February 1, 2017 marks the 7th anniversary of when Microsoft turned on billing for the new Microsoft Azure service. Happy birthday Azure! Initially the service had a fraction of the features and services it has today. There’s been a tremendous growth on the platform over the years as a result of incredible investment by Microsoft.

Here’s a little timeline information about Microsoft Azure that you may or may not know:

October 2008 – At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie announces a new cloud computing platform from Microsoft called Windows Azure. The initial announcement includes the Azure services of: Cloud Services, and Blob Storage.
March 2009 – Azure SQL Database service was announced.
November 2009 – An updated Windows Azure CTP is released enabling Full Trust, PHP, Java, including a CDN CTP and more
January 2010 – Windows Azure become Generally Available, currently free of cost
February 1, 2010 – Microsoft turns on billing and includes full SLA support making Windows Azure commercially available.
June 2010 – Windows Azure is updated with .NET Framework 4, OS Versioning, CDN, and SQL Azure update
October 2010 – At PDC conference Microsoft released platform enhancements, Windows Azure Connect, and an improved Dev / IT Pro experience
December 2011 – New services added: Traffic Manager, SQL Azure reporting, HPC scheduler
June 2012 – New services added: Azure Websites, Virtual Machines for both Windows and Linux, Python SDK, Locally redundant storage, and a new portal.
April 2014 – Microsoft renames Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure
2014 to Present – MANY, MANY features and services are released!

Something not mentioned in the above timeline is the HUGE growth of Microsoft building out the data centers and backbone infrastructure that makes up the Microsoft Azure platform. From the initial launch of Microsoft Azure back in 2010, until now, Microsoft has grown the platform out to 32 regions today. They even have announced an additional 6 regions that are currently being planned or built.

Since 2010, Microsoft Azure has grown to be available in 32 regions around the world.

The overal size of Microsoft Azure has grown to be the biggest cloud platform on the planet. Microsoft may have been late to the game as Amazon got started 4 years earlier, but Microsoft has grown the platform to include more data centers and regions around the globe than both Amazon and Google combined!

You can view an interactive map of the Azure Regions here: https://build5nines.com/map-azure-regions/

The Microsoft Azure platform has more data centers and global regions than both Amazon and Google combined!

The cloud brings with it some tremendous capabilities and capacity that most enterprises or even individuals could have only dreamed of having access to only a few short years ago. Microsoft is right there at the front of the stage rapidly releasing innovation after innovation in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Microsoft has been and still is betting the future of their enterprise business on the cloud, and Microsoft Azure is the way they are doing it.

Happy birthday Azure!

Happy birthday Azure! I can’t wait to see how you grow and advance cloud computing over the next 7 years and beyond!

About the Author

Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.