Microsoft has announced that its two Australian Azure bit barns are up and running, in a “private preview”.

Microsoft Australia managing director Pip Marlow writes that “a number of customers and partners are using the service today” but adds that “I still can’t give you the final date for general availability but I can share that it is just around the corner, a matter of months away.”

The mention of “months” probably means the service won't be ready to launch at TechEd Australia, which takes place in October. Vulture South has previously reported strong hints from well-placed sources we have no reason to doubt. So perhaps the Azure data centres are proving a little more finicky that Microsoft anticipated.

Or perhaps not: Marlow's post mentions a couple of users - e-health provider Ocean Informatics and e-learning outfit Janison – that are already using what we should probably start calling “Ozure”. If two are in there, and Microsoft has ticked all the boxes it needs to do PR about them, wider release can't be far off.

Under-promising and over-delivering is also just the kind of thing that would make a grand TechEd keynote, and certainly a better one than the “cloud mobile social internet of big data things” theme that has dominated most shindigs Vulture South as attended this year.

Here's hoping green lights for the two Ozure bit barns make TechEd Australia 2014 more interesting than that. ®