Scott Guthrie sure is popular!

Windows Azure is here and it reshapes the IT landscape. Even if technology will ultimately make the on-premise and  cloud offerings symmetrical from a technological point of view, it will remain a challenge to calculate and compare the total cost of ownership of a solution if it would run in the cloud or on-premise.

Applications are being deployed to Windows Azure today. you can find a list of them on Pinpoint: http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/windowsazure/resources

Certainly there must be good reasons to run these applications in the cloud instead of locally and certainly price comparisons have been made. But how?

There are companies specializing in this. And they can give you deep advise. But to start you can use this online TCO calculator to give you an initial idea and understanding of the major components in such a calculation.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco/

The tool asks you a number of questions which give you insight in the axises along which the cost for your solution will be measured. Currently these include:

- Development Application (Exisiting or old application, .Net or other)

- Size of the application or service (small; medium, large; you are basically asked on how many machines, like webservers, this would typically run)

- SQL Database (yes, no)

- Integration (Highly –>not; basically asking about the number of messages this application or service will exchange with other services applications)

- User logins (Heavy, medium, light, no; more than a million –> no)

- Growth profile of the application (see image above)

Based on that information the calculator will measure which services your app will be using and how that will induce a cost on processor hours, storage size, bandwidth used and messages sent and will give you a price

For my personal small, new application with database, few users, low integration and steady growth, there ROI looks great but of course I urge you to make the exercise for a couple of scenarios yourself.

I find this very useful. This is how you can do that in Office 2010 beta 2.

For instance:

- Blue: I’m on the To line

- Red: It’s from Luc

- Black regular email

You can follow the procedure underneath. Enjoy! BTW, Luc is my manager :-)

So I’m updating my developer tools. This is what I install today (and since I’m not a real developer anymore, I install everything directly on my machine and not in a VM):

1. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition Beta 2:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/try/default.mspx#download

2.  Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9fa8afe9-cad6-4090-a7f6-7d9cdc560e2d&displaylang=en

3. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (November 2009)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6967FF37-813E-47C7-B987-889124B43ABD&displaylang=en

Get the Surface SDK today and start playing! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3db8987b-47c8-46ca-aafb-9c3b36f43bcc

• Surface Web site (http://www.surface.com)
  • A new Technical Resources section to help you connect to the other available resources and support.
• MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com)
  • A new Microsoft Surface section of the MSDN Library (under .NET Development), providing the Surface SDK documentation and other topics about developing Surface applications.
  • New Surface-specific forums about designing and developing Surface applications.
• TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com)
  • A new Microsoft Surface section of the TechNet Library (under Products and Technologies), describing the basics of the Surface software and hardware and how to set up, customize, troubleshoot, and maintain Surface units.
  • New Surface-specific forums about the Surface software platform, hardware, and applications.
• Microsoft Download center (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads)
  • A new product category for all Surface downloads, including the Surface SDK Workstation Edition, applications, documentation, and any software fixes.
• Microsoft Support (http://support.microsoft.com)
  • Public Surface KB articles for fixes, known issues, and workarounds.
  • Surface Solution Center to direct customers to the right self-support and assisted-support options.

This was by far the number 1 request I got when talking about the Windows Azure Platform. Will I get a version of the Fabric that I can run on my own servers so I can very easily move applications from my datacenter to the cloud and back?

The answer is now, yes you will get that! It will be called The Windows Server AppFabric: http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/windowsserver/ee695849(en-us).aspx

You can download and test the beta 1 today. I guess Windows Server is starting to get really interesting for developers now, isn’t it?

This is the AppFabric in a nutshell:

AppFabric is a set of symmetric application services that support building and managing composite applications, available whether you are running your application on-premises with Windows Server or in the cloud with Windows Azure. It includes the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services). AppFabric delivers pre-integrated, higher level application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage composite applications and services spanning server and cloud, including:

· Out-of-box experience targeting Web and composite apps

· Management and monitoring of services and workflows

· Distributed, in-memory application cache

· Enhanced Visual Studio design and development tools

But remember, it’s a long term vision:

Initially, AppFabric will offer support for on-premise deployments with Windows Server AppFabric. In 2010, we will be offering CTPs of Windows Azure platform AppFabric to provide these capabilities into our cloud platform.

So for full symmetry between on-prem and cloud, you will need to wait just a little longer.

Downloads: Beta 1, Samples

http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/ee815840.aspx

At this free event on December 4th in the Kinepolis Brussels, Scott will be speaking about Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 as well as about the latest on web development with ASP.NET 4.0 and the next version of Silverlight.

Scott Guthrie, the man behind ASP.NET, is now Corporate Vice President of Microsoft .NET developer Platform and responsible in addition to ASP.NET for products as IIS, Visual Studio, Silverlight and the Common Language Runtime (CLR).
You can read more on Scott’s popular blog or follow him on Twitter (@scottgu).

Register now!

Copying from Katrien:

The SQL Server Day, taking place on December 3rd in Utopolis Mechelen is a full day dedicated to SQL Server 2008 content. Driven by the SQL UG, they have now added a full developer-focused track.

When: December 3rd 2010, keynote starts at 10 AM.
Where: Utopolis Mechelen

Content to expect: check out the full agenda with three separate tracks (Business Intelligence, SQL Data Platform and Development). Sessions include ‘What’s new in Report Builder 3.0, Tracking Changes and Data Movement in SQL Server, Handling XML in SQL Server, Entity Framework in Visual Studio 2010 and more.

If you haven’t registered yet, don’t wait too long!

See you there.

Just in case you don’t know our website yet..

http://www.microsoft.be/isv

ORM, Workflow, Modelling. What do they have in common?

Well they are three areas that seem to have been in transition for ever. Especially in the Microsoft world.

So I decided to take a closer look and I’m starting with ORM, Object Relational Mapping which is the way to access data today. Like it, or not, it is generally the preferred way today.

A great staring point is Eric Nelson’s session which is apparently already from March: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ORM-LINQ-Entity-Framework-Eric-Nelson

Here’s what I remember: Link to entities (part of ADO.NET Entity Framework) is our strategic technology. This is Microsoft’s and probably your long term bet. Why?

- It is not just there for SQL Server

- Microsoft is investing in this, see for instance the ADO.NET Entity Data Model Designer (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc716685(VS.100).aspx)

- Microsoft is using it in other Microsoft products (SQL Data Services…)

- There are plenty partners building on it (IBM, OpenLink, DevForce, LLBLGen v3…)

Here is Eric’s page with resources on the Entity Framework. Be sure to check it out! http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2009/09/23/entity-framework-4.0-resources-ndash-documentation-links-best-blog-posts.aspx

Day 3 at Tech Ed Europe 2009. No vacation day here like at home in Belgium. You can follow live comments here: http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=5618541733&page=5&q=%23tee09

Is it real? http://gizmodo.com/5381011/microsoft-couriers-swipes-snips-and-scribbles-the-leaked-interface I don’t know.

It sure is intriguing. What’s clear is that NUI’s are starting to be implemented. The Microsoft Surface is just scratching the, well…, surface.

Because, if you have this today, you will get more when VS2010 arrives:

Here’s how subscription levels will transition:

See details of the Ultimate Offer for devs

And then there are the Windows Azure Platform benefits! https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/ee461076.aspx

All content is available online in case you missed it.

1. Watch the sessions here: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/remix09/#agenda

2. Download the tools announced at reMIX here: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/remix09/#resources

3. Follow us here: Twitter (@remixbe),  Facebook, Linkedin

Overview of the possibilities of Dynamics xRM

xRM (Anything Relationship Management) is the natural evolution of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). In today’s dynamic business environment companies demand the ability to manage anything (X=anything), not simply relationships with customers.
Microsoft CRM sits on the .NET platform and because of that, it is much more than a traditional CRM product. Instead, a better way to think of Microsoft CRM is as a rapid development application with out of the box CRM functionality, capable of instantly leveraging the .NET platform, and a vast array of Microsoft applications.

Target Audience: Business & Technical Decision Makers

Date: November 26—Afternoon

Questions? Send me a message.