So I was setting up a new Virtual Machine, and got a message that I should try the new Azure Portal. Keep in mind, I tried this the other day, and was unimpressed. Me. Unimpressed by a Microsoft offering. But today, I said, “Sure, why not, I’ll take another peek!”

This is the coolest thing ever. I swear.

For me, the two really cool parts were being able to easily see how much money I’m spending at this point in the billing cycle – I’ve blurred out my actual spending, but it’s there on the home screen here.

The home screen of the Azure Portal

The other very interesting piece for me, was the gallery of Azure add ins. I particularly liked the ability to spin up a VM with pre-installed software. Everything from SQL Server, to Visual Studio, to Sharepoint. Plus some non-Microsoft goodies that might be interesting to evaluate for clients! This could work out to being a cheap way to determine if a particular piece of technology is viable to integrate into something I’m working on. Awesome!

Gallery of Azure Options