Understanding Azure Platform Architecture

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering by Microsoft that runs on servers and network infra located in Microsoft Data Centers which is connected to the public internet.  The platform is delivered by physical or logical (virtualized) Windows Server 2008 instances.
According to Microsoft, primary uses of Azure include

• Adding web service capabilities to the current packaged applications
• Build, modify, and distribute apps to the web with minimal on premise resources
• create, test, debug and distribute web services quickly
• Reduce the efforts and cost incurred on managing the IT Infra

Unlike other offerings such as Iaas and the SaaS, the PaaS is the easiest to operate. Take a look at the picture below
The picture clearly indicates the problems that the user has to mange on his own if he opts for IaaS to deploy his web application.
Microsoft designed the Azure platform in such a way that enables the .NET developers to use their experience of coding in Visual Studio ASP.NET and WCF services. The Windows Azure supports development in almost all popular languages. The Windows Azure SDK built in Visual Studio offers support for various languages. There is also a Java SDK for Windows Azure for Java lovers. This flexibility of Windows Azure makes it so popular among the coders. 

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