The Azure platform is indeed intriguing. Recently, when attempting to gather more information about this platform and its tools, specifically the Windows Azure SDK, we discovered that it is limited to supporting development environments on Vista or Win7.
This poses a challenge for developers, including myself, who still widely use Windows XP. Building a new development environment compatible with the Azure platform would require a substantial investment of 1000 USD or more.
There's a commitment from Microsoft to explore options for enabling the SDK on Windows XP, and we are optimistic that this will be implemented soon. It's interesting to note that the current requirement seems to encourage the adoption of Vista among developers, which is unusual, especially when building cloud applications aimed at reducing reliance on specific underlying OS support. Many developers have expressed their dissatisfaction with these Azure system requirements.
For now, our approach is to focus on enhancing our existing products and hoping to introduce new features that align with the Azure platform. We anticipate that these efforts will eventually lead to the development of new products for Azure, despite the current challenges posed by the platform's system requirements.