I was asked recently how to take a Windows Azure Infrastructure Services VM (IaaS VM) out of the load balancer rotation so it could be updated. This particular partner is using IaaS VM’s as a stepping stone on the way to a PaaS service and so needs...

Founded in 2006, Redmond, Washington based traditional ISV Extended Results ( http://www.extendedresults.com ) specializes in business intelligence solutions.  They sell primarily to enterprises worldwide across many verticals. Companies spend a...

Founded in 2012, Bellevue, Washington based Rare Crowds ( http://wp.rarecrowds.com ), is a SaaS Cloud Service Vendor and Microsoft Bizspark partner.  Rare Crowds sells ad purchasing efficiency solutions to international enterprises in the advertising...

Founded in 2010 and based in Anchorage, Alaska, Cloud49 LLC ( http://www.cloud49.com) is a BizSpark startup and SaaS ISV providing human capital management software (HCMS) primarily to enterprises in the US over $100M in annual revenue.  Co-founders...

(The information in this post was created using Visual Studio 2010, the January refresh of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit and v1.6 of the Windows Azure SDK in April of 2012. The autoscaler was installed in the compute emulator.  The “app...

(The information in this post was created using Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 in April of 2012.  All tests were done in the compute emulator.) I think of Azure diagnostics in two broad categories: the stuff that you get more-or...

Angel-funded startup and Bizspark member Wealth Habit ( https://wealthhabit.com/ ) is a Cloud Services company located in Portland, Oregon. Led by CEO James Werner, and CTO Brian Gambs, Wealth Habit provides enterprise-level B2B financial services. It...

In this posting I’ll talk about my experiences and final solution to what is usually a simple thing with a Windows Server box: installing Windows features. If your Azure solution requires a Windows Feature, you might be tempted to set up a VHD and then...

I tossed out a challenge in a comment I left on the first of this series – there’s a problem with this approach to automating blob uploads.  It’s not a problem that affects everyone.  For example, perhaps you have a multi-tenant solution where...

In my travels I hear about a lot of patterns of cloud computing.  One that I hear frequently is “upload a file and process it”.  This file could be financial data, pictures, video, electric meter readings, and lots more.  It’s so common...

The Accumulus Subscription and Usage Billing System enables businesses to find more success with subscriptions and recurring payments. The system includes a suite of integrated tools designed to help a business grow its customer base by improving customer...

vorApps for SharePoint Online delivers an email enabled information management solution leveraging the power of Microsoft SharePoint Online. Diane Gallagher of Vorsite Corp talks to Greg Oliver, ISV Architect Evangelist, about how vorApps was built on...

  It might seem like a giant leap backward to bother with installing a Windows service in a worker role.  After all, the Windows Azure and Visual Studio teams went to a lot of trouble to create worker roles as a core part of the platform. ...

Sometimes the data that’s being kept in SQL Azure relational storage doesn’t really need to be there.  A couple of examples of this are blobs and historical records.  Lots of folks have discovered the wonders of moving blobs from relational...

Certain functions of a system need to run once per day in a typical “batch window” scenario. You might already be aware that Azure compute is paid by the CPU-hour.  If you’re occupying the CPU, whether or not actively using it, you’re still paying...