16.13. Other Azure Services

In addition to Windows Azure Services and SQL Azure, Microsoft offers a number of other services such as Microsoft .NET Services and Windows Live Services.

16.13.1. Microsoft .NET Services

Microsoft .NET Services consists of a number of services aimed at providing integration and authentication:

• Service Bus: The Service Bus is a message broker used for connecting applications across networks and through firewalls.

• Access Control Service: This provides a centralized access control mechanism exposed as a web service.

• WorkFlow Service (not currently available): The original previews of Windows Azure contained a workflow service, but this has since been removed. It is likely that at some point this will be reintroduced.

16.13.2. Windows Live Services

Windows Live Services is a collection of pretty much any other web-based service Microsoft has ever provided and is now held under the umbrella of Windows Live Services and accessed using the Live SDK. At the time of writing, the SDK documentation and Azure site listed the following services (some of which are not yet complete):

• Advertising

• Alerts

• Live Messenger

• FeedSync

• Live Search

• Live Spaces

• Media streaming

• Mesh

• Photo gallery

• Silverlight streaming

• User-Data Storage services

• Writer

• Virtual Earth and Geospatial services

For more information, please refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264574.aspx.