In a keynote today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), Scott Guthrie announced the Microsoft Azure Certified program, which will enable Microsoft partners to grow their business by promoting and selling their applications and services on Azure. We were thrilled to be invited to participate in the launch of this new program along with Oracle, SAP, and Barracuda.
Starting today, you can deploy Bitnami-packaged DreamFactory and eXo Platform Express from the new Azure Management Portal.
DreamFactory is the ultimate REST API platform. It includes all of the services and capabilities needed to build modern applications for the desktop, tablet or phone. All backend services are accessed through a REST API that supports both JSON and XML Documents. DreamFactory is freely available under the Apache License, and commercial support and professional services can be purchased directly from DreamFactory.
eXo Platform Express is the commercial version of the eXo Social Enterprise platform, which combines collaboration, content and document management, calendaring and other productivity tools with social features to provide a complete intranet for the enterprise. The Bitnami eXo Platform Express image for Azure provides a free 30 day trial of the product, after which a license key can be purchased from eXo Platform.
While Amazon is still the largest player in the cloud space, Azure is building a lot of momentum - more than 57% of the Fortune 500 are using Azure, with an average of more than 1,000 customers signing up every day. By the end of this year, Azure will be available in 16 regions worldwide, which is more than any other major public cloud. We expect that Microsoft's efforts with the Azure Certified program will help to build a stronger ecosystem around Azure by helping partners to monetize their solutions on the platform. This should especially be the case for enterprise sales, as customers who have Microsoft Enterprise Agreements have credits they can use to consume partner services and applications that are made available in the Azure Management Portal.
If you are new to Azure, Microsoft provides a $200 credit to get started, so you can check out DreamFactory and eXo Platform Express free of charge. Enjoy!
