As we’ve talked about in the past, combining infrastructure and platform services provides flexibility to architect, develop, and deploy your applications and IT solutions in a way that works best for your business.  Needless to say, we are excited to add Windows Server 2012 to our list of images in the Windows Azure Virtual Machine Gallery!

Windows Server 2012 brings hundreds of new capabilities to customers, and is drawing high praise from product reviewers and industry analysts, such as this CIO Magazine article that outlines what it sees as the top 10 features.  Perhaps most exciting are the hybrid cloud scenarios enabled by Windows Server 2012, when used in combination with our newest System Center management solutions.  You’ll be able to deploy and manage applications and workloads both in your own datacenter and on Windows Azure.

For in-depth insights about all that Windows Server 2012 has to offer, be sure to visit the Windows Server blog, where the product’s engineering team describes what they’ve built.  Also, on September 4^th, Microsoft will host an online launch event where our executives, engineers, customers and partners will share more about how Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure can help organizations of all sizes realize the benefits of what we call the Cloud OS.  In the meantime, you can be up and running with Windows Server 2012 in less than 15 minutes using Virtual Machines on Windows Azure.  Sign-up for a free trial and take it for a spin!  

 – Mike Neil, General Manager, Windows Azure