Tag: PaaS

St. Louis Day of .NET this Friday and Saturday

I’ll be packing tonight and heading out early in the morning to St. Louis. I’m originally from Missouri and I am aware of the miserably hot weather in Missouri this time of year. Let me say, it is less than ideal. This morning the actual temp was 87F while the heat index was 99F. If you are in St. Louis and want to escape the extreme heat this weekend, August 5th and 6th, check out St. Louis Day of .NET.

St. Louis Day of .NET is a big 2-day education and networking event for software developers that work with Microsoft technologies. Imagine taking 2 years of user group meetings and wrapping them up into one big 2-day event. That’s St. Louis Day of .NET. Sprinkle in a keynote from Jay Schmelzer, Group Program Manager on the Visual Studio team, food, music, social events and lots of prizes and you have an incredible weekend. I almost forgot to mention that this event is also at the beautiful Ameristar Casino Resort. After the sessions and social events, there’s tons to do without even leaving the building. You’ll get a keynote from Jay Schmelzer, nearly 100 technical sessions, a great Friday evening social event, personal time with industry experts, two days of breakfast and lunch, a nice polo shirt you can proudly wear at work, and great giveaways, all for only $200.

Registration is only open until 8PM today, August 3rd. If you are wanting to go and haven’t yet registered, I have one 50% off discount code. To enter to win this 50% off registration, simply tweet this post. I’ll draw a winner, announce it and Direct Message (DM) them the code at 6PM today. To receive the DM, you must also follow me on twitter.

I will be presenting three emerging technologies and practices that I’m very passionate about and are all in some way related to Cloud Computing, PaaS and Windows Azure.

Consuming Data From Many Platforms: The Benefits of OData
The amount of data stored today is growing at a rapid rate. However, data is only valuable if it is accessible and can be consumed by people and systems. OData is an open protocol for sharing data that is positioned to solve this problem. OData uses the standard HTTP protocol using REST principles to make data accessible and has huge industry momentum with rapid adoption growth. In this session, we will explore what OData is all about and how to expose relational and non-relational data as OData using WCF Data Services. We will then walkthrough developing apps to consume the OData feeds from multiple clients including mobile devices. Finally, we will take a look at how you can benefit from using Azure to publish your data with OData services.

Overview of the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket
Whether it is buying clothing, food, or software, consumers like the simplicity of the one-stop shopping experience. Product producers also benefit greatly by being a part of a community marketplace. These rules of commerce apply to data just as much as physical goods and mobile apps. The Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket is the marketplace for data set distribution in the cloud. In this session we will explore the benefits of the marketplace and the cloud for distributing data. Next, we will review the features and capabilities of Azure DataMarket. We will then walkthrough subscribing to, consuming and paying for data from Azure DataMarket. And finally, we will explore what this means for data publishers and how you can get data into the Azure DataMarket.

Architecting for Massive Scalability
The Cloud now makes seemingly infinite amounts of computing power accessible to everyone. However, to maximize this power, your applications need to scale. In this session, we will explore patterns that enable massive scalability. We will examine Brewer’s CAP Theorem and contrast it to the ACID principles that guide traditional LOB applications. And finally, we will explore how to apply these patterns when building applications for the Cloud using Windows Azure.

I’m excited to be back in Missouri and hang out with the St. Louis tech crowd. If you have questions, success stories or just want to chat about Cloud Computing, I’ll be around and would love to hang out, discuss and dig deep into “The Cloud”. If you want to chat about other things that Centare helps companies with and they’re in my range of expertise, like reducing time to market, increasing throughput, boosting flexibility and enabling mobile scenarios. Those are all ok too.

See you in St. Louis!

WI .NET UG Recap – Moving Web Apps to the Cloud

Thank you to Scott Isaacs and the WI .NET User Group for inviting me to present last night. And another thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy summer schedule to participate in the local developer community. I had a blast presenting one of my passions, Cloud Computing, PaaS and Windows Azure. I really enjoyed our discussion and interaction last night and would love to continue the dialog if you have further questions or need assistance with moving “To the Cloud”.

I hope you left with a better understanding of the Cloud, PaaS and Windows Azure. Specifically, I hope that you now have a better idea of how to get started migrating an existing application to Windows Azure. We explored some of the items that can be extremely simple to move, like Application Data in SQL Azure, ASP.NET Membership and Diagnostics. We also discussed some of the items that can offer a challenge, both technically and architecturally, such as Claims-based security and Non-relational, NoSQL, data.

The guidance from Patterns & Practices is great when exploring these migration scenarios. You can read the P&P content online at MSDN. And if you prefer a paper book or an eBook, those are available for purchase too. Downloads for Hands-On Labs and source code for the a-Expense application are also available from P&P. The one caveat worth mentioning is that what’s currently published was developed with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, .NET 3.5 and Windows Azure SDK 1.1. It’s still a great resource to check out and there will soon be a Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 and the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 update. Subscribe to my blog and I will let you know when that update gets released.

The following links are resources that will help you on your Windows Azure journey.

Patterns & Practices – Moving Applications to the Cloud – Online Content
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx

Patterns & Practices – Moving Applications to the Cloud – Code Samples
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=2798

Patterns & Practices – Books
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/hh124092

Windows Azure SDK and Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sdk/

Windows Azure Pricing Calculator
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/

If you would like a copy of the slides from last night, you can download them from my SkyDrive.

Finally, please let me know what other cloud computing topics, either business or technically focused, you would like to learn more about. Your feedback will help guide future presentations and events. Thank you for attending and check back later next week for more details about a new community launching to provide practical, deep, hands-on experience developing with Windows Azure.

Moving Web Apps to the Cloud at WI .NET User Group

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.

Next Tuesday, July 12, 2011, at 7PM, I will be presenting on this very topic at the WI .NET User Group. 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.

If you are planning to attend, please take a moment to register for the event. There will be FREE pizza and soda sponsored by Centare. And I will bring some additional cloud giveaways.

One important detail to take note of, we will not be meeting at the normal Direct Supply location, but instead at Northwoods Software. Thanks to Northwood Software for providing the location this month.

Northwoods Software Development, Inc
4600 West Schroeder Drive
Brown Deer, WI 53223
Map & Directions

Talking Cloud at Architect Factory in Boston

As a senior member of a technology team, you can likely relate to the constant pressure to rapidly innovate and deliver new systems. It feels like the executives expect you to instantly produce the latest cutting-edge innovation they just learned about in their most recent business periodical. And you are already overwhelmed with your projects, responsibilities and are likely drowning, trying to drink from the massive fire hose of information. How can you juggle all of this and still provide solid guidance to your business community on increasing effectiveness with technology improvements?

This Thursday, June 9th, I will be helping a group of architects and senior software developers gain a better understanding of cloud computing and the value it can contribute to their organizations. I will be presenting “Understanding the Value of the Cloud” at Architect Factory 3 in Cambridge, MA (Boston) at the Microsoft NERD. Architect Factory is a 1-day conference that is designed to provide architects and senior software developers with a unique opportunity to learn the solutions, tools, techniques and processes of software architecture and services, first hand from leading software architects.

In my session, Understanding the Value of the Cloud, we will reminisce about the major milestones in computing history, look at where we are now, and consider what the future will look like with the introduction of the cloud. Next, we will examine the challenges of the traditional data center and dig into the benefits and value provided by leveraging the cloud. Finally, we will discuss how you can identify opportunities in your organization that are a good fit for the cloud, explore strategies for getting started and identify some items you must consider as architects when moving to the cloud.

My goal is for you to leave this session with a good understanding of what the cloud is all about and inspire thinking about your projects that are ideal for cloud computing. I also want you to be equipped to explain the value of cloud computing to your your business community in terms that resonate with them.

If you are in the Boston area, a senior software developer or architect, and haven’t yet registered for Architect Factory, do so soon! This is a FREE event and the number of remaining tickets are decreasing rapidly. The agenda is posted, the speakers are listed and registration is still open.

If you are considering or currently developing apps on a cloud platform, be sure to check out Bill Wilder’s session, “11 Scalability Concepts Every Architect Should Understand”. Bill’s session will help you understand how to design and build applications to take advantage of the massively scalable characteristics of cloud platforms like Windows Azure.

Lastly, if you like FREE stuff, I will also be giving away some Microsoft Cloud and Windows Azure t-shirts, mugs, keychains and most importantly books.

See you in Boston on Thursday!

Follow-Up to Centare Lunch & Learn

Thank you to everyone who attended the Centare Lunch & Learn last week. I hope you left with a good understanding of what cloud computing is and how you can benefit from the cloud. I also hope that the time we spent exploring common cloud application scenarios will help you identify cloud opportunities in your organization.

Cloud Computing takes multiple forms, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Generally, as you move from the “Traditional Data Center” and IaaS towards PaaS and SaaS, more value and ROI is realized. While the value proposition is usually greater with SaaS over PaaS, often mass-market software products don’t meet your specific needs. When this occurs, you must consider PaaS.

In our discussion of PaaS, we discussed the benefits of PaaS over IaaS and walked through a high-level overview of Windows Azure. The following are some Windows Azure resources that will be helpful as you explore the Windows Azure Platform on your own.

Windows Azure Features Overview
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/features

Windows Azure Case Studies
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/evidence/

Windows Azure TCO Calculator (Link on the right hand side)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco

New Windows Azure Pricing Calculator
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/

Windows Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla/

If you would like help assessing and planning your organization’s cloud strategy, feel free to contact me.

If you would like the a copy of the slide deck that I presented, you can get it on my SkyDrive.

Finally, please let me know what other cloud computing topics, either business or technically focused, you would like to learn more about. Your feedback will help guide future presentations and events. Thank you for attending and providing valuable feedback.