David Gristwood's Blog

If so, why not visit one of our technical briefings? These one day technical briefings on the Windows Azure Platform are designed to help games companies explore the opportunities presented by Windows Azure as a rich, extensible, scalable, resilient and...

We Brits love to talk about the weather. So,  how handy, that as part of the Coalition Government data transparency plans, they publish data from all 150 weather stations and 5,000 forecast sites in the UK. Since launching the data feed, the Met...

The Big Data Hackathon takes places at the Hub Westminster, 80 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4TE, on the weekend of the 13th and 14th of April, 2013. Why not take part and assemble a team with your colleagues to compete in one of challenges: Data Science Challenge...

Our team still get lots of questions from customers and partners about “SQL Azure” (aka “Windows Azure SQL Database”) and how it differs from the on-premise versions of SQL Server that they are used to managing and configuring.  TechNet has an excellent...

It's always a pleasure to converse with my old friend and colleague, David Chappell ( www.davidchappell.com ), this time in London during his world tour where he has been talking about cloud computing, Windows Azure and its impact on developers. In this...

Learn more about how Windows Azure has helped companies realize the true value of the cloud.  Windows Azure supports multiple development platforms, languages, and tools providing first-class choice beyond .NET for developers and enterprises. Register...

  Windows Azure Media Services in an exciting new platform that offers the flexibility, scalability and reliability of a cloud platform to handle high quality media experiences for a global audience. Media Services includes cloud-based versions of...

  Video delivery is consuming an ever larger percentage internet traffic, from user generated content to streaming movies, end user consumption appears to have no bounds. But delivering high-quality video to multiple devices, monetizing it and protecting...

MLS is the largest supplier of library automation software to schools and colleges in the UK, and their software is key to helping drive up literacy rates by proving engaging software that is fun to use and helps captures a child’s imagination.  ...

I have know James Varga for several years, and he has been involved in some incredibly interesting projects, and this latest one, running on the Windows Azure platform, is fascinating. miiCard is an “Identity as a Service” - it is a provider that proves...

The  Guardian Innovation Nation Awards – Winners - Innovation in enterprise - Shoothill "With over 5m properties and assets worth £132.2bn in England and Wales at risk from flooding, Shoothill and the Environment Agency (EA) have released the...

One of the best books I have read recently is “ Free: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business ” by Chris Anderson . Whilst it is not, per se, about the cloud, but about innovation and economics, many discussions...

Put 22 nd June in your diary if you are interested in Windows Azure , and if you want to hear the latest about the Windows Azure roadmap, and meet other developers who share an interest in the cloud. The day kicks off with a keynote address from Scott...

One of the best things about my work with Windows Azure is when a system actually goes live, so our team are going to be doing more blogs about people building on the Windows Azure platform, so you can what sorts of applications they built, why the chose...

One of the interesting architectural discussions that comes up when designing highly scalable systems, such as those that run on Windows Azure, is how to co-ordinate multiple “nodes” so that they use use unique keys within an application or system. It...

It’s great to see one of the partners I have worked with, bbits , who developed the excellent Windows Azure application Love Clean Streets , get involved in the discussion around the future of mobile development, in a recent Computer Weekly article, ...

A few days ago, Eric Nelson and I locked down the dates for www.sixweeksofazure.co.uk which is fantastic news. We also confirmed that our core set of webinars and online surgeries will happen on the Monday and Wednesday of each week – with additional...

I met up with one of my UK ISV partners, Newgrove to find out more about their new cloud based product, Orpheus, used by client's such the FT , to help them make sure they are getting the best value from their advertising. In the video he find out how...

In my latest video case study for Channel 9 , I talk to Media Science about how they have used the Windows Azure platform to help solve the problem of "Big Data" - millions and millions of chunks of data, in a wide variety of different formats...

Our team are hosting another Windows Azure BizSpark Camp in London, on Friday 30th September, 2011. So, if you are a start-up and you have been wondering about Windows Azure, or more generally about your cloud strategy, why not come along for the day...

If you are in the process of evaluating the Windows Azure platform, one of the questions you are may be asking yourself is, who else is using Windows Azure? Our Developer and Platform Group within Microsoft here in the UK has been working closely with...

Our team do all our work with partners who are the early movers, those who see the cloud, and in particular, Windows Azure, as a great opportunity to reduce costs, create new ideas or take existing products to new levels of functionality. As part of that...

The whole area of autoscaling Windows Azure applications comes up as a regular topic in discussions about the platform, mainly because there isn’t an “out the box” solution for it. This is for a number of factors, not least of which is the fact that we...

The Windows Azure Platform went live in January 2010 which means that in the UK we already have some great examples of solving real business problems elegantly through the use of cloud computing. At TechDays in May, I introduced on stage four partners...

Active Web Solutions, one of the UK partners that has been working with Windows Azure since before its launch, has launched their “Global Alerting Platform” on Windows Azure. Read more about it in this Register article , and how they build it here .