Matthew Weinberger

January 25, 2011

2 Min Read
Drupal 7 and Microsoft Windows Azure: A Match Made In Heaven?

TalkinCloud knows Drupal 7, the recent update to the open source content management system (CMS), has its fans in the channel. If MSPs aren’t building customer websites on the free software package, they’re using it for their own. Well, those Drupal 7 fans are in good company, with Microsoft publicly expressing support for the platform. Indeed, Microsoft has launched modules to help Drupal developers on the Windows Azure cloud platform add Microsoft content to their sites.

In a blog post, Microsoft’s Craig Kitterman explains that the company is all in when it comes to helping developers mash up Azure and Drupal. And to illustrate that commitment, Microsoft has funded partners MindTree and Schakra’s development of four new generic modules for Drupal instances hosted on the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform.

Specifically, the four new Windows Azure for Drupal modules (all available on GitHub) include:

  • The Bing Maps Module, to embed (you guessed it) Bing Maps into Drupal content like blog entries or technical entries.

  • The Windows Live ID Module, to tie a Drupal login to a Microsoft Windows Live login and let users sign into the former with the latter.

  • The OData Module, which allows for the querying of OData-based data sources in Drupal content. The example Kitterman used is letting users browse the Netflix catalogue from a Drupal article.

  • The Silverlight Pivot viewer Module for Drupal, which is fairly self-explanatory.

That’s not all the love Microsoft is showing Drupal, either. Drupal 7 now supports Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft’s made the Drupal package available for installation from their Web Application Gallery, to boot.

But to TalkinCloud, the most interesting part is that Microsoft is so willing to help integrate open source solutions into the emerging Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform.

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