(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — After a year of testing, Microsoft’s (www.microsoft.com) latest cloud computing effort, Windows Azure, will be going live in January, with paying customers coming aboard in February, however, a select few customers were already taken into production, including Automattic (www.automattic.com), the maker of WordPress (www.wordpress.org).
Microsoft chief technology officer Ray Ozzie presented a roadmap for Azure, at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference on Tuesday, in which he announced that WordPress could be run immediately using the Azure platform. Currently in Community Technology Preview, Azure is free to evaluate through January 2010 until it is commercially released on February 1.
OddlySpecific.com, a new site that publishes funny signs, uses WordPress for its front-end content management, and Azure on the back end. Supposing it gets popular, like other viral sites like “Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat” (www.playhimoffkeyboardcat.com) or “i can has cheezburger” (www.icanhascheezburger.com), Azure specifications can be modified instantaneously to deal with increased traffic.
Business blog, Daily Finance, notes that Automattic’s choice to use Azure for distributed hosting for WordPress and the millions of its customers’ blogs is somewhat quizzical given Automattic’s strong allegiance to open-source technology.
For Microsoft, however, this year — while at its end — has shown many new beginnings. It is seeing much success from the launch of Windows 7, and partnerships with services like WordPress may give the software giant a second wind.
