Microsoft has launched a toolkit for Android developers, enabling them to use its Windows Azure cloud platform as the basis for their applications.

The toolkit enables developers to create apps which store and process data on the Azure platform – using tools such as the SQL Azure database. This approach means much of the processing of data  is carried out within Azure rather than on the device, and developers only need to host their data in one place for applications built on different platforms.

Microsoft already offers Azure toolkits to mobile app developers working with the Windows Phone OS as well as Apple’s iOS.

The Android toolkit – first announced in May – includes native libraries for storage and authentication, a sample application and unit tests.