Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure

The IT industry has been evolving at a rapid pace; and with the advent of cloud computing the rate of evolution is accelerating significantly. However, most organizations still have a lot of IT assets running in on-premises datacenters. We are in the middle of a transition between running everything on-premises and hosting everything in the cloud. Hybrid is a term that represents the application that positions its architecture somewhere along this continuum. Hybrid applications span the on-premises and cloud divide, and bring with them a unique set of challenges. This guide addresses these challenges by mapping Windows Azure features to specific scenarios encountered in the hybrid application design and development. A case study of a fictitious company named Trey Research explains the challenges encountered in a hybrid application, and describes solutions using Windows Azure features such as Service Bus, Caching, Traffic Manager, Azure Connect, SQL Azure Data Sync, ACS, and more. The guide is divided into two main sections. The first describes the specific design decisions Trey Research made when designing their application. The second provides general guidance on typical scenarios and use cases encountered in each of the challenge areas. Together they will help you to find solutions for the challenges you will meet when developing your own hybrid applications. This guide is intended for architects, developers, and information technology (IT) professionals who design, build, or operate applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Although applications do not need to be based on the Windows operating system to operate in Windows Azure, this book is written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the.NET Framework, Visual Studio , ASP.NET MVC, and Visual C#.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Trey Research Scenario
Chapter 2 Deploying the Orders Application and Data in the Cloud
Chapter 3 Authenticating Users in the Orders Application
Chapter 4 Implementing Reliable Messaging and Communications with the Cloud
Chapter 5 Processing Orders in the Trey Research Solution
Chapter 6 Maximizing Scalability, Availability, and Performance in the Orders Application
Chapter 7 Monitoring and Managing the Orders Application
Appendix A Replicating, Distributing, and Synchronizing Data
Appendix B Authenticating Users
Appendix C Implementing Cross-Boundary Communication
Appendix D Implementing Business Logic and Message Routing across Boundaries
Appendix E Maximizing Scalability, Availability, and Performance
Appendix F Monitoring and Managing Hybrid Applications