How can you create an application that has truly global reach, and can scale rapidly to meet sudden massive spikes in demand? Historically, companies had to invest in an infrastructure capable of supporting such an application themselves, and plan for peak demand-which often means that much of the capacity sits idle for much of the time. Typically, only large companies would have the available resources to risk such an enterprise. The cloud has changed the rules of the game. By making infrastructure available on a "pay as you go" basis, creating a massively scalable, global application is within the reach of both large and small companies. Yes, by moving applications to the cloud you're giving up some control and autonomy, but you're also going to benefit from reduced costs, increased flexibility, and scalable computation and storage. This guide is the third release of the second volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud by using the Windows Azure tools and the increasing range of capabilities of Windows Azure. The guide focuses on both good practice design and the practicalities of implementation for multi-tenant applications, but also contains a wealth of information on factors such as security, scalability, availability, and elasticity that are relevant to all types of cloud hosted applications. The guide is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Although applications do not need to be based on the Windows operating system to work in Windows Azure, or be written using a .NET language, this guide is written for people who work with Windows based systems. You should be familiar with the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, ASP.NET MVC, and Visual C#.
About the Author: Dominic Betts is a principal technologist at Content Master, part of CM Group Ltd, a technical authoring and consulting company. An expert on developing applications with the Microsoft .NET Framework and Windows Azure, Dominic has produced numerous training courses, white papers, and other technical material on .NET, Windows Azure, and Microsoft BizTalk.

Alex Homer is a technical writer for the Microsoft patterns & practices team. He spends his days knee-deep in design patterns and architectural literature; writing books, documentation, sample code, and producing technical guidance in its myriad other forms. His weekly ramblings on the IT industry, and life in general, can be found at http: //blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/.

Alejandro Jezierski is a senior software developer at Southworks. His primary focus is building applications for the Cloud together with Microsoft's patterns & practices team. In the past he's been involved in the Healthcare, Automotive and Intellectual Property Industries building LOB applications.

Masashi Narumoto is passionate about the idea of the Internet as a knowledgebase. The Internet has significantly changed our lives and there's no doubt that there are still huge changes to come. His goal is to harness the ideas of many individuals into more meaningful collections so people can learn and achieve through the lens of collective intelligence. During his time on the patterns & practices team, he has worked on a series of Windows Azure Guides as a program manager, and is currently focused on Big Data. Previously, he spent 20+ years developing and consulting on a variety of solutions especially in the retail and manufacturing industry. You can find Masashi at http: //blogs.msdn.com/masashi_narumoto or on Twitter @dragon119.

Hanzhong (Hanz) Zhang is a senior software development engineer in test with the Microsoft patterns & practices team, primarily working on Windows Azure, SharePoint, and Enterprise Library. Before joining Microsoft, he focused on the document management system as Senior Software Engineer with Sharp Laboratories of America at Huntington Beach, California. Hanz has more than 15 years of experience with software development, architecture and testing.