I’m currently looking at how Windows Azure could help my company.  As a proof-of-concept, I’m going to migrate a departmental application to Windows Azure.

The application is quite simple, but the migration should contain its share of challenges.  The current application is a simple MS Access front-end exposing a few forms.  The data source is an SQL Server Database.  It uses the identity of the user to write some data (e.g. user name) to SQL tables.

My a priori approach, or target solution architecture is:

• Use SQL Azure to host the database
• Use two SQL account, a read-only one for reporting from on-premise, one writeable in-use by the application only
• Use ADFS v2.0 to extend the corporate identity to the cloud
• I’ll try to install it on a local VM for demo
• Build a web application as one web role accessing the DB directly

I suspect the biggest challenge will come from ADFS, partly because I’m no AD-expert, partly because it’s new and there is little documentation around.

I’ll write blogs as I go along.  I’m doing many other things at the same time and that migration is actually low-priority, so it will most likely take a few weeks.  I’ll link the blogs together.