Microsoft yesterday made some announcements on releases for the fall of the year. Besides making both Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 generally available at October 18, Microsoft will also provide a new version of their development environment Visual Studio 2013 and a new .NET Framework, version 4.5.1. Microsoft will also release a second preview version of SQL Server 2014 and it will release Windows Azure HDInsight Service, which cloudcomputing.info covered in October last year.
Microsoft also announced that its Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers will be offered access to Windows Azure at discounted prices regardless of upfront commitment, without overuse penalties and with the flexibility of annual payments. Through a partnership with Equinix Inc. Customers will be able to connect their networks with Windows Azure at Equinix exchange locations.
Microsoft will also release the next version of Windows Intune on October 18th, which will be able to support the new functionalities of both Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. And with Windows Server 2012 R2 they will provide the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, for Windows, Windows RT, iOS and OS X and Android.
Especially the announcement of the Remote Desktop app is very interesting and long awaited for, because customers at this time need a 3rd party connector if they want to access Remote Desktop environments from non Windows devices.