Microsoft Build 2013: Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites become generally available

Multiple platform and device focus extends to the cloud and backend

Microsoft's cross-device focus was strengthened today as the company made its Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites services generally available.

Announced during the main keynote on day two of Microsoft's Build 2013 conference in San Francisco, the availability of these services underlined CEO Steve Ballmer's message yesterday that the company is looking to make Windows-based services flexible and ubiquitous across platforms and devices.

"Over 50 per cent of Fortune 500 companies are using Windows Azure; there are 3.2m distinct organisations inside of it now," said Microsoft's president of server and tools business, Satya Nadella.

Describing storage of 8.5 trillion objects on Azure servers (Amazon revealed back in April it stores just over 2 trillion), 500,000 requests per second and 2 trillion a month, Nadella added that there is now "tremendous" growth in use of Azure as a high end server for people setting up their own clouds.

Apps developed off the Bing search platform are now responsible for a billion notifications a month, said Nadella.

Azure Mobile Services was developed specifically to let developers store app data for Windows 8 Phone, as well as iOS and Android apps, in Azure's cloud. In preview since August 2012, it's been made available today for all developers.

Azure Web Sites performs a similar function for websites. However, its capacity to interface with web development environments is impressive, and Microsoft demoed its own server-side web development framework, Asp.net, which is now able to handle multiple default browsers for web code through Visual Studio.

Scott Hanselman, principal program manager for web at Microsoft said, "There's a fundamental link now between browsers - including mobile browsers - and Visual Studio."

Microsoft went on to discuss how UK mobile telco TalkTalk Business is already working on a customer engagement plan on mobile platforms with Azure Mobile Services.

Finally, Microsoft announced a preview version of Windows Azure BizTalk Services, which adds auto-scaling server capability for apps. Depending on capacity settings, the need for server space can automatically shut down, potentially saving those leasing the space money as unneeded resources are not charged for.