Like a monthly mugshot of my PC.

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure platform

http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/CloudStorageStudio/Default.aspx

Tools are being developed on the Windows Azure Platform. This tool, Cloud Storage Studio, allows you to manage your storage in Windows Azure.

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid201_gci1380654,00.html

Microsoft to add Remote Desktop and VM support to Azure. No one announced any timelines to be clear. But it is great to see the Azure team quickly responding to what the market wants.

Also from this article:

Azure is adapting swiftly. Before the end of the beta period, Azure announced that users could control patching and OS updates, a relief to the users worried about untested updates affecting their applications. Microsoft blogger Brad Calder also announced that Azure will support Virtual Hard Disk images because "customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud."

And: Domino's Pizza runs a Java-based online ordering system on Azure

Other

http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/1261

There is a lot of debate about Cloud Standards. This will go on for a long time. I haven’t seen an IT area yet that started with defining the standards. Standards evolve out of things available, out of the usage of them.

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid201_gci1381115,00.html 

This is a list of the top 10 cloud providers according to searchcloudcomputing. I expect this list to change rapidly. Also, it is a mix of IAAS, PAAS.

http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/02/cloud-speed-test-results.html

On Cloud Harmony, you can see the results from some speed tests comparing different providers. These tests, as all benchmarks, are great food for debate. Both what’s being measured as the results can easily be debated.

http://blog.cloudharmony.com/ 

The latest post actually includes tests on Cloud storage, including Azure’s

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/02/cloud-basics.ars 

It surprises me that an article on ArsTechnica can be posted that gets the Windows Azure Platform so wrong! The author describes the Windows Azure Platform as IAAS. While most would agree that, today, it is a PAAS.

There are some pretty interesting comments there too. One in particular about lockin into SalesForce’s platform. I’m sure that even though Azure is way more open and provides services at a lower level on the IT stack, that some will claim lock in about Azure too.

I have been using SalesForce at my company for about 2.5 years now, and I can say without a doubt that the vendor lock-in is a huge concern. We use a customized version of their stock CRM application and I have to continually fight with their support to keep it meeting our needs. I routinely run up against artificial limits in the platform (i.e. object reference limits, formula call character limits, etc) that they can take anywhere from weeks to months to correct. While the up-front cost was significantly lower than going with an in-house application, they are becoming increasingly difficult to use due to their cookie cutter approach and lack of flexibility and support.

Partners, check out this Azure Partner Hub: http://azurehub.com/

Wow, it really does look like 7 might be Microsoft’s lucky number.

Today’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 series is certainly greeted with a lot of positive sentiment.

You can go hear to watch the press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsphone/

Also check out this site for demos, screenshots, etc…: http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

And this article on Gizmodo is one of the best I’ve read: http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now 

Next stop for developers is MIX10! (March 15-17th, 2010, Las Vegas)

At MIX10, there will be 11 technical sessions on Windows Phone 7 and 1 keynote by Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President of Windows Mobile Program Management at Microsoft and responsible for the overall design and product definition of the software that powers Windows Phones.

I read Serge Jespers’ blog and was really happy to see he’s as excited about Windows 7 and the upcoming HP Slate device as I am.

There really are some important characteristics being shared in this video. You can see it’s a full Windows 7 and even more importantly Phil McKinney shows he understands that people want a full and rich experience on these devices.

Don’t get me wrong, I think having an application store would be great thing but I also want to use such a device to do other things I just don’t want to give up compared to my laptop. Things like surfing the web with no limits. Connecting to my media on the home server I’m about to buy. Using Office applications. Running my favorite twitter client, etc, etc…

I don’t need a device that’s designed purely to consume content that’s charged for. So the HP Slate is what I will buy. But if we could eventually get a great application store, bookstore on top of that, that would make it even better.

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/us/details/36db4da6-8777-431e-aefb-316ccbb63e4e

Accessing a drive on Windows Azure using standard NTFS API’s? It is possible: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2010/02/02/beta-release-of-windows-azure-drive.aspx

Interesting is that it is actually a Windows Azure Page Blob in which a virtual hard drive formatted with NTFS is stored.

The blog post contains interesting details as does this whitepaper: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9710117

Fascinating to see the platform develop.