Windows Azure is the former name of Microsoft's cloud platform. The platform was renamed on April 3, 2014 to Microsoft Azure. Azure is a collection of integrated services allowing users to compute, network and store data on a cloud platform.
Windows Azure lets users build applications capable of running on any device by supporting any operating system, framework, tool or language. Azure is a hybrid cloud provider able to build applications that work on-site or in the cloud. As of 2014, Azure runs on a network of Microsoft-managed data centers spanning 13 regions and was the first multinational cloud provider in mainland China.