Windows Azure, the open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications, has recently announced its mobile services that will help enhance the productivity of developers to quickly build mobile apps. Besides, it will help easily connect scalable cloud backend to the client and mobile applications. With the launch of Windows Azure mobile services, developers can develop Windows 8 app in little time, and soon for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices.

It’s quite easy to build a simple Windows 8 app that is cloud-enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. All you need to do is to sign up for a no-obligation Free Trial, create an app using instructions, connect your mobile service to an existing Windows 8 client app, store data in cloud, and integrate user authentication/authorization and push notifications within your applications. Developers can create and run up to 10 Mobile Services in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment, which can be scaled up later. The compute capacity can be used on a per-hour basis, which is a flexible model, and allows developers to scale up and down resources to match only what they need.

To summarize, Windows Azure mobile services help developers build mobile app experiences faster, and enable even better user experiences by connecting your client apps to the cloud. This indicated dual advantage for developers as well as the end-users/clients.

Earlier this month, Microsoft launched Windows Azure Active Directory with three major highlights; where developers can connect to a REST-based Web service to create, read, update and delete identity information in the cloud for use right within their applications, the developer preview allows companies to synchronize their on-premises directory information with WAAD and support certain identity federation scenarios as well; and developer preview supports integration of WAAD with consumer identity networks like Facebook and Google, making for one less ID necessary to integrate identity information with apps and services.