At first, many expected the opening keynote at PDC to be about Windows 7. However, PDC’s first major keynote was dedicated to the announcement of Windows Azure, a platform which (until PDC) was completely concealed by Microsoft from the public (except through occasional, highly dramatic blurbs from Steve Ballmer). The platform’s announcement also came as a surprise to many developers, IT professionals, and pundits who saw Azure as an attempt at matching Amazon’s offerings through Amazon Web Services.

With this in mind, a number of questions regarding Windows Azure remained unanswered. Who exactly was this platform targeting? Was it after IT professionals looking to offload some of their services to Microsoft’s servers? Was it for developers looking to create interactive, deep web 2.0 applications? What would Microsoft do with the data? What about security?

Amitabh Srivastava, corporate vice president and head of Windows Azure within Microsoft, took some time to answer the most common questions about Windows Azure. You can read his responses and comment below the fold.

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