At the Microsoft PDC today, I attended a talk entitled, "Web Application Packaging and Deployment". It went into detail about how the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool can significantly ease deployment for ASP.net applications onto a supporting Windows platform...

I'm attending the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference this week. If you're at the PDC or in the LA area, give me a shout out!

As a Web Platform evangelist at Microsoft, I've had many conversations with individuals about the how we could improve Microsoft's IIS Web Server. I've often touted the modular architecture implementation of IIS7, and how it allows both Microsoft and...

Any of my regular blog readers may note that I recently updated my blog design. I know it was long overdue. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to voice my opinion on how much easier it is to modify CSS settings now! Community Server (which is the software...

Today we're wrapping up the Tier1/451 Group Hosting Transformation Summit. Here are my thoughts after attending the talks yesterday. Ultimately, it was a good way to get a financial analyst's perspective on concepts such as data center efficiency/real...

I'm in Las Vegas for the 2008 Hosting Transformation Summit, which is the 451 Group / Tier1 Research executive hosting summit. Here are some initial observations: 1. The summit has grown! Seems like there are twice as many attendees this year. 2. Still...

Lately there has been a great deal of discussion about WS2008 Core amongst the Web Platform Architect Evangelists and several of the great people in the IIS and Commerce/Hosting product teams. Ever since I first learned of LongHorn Core (now Windows Server...

Many of you know that I've been talking about IIS7 in road shows, talks, demonstrations, and training labs since I first started working as a Hosting Evangelist in January 2005. This fall, for the first time I'll not be talking about "this cool up-coming...

Microsoft is hosting free Microsoft Web Experience events at the Los Angeles Microsoft office on June 8th and the Denver Microsoft office on June 15th. They will be presenting information on building the next generation user experience on the web. ...

I'm really excited that Microsoft announced yesterday that IIS7 will now be a server role option as part of Windows Server 2008 (formerly known as longhorn) "server core". This means that you'll be able to install a minimalistic footprint for your server...

Come hear how we architect and run Microsoft.com and get a real world, in the trenches view of the architectural strategies behind running http://www.microsoft.com/ , including how we leverage early adoption of Microsoft Technologies (Longhorn, IIS7,...

After a great deal of work with several hosters involved in the IIS7 RDP pilots, we're releasing the fist publicly available draft of the IIS7 Shared Hosting Guidance whitepaper. If you're looking for information about how to deploy IIS7 in a shared hosting...

I had the honor of presenting at this years Mix 07 conference at the Venitian Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas. It was billed as the premier event for Web Developers and Designers for the Microsoft platform. I was able to deliver a session that covered...

This week I'm at the Global Hosting Summit in Redmond, WA, USA. It is an invitation-only event where hosting and SaaS ISV partners come to network and exchange ideas, as well as participate in keynote and breakout sessions about the hosting industry and...

The SQL Server group at Microsoft has just launched the SQL Server Hosting Toolkit with the release of the Database Publishing Wizard Community Technology Preview 1 . The objective of the SQL Server Hosting Toolkit is to enable a great experience around...

If you look at the hosting industry, there are thousands of hosting companies. I've seen most new hosting companies start small, and typically start with a linux or freeBSD based hosting offering. The question as to why more small hosting companies don...

The Windows Server Division Weblog has a post about an upcoming webcast which describes the upcoming technology Windows Deployment Services. Since this could be a future replacement for ADS, which is currently part of the Solution for Windows Based Hosting...

Yesterday I finally made the plunge and installed both Windows Vista RC1 and Microsoft Office Beta on my primary work laptop. I've been dabbling with Windows Vista for over a year now, and have even played with the Microsoft Office Beta on my home system...

This is funny. If you do a search for "search" on Google, MSN will show up higher than google: Wait, now wipe that smirk off your face! Do the same search on MSN and you find that Google shows up well before MSN search: Go figure!

Google has entered the web hosting space. <gasp!> Well, it was bound to happen. People have been speculating about this for a long time. They have a site-builder application that you can access via your gmail account at http://pages.google.com...

Today Microsoft released the latest version of the Solution for Hosted Messenging and Collaboration . HMC 3.5 is a complete solution for offering hosted exchange in conjunction with sharepoint and live communications server. It's pretty slick, and any...

TheWhir is reporting on a press release by Google that they will release their web analytics engine (which they acquired from Urchin) for free. The service will generate revenue via their adwords service. I wonder what kind of effect this will have...

Wired.com has an article reporting about Web Hoster Zipa , who is still keeping their servers up despite being smack in the middle of one of the greatest natural disasters in US history. Apparently there is an employee who is keeping a blog hosted there...

In my prior life before coming to Microsoft, I didn't use Windows as a server but rarely and as a workstation very little. My main workstation was running on RedHat (or Fedora from time to time), and I managed mostly Unix and Linux servers, only managing...

I'm not usually one to publicly plug one hosting company over another, as my job requires that I work with and support many of them objectively. Nevertheless, GoDaddy's domain registration services have REALLY impressed me. Some visitors to my blog...