Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Azure Preview Portal at Build 2014, which will provide a fully integrated cloud experience, allowing users to develop and manage an application in one place, using the platform and tools of their choice.

The new portal combines all the components of a cloud application into a single development and management experience. New components include the following:

Simplified Resource Management. Rather than managing standalone resources such as Microsoft Azure Web Sites, Visual Studio Projects or databases, customers can now create, manage and analyse their entire application as a single resource group in a unified, customised experience, greatly reducing complexity while enabling scale. The new Azure Manager has also been released through the latest Azure SDK for customers to automate their deployment and management from any client or device.

Integrated billing. A new integrated billing experience enables developers to take control of their costs and optimise their resources for maximum business advantage.

Gallery. A gallery offering application and services from Microsoft and the open source community provides free and paid services enabling customers to fully leverage the ecosystem.

Visual Studio Online. Key enhancements through the Microsoft Azure Preview Portal were announced at Build, including Team Projects which supports greater agility for application lifecycle management. The lightweight editor code-named ‘Monaco’ for modifying and committing web project code changes without leaving Azure is also included. Plus, an analytics solution called Application Insights, which collects telemetry data such as availability, performance and usage information to track an application’s health.

Microsoft Azure Preview Portal reflects Microsoft’s promise of delivering the cloud without complexity. “Developing for a mobile-first, cloud-first world is complicated, and Microsoft is working to simplify this world without sacrificing speed, choice, cost or quality,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president at Microsoft. “Imagine a world where infrastructure and platform services blend together in one seamless experience, so developers and IT professionals no longer have to work in disparate environments in the cloud. Microsoft has been rapidly innovating to solve this problem, and we have taken a big step toward that vision today.”

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