Developers could package and run ASP.NET web applications and APIs that ran in the context of a web role while the worker role was designed for long-running processes with no UI. The first pillar was the compute service which had a web role and worker role components.

The very first version of Windows Azure had a limited number of services that formed the four pillars of the platform. Given the strong heritage of building developer platforms and tools, Microsoft chose to launch Azure as a PaaS offering. Google App Engine that was announced in 2008 was the industry’s first Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. The former - an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from Amazon - was still in beta but started to get the attention of developers. Windows Azure was positioned as an alternative to Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine. Dave Cutler, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft who architected Windows NT, was tasked to design an OS that would become the foundation of Microsoft’s cloud which resulted in Windows Azure, which later got renamed to Microsoft Azure. The original flavour of Azure, code-named “Red Dog”, was clearly an extension of Windows NT built for the cloud.

As the Azure community and partner ecosystem celebrates its 10th birthday, let’s take a look at the major milestones in the evolution of Microsoft’s cloud platform.Ģ008 - 2011: Red Dog and Windows OS for the Internet Microsoft Azure became generally available on the 1st of February, 2010. It’s now the most credible enterprise cloud platform giving Amazon Web Services a run for its money. With its humble beginnings of trying to be an extension of Windows OS on the Internet to helping Microsoft win the most prestigious JEDI contract, Azure has certainly come a long way.

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