Windows Azure gives you the flexibility to power your mobile apps using Virtual Machines, Cloud Services or Mobile Services. With support for popular languages like .NET and NodeJS, built-in continuous integration, and access to any API, your development team can be up and running in minutes.
With native SDKs for Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android, Apple iOS and HTML5 Windows, Azure Mobile Services lets you reach every user on every platform. Get maximum flexibility with an open REST API. Point multiple client apps to the same mobile services backend and deliver a rich and consistent experience on any device.
The Azure Notification Hubs mobile push notification engine allows any app to broadcast push notifications to millions of Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android and Apple iOS devices with only a few lines of code. Notification Hubs also enables pub/sub routing and tag-based multicast, which makes sending push notifications to a particular subset of users—such as those following a given sports team—easy. Today, the Bing News app relies on Notification Hubs to deliver breaking news to millions of devices in minutes.
Mobile Services makes configuring user authentication via Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Twitter accounts as simple as a few clicks. Once users authenticate, you can not only personalize their experiences, but also increase engagement and sharing.
Mobile Services allows you to leverage your existing assets, both in the cloud and on-premises. Consume any Windows Azure service—including Service Bus, Media Services, Windows Azure Active Directory and Storage—or choose from the many third-party services in the Windows Azure Store. Connect to on-premises databases, Active Directory systems, and Windows Intune—even Oracle and SAP—using BizTalk Adapters.
With Windows Azure, you can scale your app on demand—and as your traffic grows, without provisioning additional infrastructure. Windows Azure offers a high-availability SLA for apps built with Virtual Machines, Cloud Services or Mobile Services as well as access to the global network of Microsoft managed data centers, allowing you to reach users anywhere in the world.