Manuvir Das: Introducing Windows Azure

Application Development Trends-Coming to Terms with Cloud Computing
Thanks Charles and Steve. Really cool stuff. As it happens, I am looking for hosting for my take on a *witter service with an Astoria backend and a smart client (and SL client in the works after I get better VS-SL support..hint Any chance a fellow
9'er with a new social service can get a "token" for the Azur ctp so I can host it?
I understand that Azure and Microsoft Server 2008 are complementary technologies. Are there plans to help port code for Windows server 2008 to Azure and vice versa. What will be the issues here and what are the limitations as per current implementation
of azure.
The idea being that initially a small company might start out with Azure and rely on its scalability solutions. Eventually the company might want to move to self hosted servers using Windows Server 2008. In that case, developers would prefer the transition
to be as easy and bug free as possible. Are such scenarios being considered?
What about providing solutions so that users have a inhouse azure environment e.g. My company decides that we need to maintain the data on our own local servers, then all I need to do is go buy say 20 servers, and then use a framework to create a mini azure
environment inhouse. There will be maybe 2 fabric controllers which keep in sync and ensure that there is no single point of failure and beyond that all the remaining machines are maintained by these controllers just as azure is doing currently in data centers.
Providing such a solution would allow companies to switch between azure in microsoft datacenter and 'mini azure' with their own servers relatively easier.