Leaving for Silicon Valley and Cloud Connect

This afternoon I’ll be leaving the Midwest and headed to Silicon Valley for Cloud Connect Santa Clara. Cloud Connect’s goal is to chart the course of cloud computing’s development by bringing together enterprise IT professionals, developers, infrastructure and service providers and cloud computing innovators. Cloud Connect is a one-of-a-kind event that encompasses the entire cloud computing ecosystem featuring a Launch Pad program, IT & Developer workshops and a full conference program.

On Thursday, I’m presenting “Applications at Scale” with Dan Bartow from SOASTA and Dave Roberts from ServiceMesh. In one hour, we will walk through the lifecycle of internet scale applications from architecture and development, to performance testing, to governance. I will be focusing on the architecture and development of internet scale applications and design patterns for scaling data using cloud platforms.

The Cloud Connect conference schedule is incredible starting with an Introduction to Cloud PaaS Architecture on Monday morning with Marc Mercuri and Mark Kottke, Three Patterns for Cloud Use in Your Organization with Brian Prince on Tuesday afternoon, and a ton of other great sessions and speakers throughout the week.

If you are going to Cloud Connect too, I hope to see you there.

Iowa User Group Tour Starts Now

In just a few minutes, I’ll be leaving home and beginning my journey to Iowa for an Iowa User Group tour. Tonight and tomorrow night I’ll be presenting “Moving Web Apps to the Cloud” at the Cedar Rapids .NET Users Group (CRineta) and Dubuque .NET User Group (dbqINETA). If you have been reluctant to take advantage of the Cloud because of fear of the unknown and having to learn another development platform, yet again, come out and learn how your .NET skills translate to developing for Windows Azure. For more information and to register, check out the following web sites.

Monday, February 6th, 2012 @ 5:30 PM
Cedar Rapids .NET Users Group (CRineta)
crineta.org
Kirkwood Community College
6301 Kirkwood Blvd SW Cedar Rapids, IA 52404-5299

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 @ 5:30 PM
Dubuque .NET Users Group (dbqINETA)
dbqineta.com
Clarke University – Keller Computer Center
1550 Clarke Drive Dubuque, IA 52001-3198

Super Bowl XLVI and the Cloud

Super Bowl XLVITomorrow afternoon, the parties will be going strong as millions of people watch Super Bowl XLVI. Approximately 200 miles away from here, Indianapolis will be wild and crazy as 10’s of thousands of fans flock to the city for the big game. But most of us watching this year’s Super Bowl will be doing so from our living rooms and man caves. Not only will we be watching the big game, but we will also be tuning it to watch the commercials. And hopefully they are witty, funny and live up to our high expectations of Super Bowl ads. It’s no secret that Super Bowl commercials generate lots of ad revenue for the TV network and this year is no exception. This year, NBC increased the price of the 30-second Super Bowl spot by 17% to $3.5 million. That’s a little more than $116,000 for each second. Even though that seems like a lot of money, NBC sold all 70 spots by Thanksgiving.

At first glance, the huge cost of Super Bowl ads seem ridiculous. But when you take a moment and consider the value for advertisers, it’s pretty easy to understand why advertisers love the Super Bowl. Advertisers normally pay a $35 CPM (cost per every thousand viewers) for a 30-second ad during a hit TV show. Last year’s Super Bowl had 111 million viewers, which means advertisers only paid a $27 CPM. If you have a massive TV advertising budget, the Super Bowl is a better bang for your buck than other popular ad slots.

Most of the ads have sizable production budgets, are witty, funny and make us want more. Usually included in the ad is a call to action that leads us to the web to get more. This is a great opportunity to start a dialog with current and future customers and a great way to convert marketing spend into targeted leads and sales. Unfortunately, if you don’t plan for the massive amount of traffic that you are likely to see in a short burst on Super Bowl Sunday, your marketing strategy and $3.5 million commercial could be a HUGE failure.

During Super Bowl XLIV, Dockers had a brilliant marketing concept to capture information of viewers interested in Dockers pants. They produced a great ad and followed it up with a great call to action. Register at Dockers.com/FreePants to get a free pair of Dockers.

The marketing worked and the Dockers web site got flooded with users registering for free pants. Unfortunately, the planning and execution of resources for the web site wasn’t successful and users trying to register got extremely slow response times and eventually failures and errors.

Today, it is easier than ever to handle this scenario and eliminate these costly fails. Public cloud platforms like Windows Azure make it extremely easy and affordable to handle burst and seasonal workloads like Super Bowl Sunday. Prior to the cloud, organizations had to acquire hardware, install and configure  that hardware in their data centers, and invest lots of capital to accommodate peak demand that may only occur once and for a brief period of time. This can be a very costly solution. With the cloud, you scale-up, on-demand to handle your demand. When the demand declines, you turn off the extra resources. You only pay for the resources for the time you used them, and not when you don’t need them.

Innovation in the consumption of computing resources with the cloud, make it affordable and simple to implement massive web and social campaigns, like those required for Super Bowl Sunday. As a result of this innovation, there is no reason for failures like the Dockers failure from Super Bowl XLIV. I’m anxious to see this year’s witty and funny Super Bowl ads. And I’m also anxious to see if there are any failures caused by a lack of computing resources. And if you are really anxious like me, you can get an early viewing of some of tomorrow’s ads at the following sites.

Business Insider
Ad Age
Adweek

Windows Azure for Developers at LCNUG on Thursday

LCNUGThis Thursday, I’m presenting Windows Azure for Developers at the Lake County .NET Users Group (LCNUG) in Grayslake, Illinois. It’s nice to be presenting in my own backyard at the College of Lake County with developers from my local community. During our time together Thursday, January 12, I will walk through what Cloud Computing is all about and why we should care as developers. I will guide us through a journey of Platform as a Service (PaaS), Windows Azure and the common scenarios we encounter that are a great fit for Windows Azure and the Cloud. Together we will explore how to get started developing apps powered by Windows Azure, how to deploy to Windows Azure and Windows Azure specific classes and configuration that you should know.

For more information, check out http://lcnug.org/News/11-12-23/LCNUG_Jan_12_Windows_Azure_for_Developers.aspx.

To register, go to http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2684538527.

If there’s something specific you’d like to see or have questions about, shoot me a message and I’ll try to incorporate it and answer your questions.

Moving to the Cloud at the Chippewa Valley Code Camp

As a developer with years of experience developing web apps using ASP.NET, SQL Server, Windows Server and Active Directory, how do you move to the cloud with Windows Azure? How can you apply your existing skills and experience to developing cloud apps in Windows Azure?

These are common questions that get raised when considering Cloud Computing, PaaS and Windows Azure. Often, developers and technology managers have applications that come to mind when hearing about Windows Azure, but they are existing apps that were designed to run on-premise and not in Windows Azure. Since the apps already exist and it doesn’t make sense to throw them away and start over, Windows Azure seems out of reach.

This Saturday, November 12th, 2011, I will be presenting this at the Chippewa Valley Code Camp. We will take a simple, ASP.NET web app, designed to run in the traditional data center, and walk through the migration to Windows Azure. We’ll discuss the important considerations, practices, architectural differences, challenges, advantages and economic benefits to consider when migrating to Windows Azure.

The Chippewa Valley Code Camp has a great lineup of speakers and sessions including talks on Windows Azure, JavaScript, Windows 8, Kinect and Micro Controllers. If you aren’t registered, there’s still time and if you are, I will see you on Saturday.