Night Train to Detroit Day of Azure

I have a latte in hand and am ready for the 5 1/2 hour night train that’s ahead. In just a few minutes, I will be departing Chicago on an Amtrak headed to Detroit for Detroit Day of Azure. Detroit Day of Azure is a one-day conference focused on Windows Azure with some of the best Windows Azure experts and speakers. This conference will take place tomorrow, Saturday, March 24th at the Microsoft Offices in Southfield, MI from 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM. If you have already registered, I will likely see you tomorrow. If you have not registered, unfortunately, the conference is sold out. If you are still interested in attending, you can sign up on the wait list and be notified as cancellations occur.

Tomorrow, I will be presenting “BI in the Cloud with SQL Azure Reporting” at 10:20 AM in the Technical Briefing Center. If you are interested in Business Intelligence and performing BI in the Cloud, attend my session where we will dig into Azure BI scenarios and tools including SQL Azure Reporting. The full description is below and you can get more information about my session and Detroit Day of Azure at http://www.detroitdayofazure.com.

BI in the Cloud with SQL Azure Reporting
Why maintain infrastructure for operational reporting, when you can do it in the cloud with SQL Azure Reporting? SQL Azure Reporting provides a set of capabilities that are familiar for developers using SQL Server Reporting Services on-premise. We will begin this session by considering the benefits and scenarios for BI in the cloud. Next, we will walkthrough what you need to get started using SQL Azure Reporting. We will then develop and deploy some reports to SQL Azure Reporting. Unfortunately, SSRS and SQL Azure Reporting do not have complete feature parity. As a result, we will conclude by reviewing the challenges and limitations of using SQL Azure Reporting over SQL Server Reporting Services.

You will learn the benefits of BI in the Cloud; the capabilities of SQL Azure Reporting; how to create and deploy reports to SQL Azure Reporting; and an understanding of the limitations of SQL Azure Reporting.

See you tomorrow in Detroit!

Recap of Iowa User Group Tour

Last Monday morning, I had coffee in Wisconsin with my buddy, and our local Microsoft Web Evangelist, Clark Sell. Clark and I had a good chat, and then I got on the road and headed toward Cedar Rapids, IA. At some point early in this trip, I realized that the Oak Brook Microsoft Store was on my route. So once in Oak Brook, I made a quick detour to pre-order the new Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone and then got back on my original journey. Unfortunately, I saw this post over the weekend which basically says if you didn’t get in on the pre-order early like I did, you aren’t going to get in on the Lumia 900 pre-order.

After about 5 hours in the car, I arrived in Cedar Rapids at Kirkwood Community College where the Cedar Rapids .NET User Group meets. The CRineta group was very welcoming, hospitable and interactive. After the meeting, we went out to a local sports bar and continued the conversation. On Tuesday evening, I presented to the Dubuque .NET Users Group. dbqINETA is a small group, but like CRineta they are also a fun and interactive group. Unfortunately, I couldn’t visit the Cedar Valley .NET Usergroup on Wednesday, but I hope to visit them sometime down the road. At both Iowa groups, I presented “Moving Web Apps to the Cloud”. During our time together, we walked through moving a traditional ASP.NET web application to Windows Azure. We worked through transitioning the typical on-premise dependencies like Windows Server, Active Directory and SQL Server to Windows Azure with new techniques and tools like Claims-based Identity, WIF, ADFS, Windows Azure Compute & Storage, and SQL Azure.

One interesting observation is that the overwhelming majority of the attendees had MSDN subscriptions, however, very few had a Windows Azure account. If you have an MSDN subscription and you are interested in developing apps in Windows Azure, MSDN provides you a great amount of Windows Azure resources as a benefit with your MSDN subscription. Every month you get a specified amount of Windows Azure resources, and it’s use it or lose it. So take advantage of your MSDN subscriptions and activate your Windows Azure account. In December, a new Windows Azure Spending Limit feature was released that makes it impossible to accidentally incur overage charges. The way it works is once you reach your allowed usage, instead of charging you for additional usage, Windows Azure will just turn off your service to prevent overage charges. This makes it completely risk free to try as a developer.

CRineta and dbqINETA, thank you for having me and I hope to see you again.

The following is a list of resources that were mentioned, as well as the presentation.

SQL Azure Migration Wizard
http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com

Patterns & Practices Windows Azure Guidance
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff898430.aspx

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.

Cloud this Week at VS Live! Redmond

The VS Live! Conference has begun. Cameron Skinner, General Manager of Visual Studio Ultimate at Microsoft is currently delivering the keynote and the conference is starting strong. Immediately following today’s keynote, I’m presenting Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role. Visual Studio Live! Redmond has a ton of great speakers, tracks and sessions and if you are attending VS Live, find me a say hello. If you have questions, concerns or ideas about Cloud Computing and Windows Azure, let me know that too and we can chat about that.

If you are not able to make it to Redmond, don’t worry, registration for VS Live! Orlando is open and hasn’t sold out yet. If you are like me and live in a cold winter area like Chicago, December 5-9 in Orlando, FL is extremely attractive.

In addition to my session, there is an impressive list of sessions in the VS Live! Cloud Track!. The following is a list of the Cloud Track sessions.
VS Live! Redmond Cloud Computing Track

Hope to see you this week in Redmond!

Talking Cloud – Tomorrow at Tulsa TechFest 2011

Friday, Oct 7th, aka tomorrow, is the sixth year of Tulsa TechFest. Tulsa TechFest is technical conference with many tracks covering lots of topics including architecture, web development, cloud computing, social media and even entrepreneurship. It has grown over the past 5 years, and this year there are 21 tracks and a keynote from Glenn Block on WCF Web API.

John Weston and I are presenting this year’s Cloud track and I’m excited to deliver two developer focused talks and John’s IT Pro talks look very interesting too. The following is the schedule for the Cloud track.

9:00AM – Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, what’s the Truth? – John Weston
10:30AM – Moving Web Apps to the Cloud – Eric D. Boyd
1:00PM – Hyper-V Virtualization to prepare for the Cloud – John Weston
2:30PM – Overview of the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket – Eric D. Boyd

If you are on the fence and haven’t yet registered for Tulsa TechFest, register and enjoy a great conference and a day of free training.