Microsoft’s Azure Mobile Services & Azure Web Sites hit general availability

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft has opened up Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites to any developer that wants to use them, Microsoft announced today at its Build conference.

Windows Azure, in general, provides cloud infrastructure and app development tools. Satya Nadella (pictured), president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division, said today that more than half of the Fortune 500 use Azure in some form and said Azure now stores more than 8.5 trillion objects.

The move today shows Microsoft’s commitment to providing cloud support for web and mobile applications. While these services have been available in some form for a while, now it is putting more energy behind them.

Azure Mobile Services gives a scalable and secure backend for apps of all kinds, including iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone, and HTML5. This can meet the needs of consumer and business-facing developers. Microsoft claims more than 20,000 customers are already using it.

Azure Web Sites provides development, deployment, and scaling abilities for web-based applications. Its main target is enterprise customers who have web apps. Microsoft claims 130,000 web apps have used Azure Web Sites while it was in preview.