The Windows Azure public cloud platform is one of the three pillars of Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision that will transform the traditional data center environment, help businesses unlock insights in data stored anywhere, enable the development of a wide range of modern business applications, and empower IT to support users who work anywhere on any device while being able to manage these devices in a secure and consistent way. The other two pillars of the Cloud OS are, of course, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, and Microsoft Press will soon be releasing free Introducing books on these platforms as well. Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables users to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Developers can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing Information Technology environment (Tulloch, 2013).