(Ars Technica) -- At PDC this week, Microsoft unveiled its roadmap for the Windows Azure cloud computing platform.
Moving beyond mere Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the company is positioning Windows Azure as a Platform-as-a-Service offering: a comprehensive set of development tools, services, and management systems to allow developers to concentrate on creating available, scalable applications.
Microsoft is building Windows Azure into an extremely complete cloud platform. Windows Azure currently takes quite a high-level approach to cloud services: applications have limited access to the underlying operating system, and software that requires Administrator installation isn't usable.
Later in the year, Microsoft will enable Administrator-level access and Remote Desktop to Windows Azure instances.
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