Creating a chat application with Azure

What I need to do is create the server side for a chat application that will run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and web browsers.

To do this I am thinking of:

• creating an application and hosting it on Microsoft's Azure cloud

• using XMPP as the communication protocol.

The iPhone app that I开发者_如何转开发 am building will then connect to my app on the cloud and they will have very colorful conversations in TCP/IP and XMPP.

Is there a better way to do this?

Do you have any tutorials to help me start?

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Not a full answer or a recommendation, but I saw a bit of the Steve Marx's presentation today which covered node.js implementation https://github.com/smarx/smarxchat at http://chat.smarx.com/

Whilst not a finished architecture, it certainly will suggest an alternative possible design!

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This is an old question. But if anyone is looking for a more ready solution today, I'd recommend give Azure Communication Services a try. It offers a managed solution for chat, SMS, telephone call, and audio/video call across all platforms.

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If you're writing your own xmpp server, you'll need to use a worker roles and open the necessary ports.

If you're looking to implement an existing xmpp server solution, you'll probably be better off using a VM role, building the server image and uploading it.