Something that made me say “oooh….”
by Joseph on Aug 2nd in Azure
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](http://idriven-001-site9.htempurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Home-Left-300x232.jpg)
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](http://idriven-001-site9.htempurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Gallery-300x231.jpg)
Gallery of Azure Options