My colleague, Goksin Bakir, who owns the Cloud priority for my organization provides a short, and easy to understand synopsis of why a business should invest in the Cloud, how to get started, and how to find out more tomorrow at TechEd Middle East, beginning with our full day of pre-conference sessions!

“Computing is undergoing a significant shift from conventional methods like client server to the cloud. Just like the transition to multi-tiered applications. The best way to find your place in the cloud is to make sure you learn about the technologies and offerings. Are you in a developer, an ITpro, Infra person or architect for solutions? Teched ME will demonstrate you how the Cloud will make life much easier and open up new opportunities in your life;

The cloud space has basically 3 main layers to host your business;

• Software as a Service (SaaS) – Packaged software products delivered over the Internet as a finished service. The back-end of a SaaS app can be hosted on any number of architectures, including PaaS, IaaS, and traditional client-server. For this reason, SaaS is primarily a description of the delivery model of an application.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – PaaS is a software platform that aids in the development, distribution, provisioning, management, maintenance, or monetization of an application. This platform is managed by a third party (i.e., not the developer or the end user) as a service.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – Infrastructure as a service offers simple virtual server infrastructure hosting. Users rent virtual machines for as long as they are needed from a third party IaaS provider, who manages only the physical infrastructure and virtual machine deployment software.

On the platform as a Service Azure is the most advanced and inclusive offering on the cloud; it that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. With Windows Azure; we get the compute and storage long with the fabric controller. With SQL azure we get the Relational database and reporting on the cloud, With Azure AppFabric we get the Service bus, Access control and caching. For small and large solutions we can use Windows Azure connect to form a virtual network. Please check the Azure site for more details

Want to get started? Here is how:

• Make sure you are a member of the community; INETA user groups have Azure specialized user groups that focus on Azure technologies. Or register your Usergroup if you have one!

• Use the Azure in Visual Studio which has an Azure Simulator to test your applications,

• Be one of the lucky ones to get and use one of the free 1 month trial accounts that will be given out in Teched MEA Azure sessions and deploy your applications.

Make sure you become of the new transition of the cloud by attending the Teched Cloud”

Floor One of the Microsoft Dubai office offers a veritable tour of the Middle East. Wander among the rows of employees you will undoubtedly hear every language of the Middle East – Urdu, French, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Turkish, English, Hindi… (and that’s not even mentioning the 500+ catalogued languages of a single country Nigeria) – 79 countries covered overall – 59 of those in WECA alone (West & Central Africa).