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Windows Azure Feature Voting Forum

Hi I’m Mike Wickstrand, Senior Director of Product Planning for Windows Azure. If you have something you need from Windows Azure, please tell us what it is and vote for other's ideas. We want to better understand what you need from Windows Azure and to build plans around how we make the things that "bubble to the top" a reality for our customers in the future.

If you are interested in learning more about how The Windows Azure Team thinks about these ideas, please visit my blog here for an update: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wickstrand/archive/2010/11/02/windows-azure-a-year-of-listening-learning-engineering-and-now-delivering.aspx

Thanks in advance!

Mike

| Mike Wickstrand | Senior Director, Windows Azure Product Planning | Microsoft |
| Email: mikewic@microsoft.com | http://www.twitter.com/wickstrand |
| Web: http://blogs.msdn.com/wickstrand/ |

  1. 2,676 votes

    Make it less expensive to run my very small service on Windows Azure.

    Status: planned

    At PDC 2010 Microsoft announced the Extra Small Instance, which will be priced at $0.05 per compute hour in order to make the process of development, testing and trial easier. This will make it affordable for developers interested in running smaller applications on the platform. A beta of this role will be available before the end of 2010.

    Please let us know if this addresses your needs for a more cost effective Azure offering.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  2. 2,349 votes

    Continue Azure offering free for Developers

    After February 1st 2010, it's going to be tough for developers/freelancers/hobbiest to learn, test and deploy azure applications as it's going to be billed for everything.
    Like Google AppEngine (http://code.google.com/appengine/whyappengine.html#norisk) Azure should provide free offering for developers with some similar limitations and if the usage goes beyond, one… more

    Status: planned

    We're working on ways to provide free and low cost onramps for developers, and expect to make more announcements in 2011. Today, there are already multiple ways for developers to get onto Azure cost effectively:

    Free Introductory Offer - provides a limited monthly quota of Azure resources at no cost, with standard rates applying above those thresholds: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/

    MSDN Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark Subscription Benefit - provides significantly higher free quotas of Azure resources to MSDN subscribers for several months: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ee461076.aspx

    Cloud Essentials for Partners - provides free/low cost access to Azure resources to members of the Microsoft Partner Network. http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  3. 1,020 votes

    Provide a way to schedule worker roles so they only run when needed

    If worker roles could be scheduled, like windows task scheduler then we would massively reduce the required cpu time used.

  4. 742 votes

    Provide multiple roles per instance

    Enables you to host more than one application on one Azure compute instance. Suitable for small departmental servers.

    Status: planned

    At PDC 2010, we announced that the Web role will soon provide full IIS functionality, which enables multiple IIS sites per Web role and the ability to install IIS modules. The full IIS functionality enables developers to get more value out of a Windows Azure instance. Full IIS Support will be generally available to customers later this year.

    Please let us know if there are important scenarios that the combination of admin mode + full IIS won't solve for you.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  5. 601 votes

    Provide DNS Services for my domains and sub-domains

    DNS is crucial - if it's down, my Azure web roles are down. I don't trust GoDaddy and Verisign with my production DNS, so I either need to have on-premise load balanced DNS servers or pay someone to do it. It would be great if Windows Azure took care of… more

  6. 524 votes

    Add TableStorage LINQ query support for Select, Count and Contains

    Critical functions such as Select, Count and Contains are not currently available when querying TableStorage data.

    If I only want a total number of rows that match a certain criteria I have no choice but to retrieve the data, count it and throw it away.

    Adding support for Select would… more

  7. 471 votes

    Provide me with full text search on table storage

    Does what it says on the tin....really need better search capabilities over azure table storage.

  8. 418 votes

    Support secondary Indexes

    Need to be able to sort on something other than the rowkey

    Status: planned

    We do still intend to support secondary indexes. However, no firm timeline has been established for when that capability will be made available. Based on our most current information, secondary indexes are not going to be released as a feature in 2011.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  9. 404 votes

    Improve the experience of deploying my application to Windows Azure.

    Status: planned

    At PDC 2010, we announced a number of enhancements to the operator experience on Azure. These include a completely redesigned portal, access to new diagnostic information, a vastly simplified sign-up process, and scenario-based forums to help answer questions and facilitate knowledge sharing.

    These Windows Azure enhancements will be generally available by the end of 2010.

    Please continue to let us know how we can improve the deployment experience on Windows Azure for you.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  10. 401 votes

    UDP EndPoints

    UDP endpoints would allow for full RTP/RTCP/RTSP media streaming implementations as well custom protocols for game systems.

  11. 390 votes

    Reduce cloud costs, specifically storage and bandwidth

    Cloud computing might be tempting when you are just starting a company because you don't need to worry about having your own infrastructure. But as you host more and more storage and demand more and more bandwidth, the current cost per GB models become pricey.

    There is a now-popular analogy… more

  12. 374 votes

    Create Elastic IPs so we can actually create web addressable apps with full DNS, not *.cloudapp.net

    Right now, you can't use DNS to make your primary web app run seamlessly on Azure. Azure needs to add elastic IPs so you can point a mydomain.com at an Azure IP, instead of the current *.cloudapp.net requirement.

  13. 290 votes

    Offer me a Windows Azure dedicated cloud, either hosted on my premises or with third-party provider.

    Status: planned

    Earlier this year, we announced the Windows Azure Platform Appliance, which will allow customers to run the Windows Azure environment in their own data centers or via a third-party hosting provider. Look for more announcements about the Platform Appliance in 2011.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  14. 288 votes

    Pay per minute instead of pay par hour

    One thing that I like the most (and most needed by my business) about cloud computing is ability to fine tune the processing power available to exactly match the demand.

    In this respect, I would even more interested if Azure was letting me adjust the number of instances much more… more

  15. 269 votes
  16. 252 votes

    Add Distributed Caching to Azure (i.e. like Velocity / memcached)

    So that multiple web roles can share the same cache.

    Status: planned

    At PDC 2010, we announced Windows Azure AppFabric Caching - a distributed, in-memory cache for applications running in Windows Azure.

    Based on Windows Server AppFabric Caching capabilities, it's intended to significantly speed up access to data for your Windows Azure applications.

    This feature is in CTP now, and should be generally available in 2011. You can find more details here:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazureappfabric/archive/2010/10/22/windows-azure-appfabric-ctp-october-release.aspx

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  17. 246 votes
  18. 165 votes

    Add the ability to remote debug my application running in the cloud

    Status: planned

    At PDC 2010, we announced the introduction of new diagnostic information in Azure, and remote desktop functionality to make it easier to connect to a running instance for monitoring and troubleshooting. Both will will be generally available later this year.

    We look forward to hearing how much these new features improve the remote debugging experience for you.

    Haris Majeed Haris Majeed Admin
  19. 163 votes
  20. 155 votes

    CDN is too expensive. What the heck!

    Seriously, how is Microsoft hoping to attract big customers to its platform? On AWS, CDN costs as little as $0.030 per GB. That's 5 times less expensive than Azure.

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