Windows Azure is Microsoft's new cloud computing services platform. Hosting in Microsoft data centers around the world, Windows Azure provides hosting capabilities, developer services (for .NET, PHP and other environments), and data storage services that can be scaled dynamically to adapt to changing scalability needs. And that is pretty close to the official definition. But what _is_ Windows Azure…?

My team and I seek to answer that question with our Real World Road Show event series. Our team has already run ten events in August across five cities, one IT professional and one developer event per city. We have 24 more events planned, starting back up the week of September 14, spanning 12 cities. I've listed our schedule on my events page, plus a couple of additional Live Meeting-based Firestarter events hosted by peers across the US. But let me tell you a bit more about our events.

Real World Azure Road Show
Come spend a day with us to explore Windows Azure™ – Microsoft’s platform for building and deploying cloud based applications – from a real world point of view!

During this event, we’ll review critical lessons Microsoft IT has learned migrating internal line-of-business applications to Windows Azure™.

What is Windows Azure™? When should I use it? How does it apply to my job? Whether you’re an IT Professional, Developer or Architect, we’ll address your top of mind questions about cloud computing.

TechNet Presents Real World Infrastructure
These sessions focus on the architecture decisions and infrastructure impacts Azure represents. They start at 8:30am and run until noon. In this session, we will discuss:

• Azure architecture from the IT professional’s point of view
• Why an IT operations team would want to pursue Azure as an extension to the data center
• Configuration, deployment and scaling Azure-based applications
• The Azure roles (web, web service and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premises applications
• How operations teams can manage and monitor Azure-based applications

MSDN Presents Real World Development
These sessions focus on the architecture tradeoffs and development techniques. They start at 1pm and run until 5pm. In this session, we will discuss:

• Cloud computing architectures in general and the Azure architecture in particular
• Several aspects of Azure from the developer’s and architect’s perspective
• Azure roles (web, web service and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premise applications
• Configuration, deployment and scaling Azure-based applications
• How development teams can optimize their applications for better management and monitoring

Our events also feature a real world case study by Microsoft IT as well as Microsoft customers. These case studies illustrate real world decisions and tradeoffs made by Microsoft IT and our customers, covering several things you should know as you consider cloud computing in general and Windows Azure in specific.