Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters. 
Windows Azure is a flexible platform that supports multiple languages and integrates with your existing on-premises environment. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards, protocols and languages including SOAP, REST, XML, Java, PHP and Ruby. Windows Azure is now commercially available in 41 countries. 
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2010 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running, packaging and deployment of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.
Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio is package you'll need when developing web apps and services for the Azure platform.

Requirements:
· Required Software for Windows Azure SDK:
· NET Framework 3.5 SP1
· IIS 7.0 (with ASP.NET, WCF HTTP Activation, Static Content, IIS Management Console and optionally CGI)
· Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 or Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008
· Hotfix: Correct WCF metadata when hosting behind a load balancer
· Hotfix: Support for FastCGI (not required for Windows 7)
· Required Software for Visual Studio:
· Hotfix: Enable Windows Azure IntelliTrace on 32-Bit OS (not required for x64 OS).
· Hotfix: Improve Visual Studio Stability (not required for Windows 7).
· IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
· Windows PowerShell

What's New in This Release:
· Resolved an issue that caused full IIS fail when the web.config file was set to read-only.
· Resolved an issue that caused full IIS packages to double in size when packaged.
· Resolved an issue that caused a full IIS web role to recycle when the diagnostics store was full.
· Resolved an IIS log file permission Issue which caused diagnostics to be unable to transfer IIS logs to Windows Azure storage.
· Resolved an issue preventing csupload to run on x86 platforms.
· User errors in the web.config are now more easily diagnosable.
· Enhancements to improve the stability and robustness of Remote Desktop to Windows Azure Roles