Greg Willis

I’m very pleased to share that we will be holding a launch event for the Windows Azure Platform in Australia on February 23rd 2010 in Sydney.   We are also planning a local roadshow around this date, including a stop in Melbourne on February 25th...

Hi, my name is Greg Willis. I have spent the last 3 years working for Microsoft's Communications Sector team and I've recently moved over to the Developer and Platform team here in Australia as an Architect Evangelist. With this move I have joined...

For the last week I’ve been working with the shy and retiring web guru Michael Kordahi on a solution to deliver enhanced coverage of the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade to the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and Fairfax’s other Australian newspapers like...

Microsoft recently announced new CloudApp (), a developer challenge for both .NET & PHP developers creating cloud applications or services on the Azure Services Platform.  Follow on twitter (#newCloudApp). There are categories for both US and...

We have Craig Kitterman from Redmond visiting us here in Sydney this week.  Craig is part of our interoperability team and one of our experts on running PHP applications on the Windows Azure cloud. While he’s in our timezone, Craig is hosting a webcast...

Live Services form a core part of our Azure Services Platform . If you want to get your hands dirty with the Live Services API’s, Sydney has one of the 11 worldwide training sessions coming on December 8th and 9th.   It’s 2 days of deep-dive...

If you'll be at JAOO Sydney or JAOO Brisbane come along and see my talk The Cloud is Azure .  I will be talking about how Microsoft's cloud platform fits in with the emerging cloud taxonomy as well as discussing some of the key elements of the platform...

FAQ: Where do I find out more about architecting and developing apps for Azure?   Well there is www.azure.com , but specifically two of the best places to get up to speed are the “How Do I?” videos and the Azure Services Training Kit . The How Do...

Recently I delivered an overview talk at JAOO in Sydney and Brisbane on Azure Services Platform, and specifically Windows Azure.   As always an interesting crowd with good questions at JAOO - thanks to Dave Thomas and the rest of the JAOO team...

Tech•Ed 2009 season comes to Australia on Sept 8th – 11th.  There are 13 content tracks planned and I’m the owner for our track on the Azure Services Platform.  My colleague Nigel Watson is owner of the general Architecture track.  ...

At the end of last week I was busy with our Steve Ballmer Power to Developers event here in Sydney.  Here is the complete video from our cloud development overview session. During Gianpaolo’s visit we had some good local discussions with the customer...

We have a couple of last-minute spots available on an Azure Services Platform developer training course next week (March 10th – 12th) in Sydney City.    If you’re a hands-on Solutions Architect or Senior Developer this is a great chance...

One of the more unique elements of the Azure Services Platform is .NET Services . Much of the current discussion around Cloud Computing focuses on moving certain IT workloads to the cloud (for example email like Microsoft Online ) or cloud compute...

I was just reflecting on the now famous Frankipedia incident and what really constitutes notability with the wisdom of crowds. Frank has certainly made a major impact on thousands of people in the development community in Australia and I suspect is at...

With Silverlight adoption growing in media companies and for rich content on websites like our own microsoft.com and tafiti , end-users will increasingly need Silverlight installed. Recently a number of local enterprise customers have asked me about...

Silverlight will be an Optional install for XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 for users of Microsoft Update.  For enterprise deployments the WSUS feature pack is now available as well.  The Microsoft Update team blog has all the details.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of our role as Architect Advisors in DPE is helping support the local customer and partner architecture community. As part of this our team host quarterly Architect Council events in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. ...

Just before the Easter long weekend, Dr Bohdan Szymanik (Enterprise Architecture Manager, Kiwibank) delivered a great session entitled: Kiwibank in Transformation: Startup to Enterprise at the Sydney Architect Council. The session was very well-received...

In May Ron Jacobs was our speaker at the Sydney Architect Council: TOPIC:  The Perfect Pattern Storm, where TDD meets UX and MVP As host of ARCast.TV, Ron Jacobs has a front row seat to observe the constantly shifting architectural landscape. In...

Following on from a slew of announcements around our Software + Services platform futures at PDC last week we have organised an update for the Australian developer community this week during SteveB’s visit down under. You can find out more about the...

As announced back in December, we have a number of upcoming Windows Azure events in Australia in February. We are honoured to have David Chappell joining us to give his expert perspective on the Windows Azure Platform.   David is a very engaging...

It’s been a busy week – we launched Windows Azure to the Australian market on Tuesday 23rd here in Sydney!   Our keynote speaker, David Chappell , delivered an excellent perspective on the Windows Azure Platform (and other cloud platforms) and...

The excellent Windows Azure Training Kit has just been updated for December.  I always recommend this as a good starting point when I’m talking to customers and partners about getting their hands dirty with all the major aspects of the Windows Azure...

I’m pleased to announce that the winner of the new CloudApp() Australian side-bet is an application called Traffic in the Cloud ; built by Brisbane-based developer, John O’Brien from Soul Solutions . Included below is John’s description of Traffic in...

Well I think we all know by now that Oracle’s Larry Ellison is no fan of the cloud computing hype.  No comment on whether that reflects Oracle’s capability in that area.  Be sure to check out Larry’s comedic skills in this latest episode: Talking...