Azure Mobile Services Now Supports Windows Phone 8, Microsoft Announces Azure Store

Windows Azure Mobile Services will now support Windows Phone 8. The news came in the keynote this morning at the Microsoft Build conference where today’s focus is all about Azure, the Microsoft cloud infrastructure.

The new addition means Windows Phone 8 can use the Windows Azure backend engine for push notifications. According to a blog post, Windows Phone 8 can use “a single framework that supports multiple formats while allowing the apps to be distributed broadly through the Windows Store.”

Azure Mobile Services serves as a backend for Windows 8 applications. Using the platform, developers can store data in the cloud, authenticate users, and send push notifications to clients.

Microsoft also announced the preview of the new Windows Azure Store so customers may add services such as New Relic. This has implications for the Microsoft ecosystem of partners that will become the critical feeders into the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platform.

Mongo Labs is one of those partners. As of today, according to a blog post, the company “will now offer seamless integration with the Windows Azure PaaS platform via an add-on service that you can provision directly from the Windows Azure management console. ”

In addition, Microsoft announced a series of updates for Windows Azure, including support for .NET Framework 4.5 and Python.