It’s clear that developers love the cloud. It’s also clear that Microsoft’s cloud services have become the future of the company. No surprise, then, that Microsoft is doing all it can to bring developers to Azure — not just the existing crowd of Microsoft/.Net folks, but developers from ecosystems far and wide.

With Microsoft’s Build event just around the corner, the company is likely to announce even more in this vein. But as it stands right now, here are four of the most crucial ways that Microsoft is making Azure into a developer’s haven.

Few people would question Microsoft has some of the smartest people around working for it, helping build Azure and all the other pieces Microsoft is set to leverage for its future. But the slickest and most advanced innovations within Microsoft won’t add up to much if no culture of customer development can be built on them.

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