Chapter 5. Minimizing Risk When Moving to Azure Cloud Services
Earlier chapters observed that the Windows Azure Platform's capability to leverage developers' C# or VB programming expertise with Visual Studio is a primary selling point for the Windows Azure Platform, which must compete with entrenched cloud-computing rivals—such as Amazon Web Services' Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and the Google App Engine. You might infer from Azure marketing materials that you can simply take an existing ASP.NET Web site, tweak its Web.config settings and SQL Server connection string, and upload it to a Microsoft data center for deployment to Windows Azure.
As usual, reality differs greatly from marketing hype. As you'll see in this chapter, obtaining management buy-in might take more time and energy than developing a completely new project or upgrading an existing one. Other impediments include
Moving from an ASP.NET web site to web application projects
Migrating data to Azure Tables, Blobs, or SQL Data Services databases
Moving the Web Application projects to Azure Hosted Services and connecting to Azure or SQL Azure Database
Convincing IT and enterprise management that hosting applications in Windows Azure doesn't impose significant risk of business interruption or regulatory infraction
At least during Azure's early days, you'll find the last item to be by far the most difficult issue to overcome.
Bypassing Barriers to Cloud Computing
Your first step to an Azure development is convincing IT and top ...
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