Markus McCormick, an escalation engineer working in Microsoft support in the UK talks about the most common support issues they see coming in to the support centre. He gives advice on how to avoid these pitfalls. If you are new to Windows Azure – don...

When we move from writing shrink-wrapped software that a customer runs a setup.exe in their own datacenter to the completely different world of providing the software’s functionality as a service over the Internet, probably our first port of call is to...

K3 Retail are the UK’s biggest Microsoft Dynamics partner. They’ve built a system that allows them to expose on-premises applications and data such as Dynamics, SQL Server Reporting Services, Email and File-Servers to a cloud-based IIS web application...

We’re going to be running an online version of the popular Windows Azure Bootcamp on the 21st May. We’re very aware that the London and Liverpool bootcamps due to run in Early May are now full so we thought by running a similar, slightly shortened version...

Jim Chapman, CEO of Retail Manager Solutions, talks about their move from on-premises software to the cloud and then tells us how Windows Azure has changed their business. Sales cycle times have been dramatically reduced, customers save money and there...

At The Races were running a high-volume website in the UK that was characterized by very peaky predictable bursts. They knew when the peaks would occur (specific horse-races in the calendar) and they had a good idea of the numbers of additional users...

The next UK Windows Azure User Group meeting is on the 8th May and will feature Mark Bower, CTO of Cube Social talking about how they built a scalable, highly available social CRM system on the Windows Azure Platform. Their video is here. Cube Social...

Anybody who has got involved in developing on Windows Azure will almost certainly have used at least one of the tools in the Red Gate/Cerebrata line-up. Cloud Storage Studio , Diagnostics Manager or Azure Management Cmdlets . Gaurav Mantri, CEO of Cerebrata...

Richard Conway and Andy Cross both founders of the UK Windows Azure User Group presented a talk today at the Tech.days online Windows Azure Conference: “10 tools in 10 minutes”. That meant 10 minutes per tool. The video of the session was recorded and...

In today’s TechDays Online Windows Azure conference, Andy Cross and Richard Conway, both founders of the UK Windows Azure User Group, mentioned the possibility of running an advanced one-day Windows Azure workshop in April 2012. If you are interested...

John Mannix from Governor Technology talks about http://cookielaw.org , a service that used crowd-sourcing to farm cookies from volunteers who installed an agent on their machines and provided later analysis and gave advice on whether a particular site...

When you think about the monetization (awful word!) of apps for the phone, you can narrow it down to either: The app is free – it was fun building it, I don’t want to be rich. The app is paid for and entirely standalone. It doesn’t rely on any service...

In the past 3 weeks I seem to have had to answer this question more than any other. I’m not sure why the past few weeks should have had to have this one popping up so much but there you have it. I thought I’d create a little “whiteboard video” to describe...

When you think about the monetization (awful word!) of apps for the phone, you can narrow it down to either: The app is free – it was fun building it, I don’t want to be rich. The app is paid for and entirely standalone. It doesn’t rely on any service...

How do you explain a cloud platform’s place in business agility to somebody with a technical background but who is now working in a more business-decision-maker role? Say an IT Manager? MOre than likely he/she was a developer or IT pro in their day. They...

The notion of computing in the cloud naturally attracts the interest of developers but a number of IT Pros see it as a threat. In a lot of cases the core skills transfer directly to cloud technologies but some IT Pros might want to develop new skills...

The new London Windows Azure User Group got off to a great start on Tuesday evening. I counted, including the latecomers, 44 people which is not at all bad for a brand new group. There were a few guys from the Azure Bootcamp I ran about 10 days ago but...

I joined Microsoft in December 1993. I’m just coming up for my 18th year in the company. I came from DEC. Some of you have never heard of DEC – Digital Equipment Corporation, often referred to as “digital”. At the time they were the second biggest computer...

The data centres have enjoyed this certification for quite a while now, as has Office 365, but Windows Azure was trailing behind a little. Well, no longer. The certification was performed by BSI Americas. The Windows Azure core services of Compute, Storage...

The really nice thing about the venue, One Drummond Gate, is the breakfast. Not a huge traditional English fry-up; just fruit, yoghurt, pastries, croissant and my favourite, porridge (with no sugar or honey!). …and that’s how the day started for pretty...

They seem to be random character strings: ISO 27001/IEC 2005, SAS 70 Type II, SSAE-16, PCI DSS, EU DPD 9546 EC… But there is a value behind each one of them, if you understand the story. If we discount the smaller niche cloud players who provide very...

Yes – I know, touchscreens, apps, keyboards. If you develop apps for any of these platforms that’s great. And if say, your app needs to do something a bit more meaty than the phone’s onboard processor can manage, you’ll almost certainly use processing...

  I recently gave a talk at the UK’s Cloud Circle Security Forum in which I included material on the Security Development Lifecycle and was quite amazed at the number of people who came up to me afterwards and expressed an interest in this formalised...

Registration is now open for the November edition of the Windows Azure BootCamp (powered by Tech.Days UK). The Windows Azure Camps are events which will show you how to take advantage of cloud computing. This is a free full day training to get you up...

A whole load of new videos are available as a result of the build conference. Here is the complete list of the Windows Azure ones – I hope something here takes your fancy…   Introduction to Windows Azure: the cloud operating system Inside Windows...