Windows Azure is an open, flexible, and robust cloud computing platform. It enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications in a cloud environment across a global network of Microsoft-managed, high-performance datacenters.

Windows Azure reduces your up-front infrastructure costs and improves business efficiency. It is arguably the fastest way for your product to hit the market and scale elastically on demand. Windows Azure makes it easy for you to leverage the power of cloud computing from where you are. You can host your existing applications on Windows Azure, or extend your on-premise applications to have a cloud interface, or build new cloud applications on Windows Azure from the ground up. You can use the language, tool or framework of your choice for building applications. Here are some of the things you can do with Windows Azure:

Web Sites

Build and deploy bespoke websites (or open source CMS) to a highly scalable cloud environment integrated with flexible Windows Azure services.

Cloud Services

Create highly-available, infinitely scalable applications and services using the technology of your choice.

Mobile Services

Shorten your app’s time to market by adding a scalable and secure backend for development tasks like storage, authentication, and push notification.

Data Store

Store just data on Windows Azure, with applications using this data running on-premises (outside the public cloud).

Capabilities such as the above combined with virtual machines, data management (SQL Database, tables, blobs), business analytics (Hadoop, SQL reporting), messaging, caching, identity, media, commerce, and high-performance computing services can satisfy any of your application needs.