This seems even more promising after reading about it and watching the channel 9 video. Azure is the underlying data center platform that provides the services needed to develop and deploy an application.  The architecture seems to be that you would have your application and seperately some type of schema that defines how your application is architected.  You upload both the app and schema (they call it something different) to the Azure system and it just puts together the backend in a MS Datacenter.  If you need to scale up your application (if you built the next Amazon.com), then just go into your Azure control panel and add a couple more instances.  The system will automatically load balance and add the additional front and back end services to scale your app.  It performs automatic health monitoring, etc.  This is awesome!  ASP.NET is a bet that is about to payoff for a lot of people who adopted it.

There is a CTP now and the tools are already available to download and plug into Visual Studio. You can run the Azure platform today on you dev machine.  I hope DNN corp throws someone on this FULL-TIME ASAP.  This is huge for DNN, IMHO!

I cant believe no one else is excited about this??

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio,

I'm also pretty excited about Azure and the possibility of building a busy DNN site and throwing it at Azure to do all the hosting work.

Could this mean once instance of DNN, hosted on Azure, running possibly hundreds of busy portals and scaling well?   Interested to know what the possibilities and limitations are.  Also interested to know what the core team think of this possibility.

The big question is how much will it cost?