.

• Good Fit

• A browser based (HTML/JavaScript) web application using a Web Server (IIS/ASP.NET on Windows Server 2003/2008) and SQL Server (2005/2008). 

• An application that needs massive amounts of inexpensive storage – perhaps for archiving

• An application that currently needs many Web Servers to handle the usage (which typically equates to many Windows Server 2003 or 2008 machines running IIS) 

• An application that needs “elasticity” – workloads change significantly over the year e.g. a music events booking system
• An application that is already in need of significant rework/refactoring. The timing could be great to combine the effort with a move to Windows Azure

• Reasonable Fit

• An application that uses SQL Server Reporting Services and/or Analysis Services extensively as neither service is available with SQL Azure today. The good news is Reporting will be added to SQL Azure in 2011

• An application that connects to many other applications or peripherals locally will require additional effort to move to Windows Azure. Additional features will be added in 2011 to make this easier

• An application using runtimes other than .NET such as Java or Ruby will require additional effort to install and run 

• Poor Fit

• An application that has one of more executables (*.exe) running on each client machine (typical technologies are VB6, Windows Forms, Delphi, WPF)

• An application that is “two tier” – an executable talks direct to a database although some of these applications will work very well against SQL Azure with a simple change

• An application using a database other than SQL Server such as Oracle or IBM DB2

ICS Solutions have developed an application that will enable you to understand and estimate the costs of moving applications to Windows Azure. Speak to ICS Solutions about the Azure Assessment and Migration Package to see the level of changes required for your application.