I’ve just got back from Devweek at the Barbican in London, and the last session I attended was something of a revelation.  You know what it’s like at a conference – it’s the last day, you’re ready to pack up and go home, but you feel you have to attend at least one more session.  In my case, that session was by Microsoft’s Eric Nelson  on Windows Azure (Developing and Deploying your first Cloud Service).

Like pretty much all windows developers these days, I’d heard of Azure and cloud computing, but my initial opinion was “Meh! Not for me”.  Then I attended this session.  There’s obviously been a lot of thought put into this by the teams at Microsoft and, although there’s still a way to go, there are some very compelling features.  I’m not going to go into any detail here (visit the website above for more details) but the standout feature for me is the fact that if you already have the knowledge to develop a web application, you can develop an Azure service. (Yes, there are a couple of gotchas around storage and so on but nothing that can’t be overcome with a little thought and learning)

I didn’t think I would, but I’ve just signed up for the CTP – if nothing else, I can play with the technology a little.  If you want to get in on the ground floor for this tuff, I’d suggest you do too.

(By the way, big thanks to Eric for a couple of great presentations this week.)