I would like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me this opportunity to write a book, for a third time, and their continuing encouragement. Kerry George, the Senior Acquisition Editor for enterprise books — my early contact for this book — was most helpful and without her guidance and meticulous editing, this book would not have been possible. I am most grateful for her advice, which she gave generously at every step of the way.

I would like to thank Zainab Bagasrawala, the Project Coordinator for having monitored the flow of correspondence successfully and for her timely reminders. I also would like to thank Swapna Verlekar the Development Editor of this book for her valuable input and pointers, which has added great value to the book. I would also like to record the help of others who helped at various stages of this book including Arun Nadar with the prefinal edits, Bianca Sequeira for more edits, both of whom worked on the Appendix collecting and testing all the links in the book, and Maitreya Bhakal, in addition to many others at Packt Publishing. I also would like to thank Priya Mukherji, the Project Manager at Packt Publishing for guiding me through the contract process, the very first step in writing this book. I thank my son for reading through the initial chapter and making suggestions and picking out errors.

I sincerely thank the reviewers Siddharth Mehta and Maarten Baillauw, Microsoft MVP who meticulously went through the book and provided very valuable advice. They both have added great value to the book. Their pointed questions and well directed advice has made portions of this book more readable and clearer, and I am most thankful to them.

I would like to thank my parents who would have shared my joy. I thank my brothers and sisters, and the whole-hearted support of our Subbagiri family. I cannot sufficiently thank my wife Michiko Fukumoto, my son Krishna Jayaram, and his wife Jannet Jayaram for their continuous encouragement.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank Microsoft Corporation for making evaluation software available and allowing me to participate in their various events, live as well as on the web, including the boot camp. I am most indebted to the MSDN forums specially related to Windows Azure and SQL Azure and their moderators and mentors from whom I have received unstinted support. I also would like to thank Neudesic for allowing me to participate in their boot camp as well as the numerous third-party vendors whose evaluation software has added value to the book