Our team - the Microsoft Developer and Platform Group - are offering a limited number free half day Fasttrack Architectural / developer Reviews focused on the Windows Azure platform for partners. These will take place at the Microsoft offices in Reading, and will run from Monday 30th November to Friday 4th December, 2009.
What does a Windows Azure Fasttrack Architecture Review consist of?
A fasttrack review is an opportunity for a partner to lay out their technical, business and architectural problems in front of some Microsoft experts, and gain advice and guidance on choosing the best path for their future development. These are interactive, conversational engagements which typically last for around 3 to 4 hours, and have proved very successful and useful for participants in the past. For these specific sessions, the focus is on Cloud computing, and in particular Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Azure platform.
The format is that of an informal meeting - some chairs, a table, a couple of whiteboards and a lot of imagination and honest speaking. The conversations are all about problems and solutions, and if you come with an open mind then you should leave with a lot to digest and think about, and a good idea of your next steps.
If you think it would help to give us demonstrations of your products, then come along with it (but not PowerPoint, please), then that's what we can do. If you'd rather draw diagrams, or talk, or listen, or sit in silence for the entire length of the session, then that's what we can do. The experience is totally driven yourselves - though obviously we have some suggested structures developed out of experience that can help things flow best, if you'd rather fall back on those.
What makes a good Fasttrack Architecture Review?
The best Fasttrack Architecture Reviews tend to happen at the stage when a partner is looking at a specific upcoming new project or software release, and is starting to think about what features or capabilities around Cloud Computing and Azure might influence their own plans (e.g. "Can we offer both on-premise and off-premise solutions?", “How do make sure we can scale up?”). An open mind and a willingness to discuss ideas are essential.
Conversely, a few things can prevent a good Fasttrack Architecture Review session. If you have already made your mind up and are simply looking for more detailed discussions, then this is possibly not the right forum - let us know and we can suggest the best routes forward. Similarly, if management are not behind the changes, or you are unable to bring a senior decision maker to the meeting, or there are no specific time scales for a new version, then these sessions can be less then optimum, and we urge you only to apply when the time is right for you.
How to apply for a Windows Azure Fasttrack Architecture Review
If you have been looking thinking about Windows Azure and cloud computing, and you think your company has a great idea, or interesting problem that would benefit from one of these sessions, then please get in touch with us, and we'll let you know if we think a fasttrack review session would be suitable. Please note that we mainly deal with architectural discussions, rather than deep technical support.
We typically get more applications than we have space for, so to make sure we get the right companies at these session, please take a little time to tell us about yourselves, and what you want from the session. You *must* provide us with a 'draft agenda' for the fasttrack review by emailing details about the following topics for discussion:
Azure Fasttrack review
1 - What are the top one or two key things you want to get out of the meeting?
2 - Are there any specific problems, issues or opportunities are you currently facing?
3 – In addition to Azure, are there any other key technologies will you want to cover in the review – e.g. SQL Server, Silverlight/WPF, SharePoint, etc?
4 - Who do you plan to bring along to the reviews (2 to 4 people is typically ideal, at least one technical person)
Technology background
5 - What technologies are you currently using?
6 - What are your timescales for considering Azure? What are your experiences with Azure to date? Are there any specific aspects of Azure you anticipate using?
Company background
7 - The size of your company and the development team
8 - Company/Product URLs
To get in touch, just email this information to ukdev@microsoft.com and state any dates that week that you would be unable to attend. If we're unable to help with a review, we'll try to point you towards some useful resources that should help to some degree.
I work with Keith Burns, and as far as I can tell, he knows pretty everything there is to know about SQL Server, which in turn means he knows pretty much everything there is to know about SQL Azure too.
As some folk are still getting to grips with SQL Azure, this seemed a great time to sit down and chat with and get him to show me a few demos. The video is up on Channel 9.
When David Chappell came to London, during his recent world tour, I got the chance to sit down and discuss with him Windows Azure, its importance and role in the ISV and partner ecosystem, and other cloud players, such as Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, VMware, and well as a few other things.
If you want to find out why he states “If I ruled the world, I would make the phrase ‘private cloud’ illegal”, then check out the video – its less than 15 minutes, and David is, as always, an excellent and insightful speaker.
From time to time I end up doing some photography and filming at some of the events that we run at Microsoft. Recently this involved me hanging around and meeting some TV celebrities, in particular James Caan (Dragon’s Den) and George Alagiah (BBC News):
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I have been giving a few high level technical briefings to architects and systems designers on Windows Azure, to help them better understand what Azure is, the philosophy around it, and most importantly, how it could potentially fit in their own product roadmaps and plans.
I’ve posted the current slides I have been using on Slideshare:
14:00 – 16:00 Tuesday 6th October 2009, London.
Cloud computing is here, and that has important implications for your business. Join us to hear from new-technology expert, David Chappell (www.davidchappell.com), what cloud computing and the Windows Azure platform means for ISVs, custom software development firms and enterprises.
David Chappell, is an industry thought leader in cloud computing who has helped software developers around the world think through the challenges and opportunities this emerging technology brings to their business
According to many, Cloud computing looks like the biggest change to hit our industry in many years. The advent of cheap, scalable compute power available over the Internet will affect almost everybody who works in IT. But what is cloud computing and how does one take advantage of this new approach?
In this session, aimed at both technical and business decision makers in Microsoft partners, David Chappell looks at the Windows Azure platform and what it means for ISVs and custom software development firms.
The topics he’ll cover include:
- An overview of the Windows Azure platform: Technology and business model
- The cloud platform context: Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, and more
- Using the Windows Azure platform: Scenarios for ISVs and custom software development firms
The goal is to provide a foundation for thinking about the Windows Azure platform, then offer guidance on how to make good decisions for using it.
About David Chappell
David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates (www.davidchappell.com) in San Francisco, California. Through his speaking, writing, and consulting, he helps software professionals around the world understand, use, and make better decisions about new technologies. David has been the keynote speaker for many conferences and events on five continents, and his seminars have been attended by tens of thousands of developers, architects, and decision makers in forty countries. David’s books have been translated into ten languages and used regularly in courses at MIT, ETH Zurich, and other educational institutions. In his consulting practice, he has helped clients such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Stanford University, and Target Corporation adopt new technologies, market new products, train their sales staffs, and create business plans.
How to Register
This event has a restricted attendance, so please register now either by following below link (and Invite code) or calling
Phone Number: 0870 166 6680 ref: 5572
Link to Registration Site
Using Invite Code: 702DFE
Venue Address & Location
Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
100 Victoria Street
London SW1E 5JL
Tel: 0870 60 10 100
Link to Directions
Getting up and going with Windows Azure
If you have been thinking about looking at Windows Azure, but not really been sure where to start, perhaps this posting will help. If you have a few hours to spare, you could a lot worse than follow through some of the sample and links below . . .
For those already have some familiarity with Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET, and this is an assumption being made for this post, Azure is actually not that new – it’s very much an evolution of the platform, building on the skill sets and tools that developers and designers are already familiar with.
Whilst you don’t strictly speaking need the SDK and development environment to look at the source code and understand the samples and underlying technology, getting hold of them and installing them really makes it easier to view the code, and test out the samples for yourself. One of my colleagues, Mike Ormond, list all the links you need to get your development environment up and going, so head off there now, and get yourself prepared for the rest of this tutorial . . .
One additional resource that is incredibly useful, and which will be referenced here, is the “Windows Azure Training Kit” so get it now, as it has a whole host of labs, step by step demos, presentations, etc, that are well worth looking over.
If you don’t want to download everything now, or have any problems at any stage, we have the ideal solution – we have prepared a number of videos that take you through Azure, you can kick back, grab your latte and watch some videos at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/videos.mspx. The "How Do I?" videos are a great selection of “bite sized” videos, each focusing on a specific aspect of either the platform or development cycle. Why not start with “How Do I: Get Started Developing with Windows Azure?” just to get a feel for what’s coming up.
Finally, to get a good overview of the whole platform, before we dive into its depths, please read David Chappell’s excellent white paper “INTRODUCING WINDOWS AZURE”.
Hello World
There is a “Hello World” sample which is part of the SDK samples which is a easy starting point to get an understanding of Azure, how it works and how you program for it. So, to start this tour of Azure, load the Hello World project into Visual Studio and have a little look around it. ASP.NET programmers should find it very familiar.
One of the great benefits of the Azure platform from a development cycle is the availability of a local development environment that duplicates many elements of the full cloud based platform, but can be run locally, prior to deployment, to test applications and step through code – you can’t attach a debugger to the cloud.
Check that you can run the application locally - by default the Azure “Development Fabric” will start automatically and you can see the deployment of your application taking place to the desktop, rather than the cloud.
The final step in mastering the Azure development environment is to make a change to the Hello World sample, such as changing the message text on screen, and deploying the new version up to Azure, and running it in the cloud.
The first time you deploy an application up to Azure, it can feel a little confusing as there are a number of steps to go through, and in its current pre-release form, the process is not as seamless and automatic as it will be by launch.
The interaction for deploying an Azure application is through the Azure portal:
Once familiar with the process, it is straight forward.
Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/mikeormond/archive/2009/08/11/deploying-your-first-windows-azure-app.aspx for a step by step guide, or this Channel 9 video http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dunnry/Deploying-Applications-on-Windows-Azure/
You should be able to deploy the Hello World application up to Azure. One aspect of the Azure portal that makes it easy to manage the lifecycle of an application is the ability to, at the click of a button, swap the Staging and Production environments:
New Features in Azure
So what is new and different about Windows Azure as a development platform?
As you will have seen from the deployment process up to the Windows Azure portal, the way applications are packaged and deployed is slightly different, and reflects the ways in which the applications are managed by the Azure “fabric” once they are deployed.
In Windows Azure, instead of the more traditional “main()” entry points, code can run in either a web facing role or back end worker process role. Exploiting this new patter is key to creating scalable Azure applications:
Windows Azure also introduces some new storage options over and above the usual file system which developers are familiar from Windows client and server:
Windows Azure Tables provide scalable, available, and durable structured storage in the form of tables. The tables contain entities, and the entities contain properties. The tables are scalable to billions of entities and terabytes of data, and may be partitioned across thousands of servers. Windows Azure Blobs provide a simple interface for storing named files along with metadata for a file. Windows Azure Queues provide reliable storage and delivery of messages for an application and are the most common basis for Web and Worker role communication.
Understanding these new computational and storage models is key to migrating existing applications to Azure or building brand new Azure applications. One of the best ways to get to grips with them is through the sample programs. Check out the SDK and the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit “Hands On Labs” and “Demos” sections for sample applications that target these features. To understand Azure storage in more depth, its worth reading the Table, Blob and Queue white papers at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/whitepaper.mspx
For example:
- The previously discussed SDK HelloWorld application uses the simplest web role model, and is thus more like a traditional ASP.NET application
- The SDK DistributedSort Sample is a more typical Azure application, in that it has a web role that accepts the input data and adds it to a queue as a work item, and has a worker role that handles the actual more processor intensive sorting operation
At end of this process, you should be able to think about different applications architectures and how to design them to scale well and use the appropriate storage options. One of the subtleties in Azure is the potential ability to build solutions using a mixture of on-premise (including desktop, server and mobile) and Azure cloud elements together, tied together by web services:
Joshy Joseph’s MSDN article “Patterns For High Availability, Scalability, And Computing Power With Windows Azure” - is a great place to start exploring patterns for designing highly scalable Windows Azure applications.
Next Steps
Now is the time to start experimenting with Windows Azure and building your own applications.
www.Azure.net is always a great place to start and to check out the latest news and resources, as is the MSDN Windows Azure Platform Developer Center
Codeplex hosts a whole host of Azure based projects, so a great way to see the code for sample applications and join their community - http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?projectSearchText=Azure
Channel 9 has an ever growing array of videos and screen casts about Azure - http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+Azure/
Also, be sure to check out some of the Azure blogs
With the recent release of the the CTP (Community Technical Preview) of SQL Azure, I thought it was a good time to site down with my colleague, and SQL guru, Keith Burns and have a chat with him about this whole topic of a cloud version of SQL, what it means for developers and systems designers, and how to get started.
| Eric Nelson and I were involved in a Microsoft UK Azure day recently, where we invited press and analysts to meet some companies that were doing interesting things with Azure and find out a little more about why the chose Azure, and what their experiences had been. I took my camera along so we could share some of those conversations with you . . enjoy! | |
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AWS have been working with Windows Azure since before its official unveiling at the 2008 PDC in LA, where they had been working on an RNLI safety of life system. Here Richard Prodger talks about how the RNLI system has progressed, and some of the other work with Windows Azure, such as “SocketShifter - Warping the Internet Space Time Continuum with the Azure .NET Service Bus” | |
Bert Craven from EasyJet is on a mission to make travel better by reducing much of the queuing we all have to do at airports, through the use of Windows Azure for mobile passenger services.
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Dot Net Solutions have done a number of interesting projects with .NET and Windows Azure. Here Dan Scarfe and Marcus Tillett talk about one of their projects, Scrumwall, and how they moved it to Windows Azure.
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Richard Burrill of PensionDCisions describes how the company has taken a new and innovative approach to help companies and individuals really understand their pension, using sophisticated software to calculate and process this data, and how they turned to Windows Azure to help them achieve this.
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Jon Poynton and Dan Sadler talk to Matt Deacon about TBS, and how company delivers mobility solutions, and in particular how their adoption of Windows Azure is helping them create a new generation of off-premise solutions. | |
. . . and if you want to read some of the reviews that came out of the day, check these out:
http://www.v3.co.uk/computing/news/2246103/easyjet-flies-clouds-azure
http://www.v3.co.uk/computing/analysis/2246022/q-mark-taylor-microsoft-uk
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/07/14/236876/microsoft-azure-goes-online-priced-to-compete-with-amazon.htm
http://www.cio.co.uk/opinion/veitch/2009/07/14/microsoft-lays-out-ts-and-cs-for-windows-azure-cloud-vision/?intcmp=ARP4
http://www.itpro.co.uk/612736/need-to-know-windows-azure
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/14/microsoft-azure-prices
It was only when the September issue of Personal Computer World, or PCW as it it always referred to, failed to drop through the letterbox that I realised that it had ceased publication. A sad day, not only because it was an excellent magazine, but because I have been a regular reader and occasional contributor to the magazine for over two decades!
You can read Personal Computer World magazine: 1978-2009 - An Obituary for a more detailed look back at the magazine and some of the topics it covered.
If you were a regular reader, you can have a nostalgic look at the covers of magazines from bygone days.
I’m a big fan of journalist Guy Kewney and had several discussions over the years with him, and he has an interesting personal perspective on its demise.
Below is the cover of the first PCW I ever bought, August 1980, which still sits on my bookshelf, along with one of my first ever C++ compiler reviews.
I was involved in the recent Bletchley Park Architects Council, where I also took a whole load of photos and several videos to capture the essence of the event. Matt Deacon, as the event organiser, has done an excellent job of pulling all the material together for your delight and delectation:
The blog entry is slip over two parts - Part 1 and Part 2.
We’ve been remixed – which I assume in the on-line world is most sincere form of flattery :-)
The Intelligent City Project I did a video I shot a while back
. . . the intro for which has inspired such comments as:
Fantastically, it’s like the start of a poor horror film.
I find the start a bit creepy
. . . has been remixed on www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk with their article The horror of an integrated wayfinding system
I *think* its a complement.
The DPE team at Microsoft here in the UK where I work get involved in some cool projects, and more recently, I have been involved in filming them (and occasionally starring in), as well as meeting the folk involved, which is great fun.
Here is one of the most recent, which I have just posted:
Lest you think its all glamorous on-location shooting and globe trotting, let me show you some of the shots I took during our filming:
We all have to suffer for our art :-)
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A couple of months ago I was out and about wit my fellow Microsoft colleagues at Weston Manor, in Oxford, for a ‘Cloud’ related conference. The content for the event, along with the videos I made, are now up on the architects portal.
Click here to visit the site and see the videos
