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...

Nothing at all to do with technology, but I’m so pleased… I did 10,000 metres on the rowing machine today in 38:28.8. That’s an average pace of 1:55.4. To put that in perspective, if you ever get on the rowing machine and do the standard 2,000 metres...

Analysts such as Gartner say the cloud platform business has a PaaS future. But when you look at the market today, it’s the IaaS market that is strong healthy and growing very fast. Let’s stick with the 2 main protagonists of each approach – Amazon for...

In the light of the recent story about Amazon’s EC2 cloud platform being zapped by a lightning strike , I was reminded of the forecasters’ maxims – “…calculate the development time, then double it” and “…calculate the required budget, then double it”...

Microsoft has developed an iterative MapReduce runtime for Windows Azure, code-named Daytona. Project Daytona is designed to support a wide class of data analytics and machine-learning algorithms. It can scale to hundreds of server cores for analysis...

I’ve created a complete run through of everything in the UK bootcamp, all in order. Click the first video, watch, click the second video, watch etc etc from beginning to end. Click the image to go to the complete Bootcamp run-through. Planky – GBR-257

The second session of the bootcamp was SQL Azure. Watch this video before you attempt any of the labs. Windows Azure Bootcamp Session 2: SQL Azure from Steve Plank on Vimeo . Have fun Planky – GBR-257

Here’s the video of session 1. Windows Azure Bootcamp Session 1 from Steve Plank on Vimeo . Planky – GBR-257

The second section of the bootcamp deals with SQL Azure. This is not a standalone lab – it builds on what you have already built in Web, Worker and Storage Labs 1 to 4. Refer to the Intro video and the post for Labs 1 to 4 .   UK Windows Azure Bootcamp...

Here are the first 4 labs in the Web Role, Worker Role and Storage section of the bootcamp. UK Windows Azure Bootcamp: Web, Worker and Storage Lab 1 from Steve Plank on Vimeo .   UK Windows Azure Bootcamp: Web, Worker and Storage, Lab 2 from Steve...

This is just a screencast to show you what the labs instruct you to build.   UK Windows Azure Bootcamp: Labs Intro from Steve Plank on Vimeo .   Planky – GBR-257

The UK ran a series of Windows Azure Bootcamps. Video screencasts of the labs are now available. I’ll divide them up in to Windows Azure labs and SQL Azure labs in the next few posts, plus a labs intro – just to keep everything neatly separated. Planky...

A paper on how cloud technologies increase business agility. Click the image to download. It’s a good paper for a developer to share with somebody from the business-side of an organisation to explain one aspect of the benefits of the cloud – agility....

Rock, Paper, Azure. A developer competition in which you could win $5,000. You download some Azure code, tune your bot with your own code and let it loose in to the competition to play rock, paper, azure (rock, paper, scissors) with the bots of other...

This video is a click-by-click, line-by-line screen-cam of how to authenticate using an on-premise Active Directory with a Windows Azure application. It uses Active Directory Federation Services V2.0 (ADFS 2.0) and Windows Azure’s App Fab Access Control...