Hello Azure, Goodbye Pain!

Introduction 

This article is a part of the Windows Azure Developer Challenge, which is a competition with five challenges (or rounds). The challenges involve different Azure technologies that are relevant for very broad audience, from the hobbyist to the enterprise. 

The challenges are: 

1. Getting Started - Not much is required here, just signing up for Azure and writing and article (the one you are reading now.). 
2. Build a website - Get a website running on Azure. 
3. Using SQL on Azure -  Use the SQL Azure database in a project.  
4. Virtual Machines - Use Azure VM(s) in a project (both Linux and Windows VMs are available in Azure). 
5. Mobile access - Use Azures Mobile Services to make a project rule on mobile platforms. 

What can Azure do for me? 

The greatest benefit of Azure as opposed to classic webhosting is that I don't have to buy/rent what I (might) need on beforehand. I can just spin up, spin down, add service, remove service as I go and deployment is just really easy. 

The Next Steps 

• For the "Build a Website" challenge I will not actually build a new web site. In stead I will show you how easy it is to move an existing WordPress blog from a classical host setup to an Azure website.
• For the "using SQL on Azure" challenge I will build a data driven application in LightSwitch. I will use Azure websites (also used in the "Build a Website" challenge) for the hosting the client part of the application. 
• For the "Virtual Machines" challenge I will a VM to bring spatial data (geo-data) into an application.
• For the "Mobile access" challenge I will spatial data with push notification in Azure mobile services. 

History 

2013 April 23rd - Created article with content for the first challenge.