Microsoft Has Launched A New and Improved Azure Marketplace!

Microsoft announced yesterday a new Azure Marketplace freshly stocked to the ceiling with new cloud products ready to integrate into your Azure environments.  From virtual machine images to cloud services, this release has dozens of partner and Microsoft based items to choose from.

Using the marketplace provides a super easy way to take advantage of a rich ecosystem of applications and services integrated to run great with Azure. — Scott Guthrie’s Blog

Here is a quick rundown of some of the items available.

  • Virtual Machines
    Nearly but not quite all services in the Azure Marketplace are Virtual Machine images of one sort or another.  Microsoft has tried to make the roughly 444 virtual machine images more discoverable by grouping the offerings into the following categories:

    • Recommended selections – A curated list of both Microsoft and non-Microsoft based images
    • Azure Certified – Does that mean the other items aren’t certified, in which case why one might ask why they are in the marketplace to begin with.  But let’s not split hairs.
    • Database Servers – SQL Server, Couchbase Servers, IBM DB2 Server, Oracle Database 11gR2, etc.
    • Application infrastructure – Biztalk Server, DreamFactory 1.7, Java JDK, Microsoft Dynamix, openSUSE, Oracle WebLogic Server, SharePoint Server Farm, Visual Studio Premium 2013, Windows 7 & 8 clients, and Windows Servers
    • Security and protection – aiProtect DDOS protection, Alert Logic Threat Manager, Barracuda Spam Firewall, Check Point Virtual Appliance, CloudLink SecureVM, Digital DNA Server, etc.
    • Windows based – This is a superset of images from all categories that are hosted on a Windows OS platform
    • Linux – This is a superset of images from all categores that are hosted on a Linux OS platform
    • Networking – Many of the security and protection images are included in this category along with others such as IBM MQ, KEMP VLM, SteelApp TM, etc.
    • VM Depot – A a community-driven catalog of virtual machine images provided and licensed by community members and includes images such as WordPress, CiviCRM, CKAN 2.1, Django, Drupal, JBoss, etc.

  • Web Applications
    The Web Applications products include both fully fleshed out web platforms such as WordPress, Orchard CMS, and Joomla but also include basic starter web sites that are simple Site+DB solutions.  These products are divided into the following categories

    • Recommended – A relatively short list of the most common web CMS and services such as WordPress, DNN Platform, as well as CDN and Application Insights
    • Blogs and CMSs – .NET CMS Composite C1, Acquia Drupal 7, DNN Platform, Ghost, Joomla, Kentico, mojoPortal, SugarCRM, Umbraco CMS,  etc.
    • Starter Sites – This is your stripped down web starter kits including ASP.NET Empty Site, HTML5 Empty Site, Node JS Starter Site, PHP Empty Site, etc.
    • App Frameworks – These images are for building more robust web applications and include Apache Tomcat 7, Bottle, CakePHP, Django, Flask, and Jetty
    • E-Commerce – This category has sites and frameworks geared town online sales including Drupal Commerce Kickstart, EC-CUBE, nopCommerce, OpenX, osCommerce, and Virto Commerce
    • Other – As the name implies, this is the place for other web sites ranging from BugNET, Gallery Server Pro, MediaWiki, phpBB, nService, etc.
  • Mobile Services
    This section is for services specifically geared toward services for mobile applications.  The only two categories in this are are:

    • Recommended – A short list of Microsoft only services including Mobile Service, Notification Hub, and Scheduler
    • Add-ons – A slightly longer list of services with Buddy, PubNub, Pusher, Scheduler (Aditi Technologies version), Search, SendGrid, Service Bus, and Storage
  • Developer Services
    This is the place to find all of your developer specific services and tools to build your own applications.  The categories in this section are:

    • Recommended – A Microsoft only list of services including Application Insights, Automation, Team Project, and Visual Studio
    • Monitoring and Diagnostics – These services include AppDynamics, AzureWatch, ClearPointe Azure Management, Log Manager, New Relic APM, Stackify, etc.
    • Dev and Test Tools – This is another short list with only Automation, Blitz Load Testing, loader.io, Team Project, and VS Anywhere
  • Media Services
    These products provide media services as well as application services for Media rich applications.  A relatively small section, this area contains only two categories:

    • Recommended – Microsoft only services including CDN, Media Service, and Storage
    • Add-Ons – Non-Microsoft services including Aspera Server on Demand, Blitline, Cloud Live, EZDRM Hosted PlayReady DRM, Kayak Media Processor, and STORM Managed File Transfer Service
  • Data and Analytic Services
    This section is for all things storage and includes many non-Microsoft technologies as well as those based on SQL Server.  The categories for this section include:

    • Database Servers – A list of database server images including ADAPA Scoring Engine, Couchbase, IBM DB2, Oracle DB, and SQL Server
    • Data Services – The products in this section are not strictly database servers but include other storage mechanisms such as DocumentDB, Data Factory, Memcached, HDInsight, MongoDB, MySQL, RavenHQ DB, Redis Cache, etc.
    • Data Analytics – This is a small list of analytics services including Cloudera Enterprise, DataStax Enterprise, and Hortonworks Data Platform
  • Storage, Cache, and Backup
    The products in this section are primarily backup and long term storage solutions along with Redis Cache services.  There are only two categories in this section which are:

    • Storage and Cache – Literally what the name says, Redis Cache and Microsoft Storage
    • Backup – These are backup services such as Automatic Backup, Microsoft Backup, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, Seagate Backup Service, and Veeam Cloud Connect for Service Providers
  • Identity Services
    This is a short list of products that includes Active Directory, Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication, and Auth0
  • App and Data Services
    This section is for all of the services that provide data for your business or application needs.  The categories in this section are:

    • Integration – Services intended to be integrated into your custom apps such as BizTalk Server, Cloud Connector, ExpressRoute, Notificatin Hub, Noxum Workflow Service, SendGrid Email Delivery, etc.
    • Data Insights – These products provide your applications with data from various sources including Bing Search, D&B Business Insight, Embarke Email Analytics, Microsoft Translator, and Worldwide Historical Weather Data
    • Data Validation – This includes products for confirming data integrity such as Address Check and IP Check from Melissa Data, Phone Number Validation, Sales and Use Tax Rates, and Verify
    • Content Services – These services provide primarily image processing services including ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK, Blitline, and cloudinary