blogs.msdn.com/brianjo

Future Blogging

Brian Johnson MS — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 02:33:25 GMT

I do a lot of my online communication through Facebook and Twitter. You can find and follow my feeds at http://about.me/brianjo.

30 to Launch Azure at Seed Philly!

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:15:17 GMT

Back in February we had a great series of Windows Phone 7 talks we did at Seed Philly that culminated in a demo night where startups showed off some pretty interesting Windows Phone 7 applications. During the weeks that we held the event, we heard from attendees, “Why don’t you do this with Azure?”

Well, now we are. Once again we’re holding a 30 to Launch event in Philly, this time focused on Azure. We’ll give you some instruction to get started and we’ll finish with a pitch nigh so you can show off what you’ve been working on.

I’ll be there for all three nights of the event and I’m really looking forward to seeing what everybody comes up with. Sign up for the program at this link.

Here are the details:

30 to Launch Azure Challenge

What is this?

During the month of April and May we are throwing down a Windows Azure app challenge in Seed Philly. Join us over 3 weeks to build your Azure app!

Azure App Challenge Onsite Details

Location: SeedPhilly
Time: 6:00pm-10:00pm
Dates: May 3, 17, 23
Presented By: Microsoft
Meet your host: Brian Johnson Senior Developer Evangelist

Register: http://seedphilly30tolaunchazure.eventbrite.com/

Why should I care?

You could go home with an Xbox 360+Kinect Bundle*! And you’ll learn how to develop applications for Windows Azure.

What are the details?

We will be hosting three sessions in the 30 days. (Read on each week below to learn more!)

As you learn, develop a new application prototype and a 2 minute presentation about your app.

At the last session, pitch your app to the class and the best pitch (audience judged) gets and Xbox 360+Kinect 250GB Bundle!

Pre-Work:

Review the information on this page: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/

Bring a Windows PC, or a Mac with Windows under virtualization.

Install the Azure tools for Windows from here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/

Week 1 & 2 (Both sessions on May 3)

Get started on Windows Azure!
Date: May 3, 2012
Time: 6-10:00pm
6:00-7:30 pm
Session 1. Getting Started with Windows Azure
(food and drinks provided)

Introduction to Cloud and 30 to Launch

Overview of the Azure Platform

Azure Platform Core Services

Azure Roles

Azure Storage

Azure Setup and Tools

Supported Development Languages

Azure Scale

Discussion

7:30-10:00pm (On May 3)
Session 2. Get Coding!

Set up your Azure account and get started.

Week 3

Office Hours
Date: May 17, 2012
Time: 6:00-9:00pm
Session 3: Come answer your questions on W8 (food and drinks provided)
Speaker: Brian Johnson

Week 4

Pitch Day!
Date: May 23, 2012
Time: 6:00-9:00pm
Session 4: Pitch your App and hear feedback from others (food and drinks provided)
Speaker: Brian Johnson

*No Purchase Necessary. Open only to hobbyists, professionals, or developers in the field of software tech who are legal residents of the 50 U.S. or D.C. 18+. Microsoft is committed to complying with government gift and ethics rules and therefore government employees are not eligible. Game ends 5/23/12. For more details, see the Official Rules.

If you can’t make it to Philly for this event, you can still participate in the online event. Just go to the 30 to Launch site for more details.

Event Report – Startup Weekend Tampa

Brian Johnson MS — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:54:09 GMT

Startup Weekend Tampa – April 13-15, 2012
(Quick Note – At Microsoft we do event reports when we participate in big community events so we can share experiences and let our co-workers know what we’re up. This was really a fantastic event so I wanted to share a little wider.)

http://tampa.startupweekend.org/ (Video and results available)
Photo Link

130 Participants
200+ Attendees
40+ hours in the MSFT Tampa offices
14 Teams
6 New BizSpark Startups (so far)
4 New Azure (so far)

Startup Weekend Tampa was held in the Microsoft Offices in Tampa, Florida over the weekend of April 13th. 130 startup participants formed 14 teams and each team spent the weekend creating a product and pitch for the close of the event on Sunday night.

Startup Weekend events were held in a number of cities worldwide over the same weekend, including Mega Startup Weekend in Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend Notre Dame, and Startup Weekend Deli, India. Attendees, organizers, and other participants communicated between the events through Twitter.

In Tampa, I invited all of the teams in the event into the Microsoft BizSpark program, and by the end of the weekend, we had 5 new BizSpark Startups. Three of these were running on new Azure accounts and one was demoing their Kinect-based augmented reality application.

On Sunday, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn visited the offices and saw demos from some of the participating teams.

Teams presenting in the final pitch session included:

ClipCite - A text-based Web clipper that clips sites and organizes your content. It also allows you to search topics to find other clippings that will help speed up your research. (BizSpark) (Azure)
Quote Sheet - Mobile app that helps you keep track of quotes.
SchoolCal - A social calendar for schools that allows groups to share events.
Oroomeo - A retractable room divider that is portable, compact and customizable.
Splik.it - Instant coupons for social actions.
JitJab - A cloud-based public chat that allows people to easily join the conversation on any web-based application. (BizSpark) (Azure)
The Dirty Sheets - A microblog for funny hookup stories.
Bitcoin Trust Authority - Consolidated complaint and feedback platform on Bitcoin businesses. (BizSpark) (Azure)
Holistic Healthiness - Assess data to provide users with a health score and ranks them against larger variables (demographics, location, age, etc.). Provides holistic health services recommendations based on results.
Trivia Wars - Mobile board games
Easely - An online marketplace for art in which buyers and seller can come together on a local level. (Investigating Azure) (BizSpark)
SignWaive - Liability waiver and payment processing application that integrates with a CRM system. (BizSpark)(Azure )
Augment Games - An augmented reality gaming company focused on education. (Kinect Based Augmented Reality) (Investigating Azure) (BizSpark)

You can see a replay of the final pitches at the Startup Weekend Tampa home page.

This was a very successful event and working with the startup community in Central Florida is an absolute joy. This is the second Startup Weekend held at the Microsoft Offices in Tampa, the first being held last July.

I’m really looking forward to working with the new BizSpark companies that pitched this weekend. If you didn’t get a chance to sign up your company for BizSpark, just drop me a note at brianjo@microsoft.com.

Huge thanks to the organizers of the event, Susie Steiner, Kim Randall, and Ryan Sullivan. You really made this a great event for the attendees and you make it easy for us to continue to support these events from the Microsoft Office in Tampa.

Brianjo

Windows Azure Learning Path

Brian Johnson MS — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:19:13 GMT

Great new content from the expert team I’m involved with around Azure. Check out all the new content here:

Windows Azure Learning Path

We have aggregated a set of resources for a structured learning of cloud computing through a set of courses designed to hone your skills progressively. Each course is comprised of a set of hands-on labs and videos that focus on Windows Azure that is Microsoft public cloud.

Testing against IE for Startups

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:56:58 GMT

I tell this to startups all the time. You need to test your sites and products against IE, even if that isn’t your preferred browser. CNET posted a story today that shows the increasing usage of IE on the desktop. You can check out the story here:

Microsoft's IE reclaims lost ground in browser battle

Internet Explorer resumed growth in browser usage in March, reversing a years-long slide at least for now. IE9 in particular grew fast, but Microsoft is weak in mobile browsing.

One of the easiest ways to test against IE is to use the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images available from the Microsoft Download Center. To use these, just set up a Windows 7 machine with Virtual PC and use the images here for testing:

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image

In order to help web designers and web developers test their websites in older versions of Internet Explorer, we've provided the following VHD with Windows set up with the specified version of Internet Explorer. The images are patched with the latest security updates and are otherwise clean installs of the operating system with very few modifications.

These images will allow you to test your sites and apps against IE7, IE8, IE9, and even IE6 on Windows XP.

Setting these up is pretty easy. I would be glad to do a video if anybody wants to see how this looks on the PC.

Tampa Hackathons: METRO FRIDAY for Win8 or Windows Phone in April

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:43:09 GMT

This sounds like a ton of fun.

METRO FRIDAY hackathons for Win8 or Windows Phone - Tampa - April 2012

I like hackathons. Lots of interaction that wasn't planned. You get to see some really cool project. And you get to code.
Hackathons are very simply an event where folks sit around and co-work on their projects with specific goals in mind.
I also love Windows Phone and Windows 8. So I thought to myself, hmmm, "have big meeting room", "have some Fridays open", why not runs some open hackathons!.
So with that, the esteemed Jim Blizzard and myself came up with the idea for METRO FRIDAY HACKATHONS.

What: Hackathon for Metro Styled Apps on Win8 or Windows Phone
When: 900AM to 800PM - all day, April 6, 20, and 27
What: Open format hackathon focused on Metro for Windows 8 or Windows Phone
Where: Microsoft Office, 5426 Bay Center Drive, Suite 700, Tampa, FL 33609 - directions

Ideas on what you could do:
Publish your app during the hackathon! (this qualifies you for some special drawings!)
Evaluate your app for SDK 7.1.1 256mb emulator compatibility
Work on a project with experienced folks to help you. Jim Blizzard for Windows 8, Joe Healy for Windows Phone
Jump start your Windows 8 or Windows Phone Developer Experience Cowork for a Day!

Ars Technica: Create a Bootable Windows 8 USB Thumb Drive

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:49:32 GMT

I’m going to build one of these today. Just need to dig up a 30GB+ storage drive.

Ordering "Windows to Go": how to create a bootable Windows 8 USB thumb drive

Microsoft's Windows 8 Consumer Preview is called that for a reason—there isn't a lot on the surface that looks very compelling about the new operating system to business users. The revelation that Microsoft would not support domains or other administrative features on Windows 8 for ARM devices dumped cold water on many enterprise customers' hopes for a single, unified way to manage users and systems across desktop and mobile devices.

Also found tons of good Windows 8 information to take a look at in the Download Center.

HTML5 Drag and Drop for SharePoint

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:17:05 GMT

Really good article in MSDN Magazine this month by Andrey Markeev. Check it out:

Adding HTML5 Drag and Drop to SharePoint Lists

Microsoft SharePoint is an enterprise platform with a long history and vast variety of features, which is why it can’t always react quickly enough to follow emerging Web technology trends. Despite a wide enterprise adoption of SharePoint and a huge effort to provide a broad number of features, SharePoint still lags behind modern CMS products in terms of immersive UIs, such as HTML5 and CSS3.

In my opinion, HTML5 is not only a hot new technology, but it truly has many practical benefits: it’s easy, convenient and rich—and it’s supported, more or less, by all the modern browsers (including mobile device browsers). Additionally, HTML5 and JavaScript are becoming major technologies for desktop programming in Windows.

Found this via MSDN Flash.

Updated BizSpark News App

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:09:52 GMT

Well, I haven’t actually updated the app, but I have updated the feeds going into it. The BizSpark Team Blogs have changed and so I’ve updated the RSS feed that gets pulled into BizSpark news to pick up the latest from the team. You can get the app here if you haven’t seen it before.

East Region BizSpark Startup Kinvey Closes $2M Round

Brian Johnson MS — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:42:34 GMT

Awesome news. Hacker Chick, Abby Fichtner, has some details in the Microsoft BizSpark blog. Congats to Kinvey!

Kinvey, Backend as a Service, Closes $2M Round

We knew Kinvey was up to all good things when Atlas Venture’s Fred Destin introduced their Boston 2011 TechStars Demo Day presentation with the surprise announcement that he was leading their seed round with a $1 million investment.

(Okay, we actually had a pretty good idea long before that as we watched them evolve their ideas on how to help developers create Bad asS apps).

And so we’re extremely excited (if not terribly surprised) to share that they just closed out that seed round at $2M. In the words of TechCrunch, Kinvey aims to let developers skip past all the boring database-building and get right into the fun stuff.

Microsoft training from 10 years ago

Brian Johnson MS — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:03:09 GMT

The Microsoft fiscal year (FY) started on July 1, and it’s our time of year to do things like plan our career path, training, etc. I was just looking at the training I did in Redmond (around) 10 years ago and I thought it would be interesting to post the list. Some of the classes were several hours per week or a week at a time, others are one-off lectures. Amazing to think that .NET was so new then…

C Programming II	Hacking Exposed - Live
NEO - New Employee Orientation	HailStorm Introduction
New Employee Family Orientation	Introduction to the Managed Extensions to C++
Visual Basic: Intermediate	Managing Cross-Product Partnerships
Win32 Programming	MSR Tech Festival 2002
Windows Programming in C	Rapid Development: The Ten Myths
Building .NET Applications	Scripting: Learning Perl
C++ Programming	Securing and Deploying .NET Assemblies
COM 1: Component Objects	Sysinternals: A Tour of these Powerful Tools
Debugging Windows Applications	Targeting Mobile Devices with Active Server Pages+
HTML+TIME (SMIL) 2.0 in Internet Explorer 5.5	The New WinDBG - the Tool for Hardcore Debuggin
MSR Tech Festival 2001	Using Windows Installer For Your Application
The Key to C#: Q&A with Anders Hejlsberg	Visual Basic .NET: Introduction - Online
.NET Framework And Tools	Visual C++ Internal Awareness Week: June 24 - 28, 2002
.NET Mobile Web Software Development Kit (SDK)	Visual Studio for Applications .NET Application Customization
.NET: An Introduction	Windows Installer: An Introduction
ADO.NET: Introduction	Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista OS Internals
Announcing IceCAP 4.1: The Tip of the Iceberg	Writing Secure Code – Enough is Enough!
Buffer Overruns in Depth	Writing Solid Code
C# Programming	Xbox .NET: Setting the Standard for Online Console Gaming
C++ Workshop: Advanced Managed Extensions	VS .NET Languages: Introduction to Visual C++ .NET
C++: Managed Extensions	Microsoft Developer Fundamentals
COM Fundamentals	Dynamics of UI Design and Program Management, Version 2.0
Design Day 2002	Extending the .NET Framework
Design without wasting time	Frameworks Class Library: A Whirlwind Tour
Designing Windows XP Icons

BizSpark One Startup Panopto in GeekWire

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:16:09 GMT

I met the guys from Panopto in Pittsburg a couple of years ago and they floored me with the demo of their lecture capture software product. I worked with Christopher Griffin to get them into BizSpark One and they’ve been turned out to be an excellent partner for that program. I would encourage you to check out their Silverlight-based sample recordings to see how really well done this product is.

Check out the GeekWire story below for an interview with Co-Founder (and former Microsoftie) Eric Burns.

Startup Spotlight: Carnegie Mellon transplant takes root in Seattle with Panopto

Panopto was founded in 2007 with technology from Carnegie Mellon University. But the company is now growing its presence in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, thanks in part to a connection to Microsoft.

The company’s co-founder and CTO, former Carnegie Mellon researcher Eric Burns, previously worked on book and academic search technologies for Microsoft’s Windows Live unit. (Now Bing).

At Panopto, he’s now leading the charge to develop a video, audio and screen recorder that that helps individuals capture everything from city council meetings to academic lectures to concerts.

In the latest installment of Startup Spotlight, we chatted with Burns to get his take on what makes the company tick.

New from Ignition Showcase 11.15.10

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:41:29 GMT

Good stuff from our Partner Ignition blog…

Windows Azure Updates!

Update Your Windows Azure Skills at the Microsoft Partner Network
How to Build a Hybrid On-Premise/In Cloud Application
Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack Release Candidate (RC)
Now Available For Download
SQL Server “Denali” CTP1 Available for Download
Whitepaper: Inside SQL Azure

Windows Server Updates!

Windows Server as a Great Development Platform
Windows Server 2008 R2 Resources
You May Have a Private Cloud Already!
Build Your Private Cloud with System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0
Microsoft Private Cloud Announced!

SQL Server Updates!

SQL Server Administration for the Oracle DBA
Leveraging Data Warehousing Appliances

SharePoint Updates!

SharePoint in the Cloud

Keep teams in sync and manage important projects
Manage and share important document
Stay up to date with company information and news
Share documents securely with partners and customers
Market your business using a simple public-facing website

Online Silverlight Firestarter on December 2nd

Brian Johnson MS — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:46:41 GMT

If you do any WP7, Silverlight, or WPF development, you’re probably not going to want to miss this.

Future of Silverlight

Keynote Starts December 2, 2010 at 9:00 pacific time

Hear what’s coming next from Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie

Training, labs & swag

Online or in-person at Microsoft HQ, December 2nd 2010

It’s just like an extra day of PDC, dedicated to Silverlight

BizSpark Graduation Offer

Brian Johnson MS — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:30:32 GMT

In the next year or so, a number of our BizSpark Startups will come to the end or their three years in BizSpark. Microsoft wants to be ready to help these companies transition into non-BizSpark partners as painlessly as possible.

Today we posted our offer to graduating BizSpark Startups. You can find the details here:

BizSpark Graduation Offer

The BizSpark Graduation Offer allows Startups who graduate from BizSpark to:

1. Keep, at no charge, all the software they currently use*, and

2. Have the option to purchase a subscription or maintenance to keep their software updated

Highlights:

After three years in the program, we will waive the $100 exit fee and offer the following:

ü Startups can renew their MSDN subscriptions at any level, starting at $935 for two years, per developer (MSDN renewals include Windows Azure benefits – compute hours, SQL storage, etc.)

ü Startups can purchase the first two years of Microsoft Software Assurance (upgrades, support and training) for production server licenses at a 50% discount.

If you’re not currently in BizSpark, check out the site at http://bizspark.com. If you’re eligible, apply for the program. If you’re a startup on the east coast of the US, go ahead and drop me a note at brianjo@microsoft.com and I’ll work with you directly.

It’s like watching your kids grow up.

Brianjo

Curse on the Windows Team Blog

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:33:03 GMT

No, not that kind of curse. Brandon has a great post on the Windows Team Blog about BizSpark Startup Curse. Check it out.

Managing Game User Interface Add-ons with the Curse Client from Curse.com

I consider myself a casual gamer. I play a few PC games, mostly Games for Windows – LIVE titles, and of course Xbox. But this week I’ve been exposed to an interesting area of online gaming. Some of the more advanced gamers out there might find it sad that prior to this week, I had no idea there is such a big community of user interface add-on authors who create free plug-ins for online games like World of Warcraft. I had, of course, heard of and played World of Warcraft before, but didn’t know there were user interface add-ons for the game. User interface add-ons are plug-ins that change the user interface that a player utilizes in a game. This is where the folks from Curse.com come in. They have created a client for Windows – the Curse Client – that is designed specifically to deliver user interface add-ons that 3rd party authors publish through Curse.com.

I mentioned on FB last week that a big patch came out for World of Warcraft last Tuesday and that one of the things that Curse was able to do was to mitigate traffic spike problems by moving to the Microsoft Web Platform. They seemed to have handled lasts weeks patch with no problem at all.

MyWebCareer.com goes live

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:58:21 GMT

I’ve been working with a BizSpark startup called MyWebCareer.com. This site lets you monitor and manage your “Online Career Brand”. The site is one of the largest Azure applications I’ve seen, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at it. Very cool stuff. Check it out.

From their About page:

Based in Northern Virginia, MyWebCareer was founded in January 2010 by a group of executives with over 30 years of collective experience in developing mission critical solutions for US Federal Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Forensics clients.

What do you know about your Online Footprint?

Almost everything you do on the Internet can be traced back to you and nearly everyone has left some online footprint(s). These online footprints can include references to you on corporate websites, blog posts, press releases, and social or business network profiles. Collectively these footprints make up your online brand. Employers, colleagues, friends or just acquaintances are increasingly using ever more sophisticated Internet search engines to research your online brand to gain additional insight about you.

At MyWebCareer we have created a service for Career Professionals that enables you to uncover and evaluate your online footprint. Our product integrates technologies and methodologies that have been successfully utilized by the law enforcement and intelligence communities since 2001. Our objective is to provide Career Professionals with insight into their online brand and to offer tools to make this data accessible, manageable, and actionable. We use sophisticated link analysis, visualization and semantics technologies to enable you to quickly evaluate and explore data that may relate to you.

At MyWebCareer we know all about privacy and data protection. Our approach to privacy is simple. Your data is available to you only. We will never share or sell your data with any third party without your express permission.

Windows Phone 7 Available November 8th!

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:11:55 GMT

Really excited for this. Be sure to check out the Windows Phone 7 launch events linked below:

Today we announced that Windows Phones will be available for consumer purchase thru At&T November 8th! Make sure your app is ready in time for consumers by following the below timeline:

Oct 11: Participating early certification developers will receive instructions on submitting their xaps, allowing those apps to be published in Marketplace in the lead up to, and after, launch.

Oct 12-November: Microsoft will continue processing submissions and prioritizing new requests in the order they are received until the self-serve submission process is broadly enabled.

Need help getting started with how to build your app and the resources available? Check out the Windows Phone 7 Launch Events and MPR below.

WP7 APP DEMO:

Windows Phone 7 Launch Events:

Get ready to capitalize on this exciting new frontier with two days of fast-paced learning. Day One takes you under the hood of Windows Phone 7 with the tools and fundamentals of application development, plus design scenarios using Silverlight, XNA and the Windows Phone 7 SDK. Day Two is all about turning your napkin sketches into real, sellable apps. Go at your own pace to build your app and upload it to the full-service Marketplace. Register at www.msdnevents.com/wp7.

Additional Resources:

Microsoft Platform Ready is always available online to help you develop, test and deploy your WP7 app. Get access to trainings, offers and 24/7 support @ http://www.microsoftplatformready.com/home.aspx.

Microsoft Security Essentials for Small Business

Brian Johnson MS — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:22:11 GMT

Eric Ligman announced today that Microsoft Security Essentials will be available to small business for free in October. I use Microsoft Security Essentials on all the machines in my house and it’s saved our bacon a number of times. Check out Eric’s post on the solution for small business and the other options that are available.

Announcing: Microsoft Security Essentials available FREE to Small Businesses in October!

Here is some great news for all of the small businesses out there from Microsoft that I am very happy to be able to tell you about!

As we all know, small businesses are under incredible pressure to:

Reduce operating costs

Improve productivity

Grow their business

Do all of this in a very challenging economic climate

It’s also no secret that most small businesses today do not have a dedicated IT professional on staff to manage their IT resources (which you may recall is why we originally launched the Small Business Specialist Community of partners worldwide). Small business owners and employees are focused on running their business, not managing complicated IT infrastructure.

For those reasons, we are extremely excited today to let you know that Microsoft is making its Microsoft Security Essentials available to small businesses on up to 10 PCs for FREE, beginning in early October! By providing Microsoft Security Essentials to small businesses free of charge, Microsoft extends its commitment to help these companies save money and grow their business by offering no-cost protection from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats.

Interview with Hedgehog Development - Azure, the Microsoft Partner Network, and BizSpark

Brian Johnson MS — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:43:14 GMT

Posted this to the MPN East blog and though I would also share it here.

Hedgehog Development is a custom web and application development shop that provides consulting and development services for a range of different industries. They're also a former Microsoft Partner of the Year (2008) and a BizSpark Network Partner. In this interview Microsoft Evangelists John McClelland and Brian Johnson talked to Hedgehog about the Microsoft Partner Program, developing a Facebook application with Azure, and about working with BizSpark startups.

Small Basic Updated

Brian Johnson MS — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:17:43 GMT

Check out the Small Basic blog for details on the update they’ve release to Small Basic. Coolest new feature is being able to publish to the Web. This is just the fractal sample, but the possibilities with this are pretty wild. I’ve been looking for a good way to model simple stuff in Web pages for years and this might just do the trick.

Is Azure Right for my Business?

Brian Johnson MS — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:25:26 GMT

Free Live Meeting on February 25. Check out the link for details and to register. Should be a good event.

CSD24CAL: Is Azure Right for my Business?

Microsoft Partners are cordially invited to attend an online Live Meeting briefing to hear new insights and points-of-views from well-known industry experts and leading edge partner companies on what the Windows Azure opportunity means for your organization. We will demonstrate how you will be able to change the face of your business and introduce new revenue streams for building solutions for our customers.

Have you pondered the business opportunity behind Azure?
Do you want to know how to:

Leverage the opportunity and get started / engage your customer?

Assess an organization for Azure and help them determine their S+S strategy?

Compute cloud charges and determine the ROI of migrating to the cloud?

Determine what best practices to apply in migrating applications to Azure?

At this briefing you will:

Hear from a leading Azure partner on how to get-started identifying and developing Azure opportunities

Hear from peers within your network about real projects and business development initiatives

Who should attend?

This is a business development briefing for Microsoft Partners, specifically system integrators, who build custom developed solutions. Partner attendees most likely to benefit from this briefing include:

Executive Technology/ Business Liaisons

Technology Decision Makers

Development and Architecture Leaders

Partner Interview: SummitCloud | brianjo | Channel 9

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:38:04 GMT

This is an audio interview I posted to Channel 9 today. SummitCloud is working through the Microsoft Partner Network to drive and find new business opportunities.

Partner Interview: SummitCloud

Posted By: Brian Johnson | Today @ 9:14 AM | 58 Views | 0 Comments

SummitCloud is a BizSpark startup that produces analysis and compliance software used by suppliers and retailers. Microsoft Partner Evangelist John McClelland and I sat down with SummitCloud CEO David Leibowitz to talk about SummitCloud, BizSpark, and the Microsoft Partner Network.

Partner Interview: SummitCloud | brianjo | Channel 9

Technorati Tags: azure,partner,microsoft,bizspark,summitcloud

Microsoft in the Cloud

Brian Johnson MS — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:01:09 GMT

The Microsoft in the Cloud events are coming to cities in the US East Coast in February and March. Stops include Washington DC, Atlanta, New York, Charlotte, and Boston. Check out the link below for details.

Microsoft in the Cloud

...For Today, Tomorrow and Beyond.

Are you evaluating cloud technologies and wondering where Microsoft fits in? Did you know that Microsoft has over 15 years of experience delivering services like Hotmail and more recently Xbox Live through the cloud to millions of users? Do you want to know more about what Microsoft’s annual investment in the cloud – a significant portion of its $9.5B R&D budget means to you and your company?

Companies everywhere are looking to leverage cloud technology to:

Drive greater efficiency in IT systems and cut costs out of IT infrastructure

Increase the scalability and agility of IT infrastructure

Reduce IT carbon footprints

Help developers respond more quickly to business requirements

Address lost productivity and user frustration with disconnected IT experiences

Join us to discover how Microsoft Cloud Computing enables organizations like yours:

Have the Flexibility of choosing whether your applications will run locally, in the cloud, or a combination of the two based on your business needs

Remain confident in the Security and availability of your data and services as you harness the efficiency, cost, and environmental benefits of the cloud

Maintain Control while increasing end-user satisfaction and productivity via the enablement of seamless experiences across the PC, Web, and phone.

Interoperability Bridges & Labs Center

Brian Johnson MS — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:55:02 GMT

Great resource for those working with PHP and other F/OSS tech on Windows and IIS. Lots of projects and labs to explore here. (I wish I had been aware of the a couple of weeks ago.)

Interoperability Bridges & Labs Center

The Center is dedicated to technical collaborative work to improve interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. In this site, you will find a live directory of freely downloadable technical interoperability Bridges & Labs and related content such as demos, technical guidance and articles. The vast majority of the projects are Open Source. The Center is run by the Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Group working with the community at large.

Technorati Tags: Interop,PHP,Windows,IIS,Microsoft