Microsoft announced the availability of development toolkits for its cloud computing platform Azure targeted on various mobile devices, namely Windows Phone, iOS and Android (even though in preview).
With these toolkits, developers can integrate their application with the Azure platform, quickly porting applications between various devices sharing authentication, storage and common, even high-level, components.
The iPhone toolkit (currently at version 1.0), allows writing apps for iPhone leveraging compiled iPhone code libraries to interact with Azure, just like the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: version 1.2 of this toolkit will be available in two weeks with improved or new features.
The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is currently in Prototype Preview, and will be released during the summer.
The technology underneath these toolkits is being pitched as used by Groupon, and this is yet another call to developers for the Azure technology: sample applications, “Cloud Ready” packages and screencasts are all means to involve developers and companies in the new platform.
We covered Russinovich’s take on Azure regarding this very stance.