Here is a list of PDC announcements made by Bob Muglia during the PDC 2010 Keynote (http://www.mcirosoftpdc.com). Remember that you can watch not only the keynotes and all of the sessions online.
Calendar Year 2010
· Virtual Machine (VM) role: increases flexibility to run software of your choice (stateless server components) on Azure platform. Database server is an example of a stateful server which you can’t run on VM role.
· Full IIS: allows multiple web sites per Web role and makes it possible to configure the ASP.NET pipeline
· Elevated Privileges: This allows you to temporarily elevate your privilege (e.g. installation of a software component that requires admin privileges), install a piece of software and downgrade the privileges in preparation for running the application.
· Remote Desktop: Enables the connection into a running Azure role instance for close inspection of the run time aspects of the application and debugging.
· Windows Azure Virtual Network: a collection of network services starting with Windows Azure Connect (formerly Project Sidney) which allows the establishment of IP Sec tunnel for enabling on-premise/cloud hybrid environments
· Extra Small Windows Azure Instance: provides developers a cost effective development and training option
· Windows Azure Marketplace: online marketplace for you to share, buy and sell building block components, premium data sets, training and services needed to build Windows Azure platform applications
The above features will be available by the end of calendar year 2010.
Calendar Year 2011
· Dynamic Content Caching: this capability allows you to cache application generated information in CDN edge nodes. Previously CDN only was able to pull content from Azure Storage.
· CDN SSL Delivery: allows the CDN delivery of content through TLS/SSL links
· Constructing VM role images in the cloud: in future IT Pros will be able to compose VM images on Azure instead of today’s on-premise composition and uploading to Azure
· Windows Server 2003 and 2008 SP2 in VM Role: more gust OS options
· Improved Java Enablement: Java will be a first-class citizen through a set of performance enhancing improvements to Azure roles, Eclipse tooling and Java client libraries for Windows Azure.
Other
TFS on Windows Azure: this is multi-tenant hosted TFS service which enables the integration of globally deployed development teams into a logical one. This is pretty offers same level of functionality as the on-premise equivalent.
For more details, please visit Windows Azure team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2010/10/28/you-spoke-we-listened-and-responded.aspx.
Brian Harry’s blog for TFS cloud service: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/10/28/tfs-on-windows-azure-at-the-pdc.aspx