Automatically Create a Windows Azure VM and Deploy an App with Apps for Azure

A new app, called Apps for Azure, has hit the Windows App Store. Apps for Azure is part of a larger service provided by Dynamic Deploy. Dynamic Deploy's intent is to collect, store, and make available open source and commercial applications that can be easily selected and deployed into a Windows Azure virtual machine.

Much of Dynamic Deploy's service is free, only requiring an account. The free account allows you to publish your own apps, deploy cloud services, and deploy virtual machines. But, a $9.99 per month subscription will net you a bit more, including access to the web service API, ability to deploy multi-tier stacks, usage of Storagecopy, and the ability to publish private apps.

The Windows App Store app just released brings a searchable interface to Windows 8.1, allowing you to locate apps published to and stored by Dynamic Deploy that you would like deploy into a Windows Azure VM instance. This is a pretty neat solution and brings one of the first real "app stores" to Windows Azure.

Apps for Azure utilizes the same app categories provided on the Dynamic Deploy web site, so you can get a sense of what apps are currently available for deployment. There are currently 24 different categories including things like BI, databases, OS images, and analytics.

You can search the Windows App Store for 'Apps for Azure' or use the following link:

Apps for Azure