Microsoft's Azure cloud-based hosted environment is more than just a Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastruture as a Service (IaaS) environment. Rather, Microsoft Azure is highly leveraged by developers of enterprise organizations in their application lifecycle management processes. This book covers the key solution areas where Microsoft Azure helps developers extend their development platforms into the cloud, and not just for Microsoft-based development in .NET or SQL, but also for development on Linux and Windows for Perl, C#, Bash, and Python managed by tools like Puppet, Chef, and System Center. Solution guidance are shared on day to day operational controls, release management, and experience of developers who have successfully created a hybrid cloud application development and deployment process leveraging the cloud capabilities of Microsoft Azure.