Aaron gives a great summary here with Windows Azure: A New Era for Microsoft Developers. This is extremely helpful for those of us who didn't get to this years PDC! Oh, woe of woes... :)
I'm extremely interested in this space (who isn't?) but I'm interested in finding out if "Azure" is MORE than sweeping a bunch of relevant existing technologies under a new name. Though, even if that's the case, its still better than what MS was offering before - they were seriously fragmented in this space, an identity crisis if you will - they didn't have a coherent vision that competitors (Amazon) had. Azure, if it does nothing else, will at least do that. This is still a big win!
Microsoft also often becomes untouchable in a particular space because of the commitment to a quality developer experience. It sounds as if this might be the case again in the 'cloud computing' domain. I can't wait to get a hold of some of the bits to see what the experience is like!
Now matter how cool the platform is the developer experience can make or break it!
