Short answers, pulled from the story.
The platform officially launched as Windows Azure on the 1st of February 2010. This release offered virtual machines and infrastructure services to early adopters following its unveiling in October 2008 under the codename Project Red Dog.
By the 25th of March 2014, the company renamed the service Microsoft Azure to reflect its broader scope beyond just Windows operating systems. This rebranding coincided with the introduction of the Azure Resource Manager for grouping related services.
By fiscal year-end 2025, Azure operated over 400 datacenters across 70 regions. The platform generated more than US$75 billion in annual revenue during this period while maintaining global presence.
An outage occurred on the 29th of February 2012 due to incorrect code calculating leap day dates affecting multiple services. This incident disrupted operations before subsequent outages like the worldwide partial compute outage on the 30th of October 2013.
By 2018, Azure operated in 54 regions with Microsoft becoming the first primary cloud provider to establish facilities in Africa including two regions in South Africa. This expansion marked a significant milestone in the company's global infrastructure growth.