We recently published the 3rd edition of “Moving Application to the Cloud “. Just like other Patterns and Practices books this books is also available for free download and the source code samples are available as well. I strongly recommend our customers and partners (and audiences :)) to read this if they considering to move apps to Windows Azure.

Quick summary taken from MSDN is:

How do you build and deploy applications to be scalable and have high availability? Along with developing the applications, you must also have an infrastructure that can support them. You may need to add servers or increase the capacities of existing ones, have redundant hardware, add logic to the application to handle distributed computing, and add logic for failovers. You have to do this even if an application is in high demand for only short periods of time.

The cloud offers a solution to this dilemma. The cloud is made up of interconnected servers located in various data centers. However, you see what appears to be a centralized location that someone else hosts and manages. By shifting the responsibility of maintaining an infrastructure to someone else, you’re free to concentrate on what matters most: the application.

This guide is the third edition of the first volume in a series about Windows Azure. It discusses the hosting options available in Windows Azure and demonstrates how you can adapt an existing, on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud. It introduces a fictitious company named Adatum that modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, step-by-step so that it can be deployed to Windows Azure using a range of different hosting options.

The guide is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that are appropriate for the cloud. It is primarily written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server and Microsoft Visual C#.

You can download the free e-book here.

Sample Source code is available here.