About the Authors

Roberto Freato has been an independent IT consultant since he started working. He worked for several small software firms while he was studying. After completing his MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, where he worked on a thesis on Consumer Cloud Computing, he specialized in cloud and Azure. Today, he works as a freelance consultant for important companies in Italy, helping clients design and kick-off their distributed software solutions. He trains for the developer community in his free time, addressing many conferences. He is a Microsoft MVP since 2010.

Thanks to Simona, Mom, and Dad.

Neil Mackenzie has worked with computers for nearly 3 decades. He started his computer career doing large-scale numerical simulations for scientific research and business planning. Since then, he has primarily been involved in healthcare software and developing electronic medical record systems. He has been using Microsoft Azure since PDC 2008 and has used nearly all parts of the Microsoft Azure platform, including those parts that no longer exist. Neil is very active in the online Microsoft Azure community, contributing to the MSDN Microsoft Azure forums in particular. He is a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Azure.

I would like to thank all the people from whom I've learned Microsoft Azure. I would also like to thank the staff at Packt Publishing for nursing the project along and Brent Stineman for first suggesting my name to them. I have found the comments from the technical reviewers invaluable, which immeasurably improved the book. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, Claire, and my children for suffering through all the late nights and lost weekends that went into the writing of the book.