Weekly Roundup: Android comes to Windows Azure Mobile Services

Microsoft has announced some important updates to Windows Azure Mobile Services. Plus,

Cloud Foundry has also announced its ‘handshake’ with Pivotal Initiative.

Here’s a quick summary of cloud happenings over the last week.

Beginning with the IaaS leader, Amazon has offered a month long free trial of the AWS Trusted Advisor to all AWS customers. This service inspects the AWS environment and makes recommendations to help users save money, improve performance or close security gaps. Additionally, enhanced the Trusted Advisor's user interface and added a new suppress feature that allow users to hide the results of certain checks. Next, they have also announced that AWS customers will get a $120 AWS Credit with any new SAP Hana One subscription.

Amazon has reduced the price of Amazon DynamoDB in all AWS regions. The price of indexed data storage has decreased by up to 75%. The price of provisioned throughput capacity has decreased by up to 35%. Also, they have introduced a new Reserved Capacity offering. This offering apparently can save up to 53% with a 1-year term and up to 76% with a 3-year term.

They have also announced the accessibility of log files generated by Amazon RDS DB Instances running MySQL, Oracle Database, or SQL Server via the AWS Management Console and the Amazon RDS APIs. Finally, Amazon has released an AWS Implementation Guide for SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, to help users deploy the necessary and correctly configured infrastructure.

PaaS player, Microsoft has made some improvements to the identity and access management capabilities in Windows Azure. The three new features that allow users efficiently manage access are:

• Manage users and their access rights in the Windows Azure Portal.
• Try out a preview of our new phone based two factor authentications for users who are Global Administrators in Windows Azure AD.
• Manage the synchronization and federation between your Windows Azure Active Directory and your Windows Server Active Directory from within the Windows Azure Portal.

Another interesting announcement was Windows Azure Mobile Services will now fully support Android apps and Mobile Services are now available in the East Asia region. Cloud Foundry has announced that the open PaaS, joined the Pivotal Initiative, an independent project by VMWare and EMC dedicated to maintain focus on big data and cloud application platforms.

Appcelerator has open-sourced 24 modules on the Appcelerator Marketplace. Hence, allowing the members of the community to contribute, improve and advance these modules. They have also announced that module developers can now publish their own open sourced modules in the Appcelerator Marketplace.

Stay tuned until next week!

- Janakiram MSV, Chief Editor, CloudStory.in