I am helping to build Yahoo! Cloud now. It’s a lot of fun, but its final vision is still shaping up. We’re not in the business of providing IaaS or PaaS yet and as such it’s quite different from my previous gig, Windows Azure Platform. So is Yahoo! Cloud...

I’d like to announce that Cloud Provisioning & Billing 1.0 (CPB) has been released to the web . CPB is primarily targeted at service providers wanting to sell Windows Azure Platform services and resources in combination with their own and application...

Recently, I’ve been helping SugarCRM Inc. to port their flagship SugarCRM application, “largest PHP application in the world”, to Windows Azure Platform. Here’s the slide deck we jointly prepared with SugarCRM Chief Software Architect Majed Itani for...

I’m glad to announce that we have released Rich Cloud Application Framework and Sample 2.0 . Rich Cloud Application is a Rich Internet Application that is hosted in the cloud and has following key characteristics: • Duplex server communication • Session...

Here’s a new slide deck that I prepared for our partners and which gives a good overview of technologies frequently used in creating Rich Cloud Applications – Windows Azure Platform, Silverlight and Sync Framework. It covers both present and near future...

Here's a deck describing Rich Cloud Application concept architecture in a bit more detail and showcasing Product Support Online sample scenarios and touches upon the next release: Savateyev_RichCloudApplications(Feb2010)1.3.pptx Let me know if you have...

I've finally published to MSDN what we've been working with our partner Murano Software for the last couple of months - Rich Cloud Application Framework and Sample . This is a proof of concept (POC) application based on RCA concepts I described before...

I've been asked few times for the slide decks of presentations I have done recently on overview of Windows Azure and on what's new in .NET 4.0. You can find them here: Cloud Computing: Practical Innovation (November 2009) What's New in .NET 4.0...

Given all latest changes to SDKs and tools, I think a significant update is needed for my old blog post on creating a data access layer for Azure Table Storage in Silverlight ( Porting Silverlight RIA to Windows Azure - Part 1 ). It is now a part of whitepaper...

Rich Cloud Application (RCA) is a concept describing a new type of Rich Internet Application (RIA) served from the cloud. To the end user it would look exactly like RIA but with additional functions that take it to the next level - peer awareness, session...

There's quite a lot of buzz around smart grid lately - many companies jumping on the green tech band wagon and investing resources in making all kinds of applications for smart grid - the next-generation energy infrastructure. Microsoft is no exception...

Silverlight 3 comes with very good PollingDuplex library allowing two-way communication between a server and a client but it lacks scalability features allowing it to work from behind a session-less load balancer such as one in Windows Azure. This limits...

Following up on my previous posts on this topic, this time I want to present really scalable solution to the problem of scaling client-server two-way communication in Silverlight 3 in the cloud. This solution is based on great implementation of HTTP polling...

One of the most serious limitations of current implementation of PollingDuplex mechanism (one that allows server to talk to Silverlight applications in the browser) in Silverlight 3 is its lack of support for multiple backends. In other words, if your...

One major area where hosting RIA in Azure is significantly different from hosting in a regular web server is the use of the foundational piece of Azure platform itself - .NET Services Service Bus. Service Bus is an “intermediary in the cloud” allowing...

Firstly, why is implementing efficient data access important for Azure RIAs in particular? The cloud databases in general are not the most performant databases in the world – they scale well but any given response by itself is probably going to be slower...

UPDATE: Please refer to an updated version of this post for up-to-date steps working with Azure SDK November CTP and Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 Beta. Windows Azure is a great platform for taking traditional web applications and rich internet applications...

I've done couple of presentations for our partners in Europe recently and want to share the scrubbed slides with everyone. First one summarizes the UX Continuum story on Microsoft platform as it relates to software architects and decision makers and touches...

Following up on my previous post - the reference application is now called PSO (Product Support Online). It will be developed in two phases to align features better with the changing nature of Azure and SDS APIs, but more importantly, to draw a clear...

Here’s new project I'm working on which is taking after my CPM pet project and various Azure and Silverlight projects I've done with partner ISVs. It is an easy-to-use application for providing basic product support in the cloud, collecting feedback...

This week I attended a MIX09 session (well, the one that is supposed to be presented there in March anyway) by Rick Barraza, Senior Experience Architect at Cynergy . Rick is well known for his work on Flash, Flex, AIR, Silverlight and WPF projects and...

In response to the questions I received about CPM, I want to clarify what it is and who it is for. What is it? CPM is really a general concept that doesn't mandate any specific implementation or platform or even architecture. It has few central...

SharePoint SilverView 1.0 Guide Pack has finally been released to the web this week. It adds following few things to the beta releases: List View (shown below) - different from first view (Explorer) in that it lists all list items in their own cells...

I'm glad to announce that today Trent Swanson and I have published a beta of SharePoint SilverView Guide Pack (described in my previous posts). This is a pre-release software and it contains only one view so far (Explorer View), but we are planning to...

Continuing the topic of SharePoint+Silverlight Guide Pack started in my previous post. This guide pack when completed will include: Silverlight API for SharePoint - a Silverlight .NET library exposing a subset of SharePoint Web Services via structured...