On Cloud Computing, Integration Technology, Mobility, RFID, ERP etc...
Sr, Program Manager at Microsoft and MBA from UNC Chapel Hill.My small world includes my beautiful wife Swati and our awesome twin boyz Arni and Abhi.
The Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games allows you to quickly get started building new social games in Windows Azure. The social gaming market continues to grow and become more profitable, and eMarketer predicts it will increase to $1.32 billion in revenues by 2012 (up from $856 million in 2010). To help you quickly tap into this market, the toolkit includes accelerators, libraries, developer tools, and samples that you can use in your own .NET or HTML5 game. The toolkit also enables unique capabilities for social gaming prerequisites, such as storing user profiles, maintaining leader boards, in-app purchasing and so forth. Windows Azure The Windows Azure platform provides game developers with on-demand compute, storage, content delivery and networking capabilities so that they can focus on development as opposed to operational Windows Azure is a cloud-computing platform that lets you run applications and store data in the cloud. Instead of having to worry about building out the underlying infrastructure and managing the operating system, you can simply build your application and deploy it to Windows Azure. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, networking, and content delivery capabilities. For more information about Windows Azure, visit the Windows Azure website. For developer focused training material, download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit or view the online Windows Azure Platform Training Course. Tankster The Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games also comes with a new proof-of-concept game called Tankster from industry innovator Grant Skinner and his team at gskinner.com. Tankster is built with HTML5 and comes complete with reusable server side code and documentation. It also supports a variety of social interactions including messaging, wall posts, and comments while player achievements and game stats are presented on a live leaderboard so gamers can interact with each other—what’s a social game without being able to talk trash?
The Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games allows you to quickly get started building new social games in Windows Azure. The social gaming market continues to grow and become more profitable, and eMarketer predicts it will increase to $1.32 billion in revenues by 2012 (up from $856 million in 2010). To help you quickly tap into this market, the toolkit includes accelerators, libraries, developer tools, and samples that you can use in your own .NET or HTML5 game. The toolkit also enables unique capabilities for social gaming prerequisites, such as storing user profiles, maintaining leader boards, in-app purchasing and so forth.
Windows Azure
The Windows Azure platform provides game developers with on-demand compute, storage, content delivery and networking capabilities so that they can focus on development as opposed to operational
Windows Azure is a cloud-computing platform that lets you run applications and store data in the cloud. Instead of having to worry about building out the underlying infrastructure and managing the operating system, you can simply build your application and deploy it to Windows Azure. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, networking, and content delivery capabilities. For more information about Windows Azure, visit the Windows Azure website. For developer focused training material, download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit or view the online Windows Azure Platform Training Course.
Tankster
The Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games also comes with a new proof-of-concept game called Tankster from industry innovator Grant Skinner and his team at gskinner.com.
Tankster is built with HTML5 and comes complete with reusable server side code and documentation. It also supports a variety of social interactions including messaging, wall posts, and comments while player achievements and game stats are presented on a live leaderboard so gamers can interact with each other—what’s a social game without being able to talk trash?
Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games
Found this good article on Windows Azure Storage Architecture. Good read if you are planning use storage in cloud.
In this posting we provide an overview of the Windows Azure Storage architecture to give some understanding of how it works. Windows Azure Storage is a distributed storage software stack built completely by Microsoft for the cloud. Before diving into the details of this post, please read the prior posting on Windows Azure Storage Abstractions and their Scalability Targets to get an understanding of the storage abstractions (Blobs, Tables and Queues) provided and the concept of partitions. 3 Layer Architecture The storage access architecture has the following 3 fundamental layers: Front-End (FE) layer – This layer takes the incoming requests, authenticates and authorizes the requests, and then routes them to a partition server in the Partition Layer. The front-ends know what partition server to forward each request to, since each front-end server caches a Partition Map. The Partition Map keeps track of the partitions for the service being accessed (Blobs, Tables or Queues) and what partition server is controlling (serving) access to each partition in the system. Partition Layer – This layer manages the partitioning of all of the data objects in the system. As described in the prior posting, all objects have a partition key. An object belongs to a single partition, and each partition is served by only one partition server. This is the layer that manages what partition is served on what partition server. In addition, it provides automatic load balancing of partitions across the servers to meet the traffic needs of Blobs, Tables and Queues. A single partition server can serve many partitions. Distributed and replicated File System (DFS) Layer – This is the layer that actually stores the bits on disk and is in charge of distributing and replicating the data across many servers to keep it durable. A key concept to understand here is that the data is stored by the DFS layer, but all DFS servers are (and all data stored in the DFS layer is) accessible from any of the partition servers. These layers and a high level overview are shown in the below figure: Here we can see that the Front-End layer takes incoming requests, and a given front-end server can talk to all of the partition servers it needs to in order to process the incoming requests. The partition layer consists of all of the partition servers, with a master system to perform the automatic load balancing (described below) and assignments of partitions. As shown in the figure, each partition server is assigned a set of object partitions (Blobs, Entities, Queues). The Partition Master constantly monitors the overall load on each partition sever as well the individual partitions, and uses this for load balancing. Then the lowest layer of the storage architecture is the Distributed File System layer, which stores and replicates the data, and all partition servers can access any of the DFS severs.
In this posting we provide an overview of the Windows Azure Storage architecture to give some understanding of how it works. Windows Azure Storage is a distributed storage software stack built completely by Microsoft for the cloud.
Before diving into the details of this post, please read the prior posting on Windows Azure Storage Abstractions and their Scalability Targets to get an understanding of the storage abstractions (Blobs, Tables and Queues) provided and the concept of partitions.
The storage access architecture has the following 3 fundamental layers:
These layers and a high level overview are shown in the below figure:
Here we can see that the Front-End layer takes incoming requests, and a given front-end server can talk to all of the partition servers it needs to in order to process the incoming requests. The partition layer consists of all of the partition servers, with a master system to perform the automatic load balancing (described below) and assignments of partitions. As shown in the figure, each partition server is assigned a set of object partitions (Blobs, Entities, Queues). The Partition Master constantly monitors the overall load on each partition sever as well the individual partitions, and uses this for load balancing. Then the lowest layer of the storage architecture is the Distributed File System layer, which stores and replicates the data, and all partition servers can access any of the DFS severs.
Windows Azure Storage Architecture Overview - Windows Azure Storage Team Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
Article in Windows 7 News on Light Switch. Light Switch is really awesome…
Microsoft’s LightSwitch to Launch on July 26. This program will give developers a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family. Create Custom Business Applications Microsoft may not be winning the Mobile Phone war, but it is certainly on top of the PC war. With LightSwitch Microsoft hopes to let developers build custom applications that rival off-the-shelf solutions. In this way, when developers want to pursue more serious applications that are not “Apps” Microsoft shows a way to do this. There will be pre-configured screen templates that give your application a familiar look and feel. There is prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with step-by-step guidance tools. However, if you need to write custom code, you can use Visual Basic .NET or C#. You can deploy to the desktop, browser, or cloud to share your application with others more easily without the cumbersome installation processes. System Data Access LightSwitch supports exporting data to Excel, and you can also attach your application to existing data sources like SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Azure, SharePoint, Microsoft Office Access (post-Beta), and other third-party data sources. Lightswitch will also allow developers to create custom applications in tune with the way you do business. This will let developers build a scalable application that matches your current needs now and in the future. This doesn’t tie developers down to current technologies. Indeed, applications can grow to meet the technical demands of applications using the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Hosting option. Extend Applications The development environment for LightSwitch is Visual Studio. With this tool LightSwitch includes a lot of pre-built components . LightSwitch applications will support extensions for templates, data sources, shells, themes, business data types and custom controls. Get extensions from component vendors or develop them yourself using Visual Studio Professional, Premium or Ultimate. You can compare Lightswitch with Visual studio. You can download the Lightswitch Beta Version.
Microsoft’s LightSwitch to Launch on July 26. This program will give developers a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family.
Create Custom Business Applications
Microsoft may not be winning the Mobile Phone war, but it is certainly on top of the PC war. With LightSwitch Microsoft hopes to let developers build custom applications that rival off-the-shelf solutions. In this way, when developers want to pursue more serious applications that are not “Apps” Microsoft shows a way to do this. There will be pre-configured screen templates that give your application a familiar look and feel. There is prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with step-by-step guidance tools. However, if you need to write custom code, you can use Visual Basic .NET or C#. You can deploy to the desktop, browser, or cloud to share your application with others more easily without the cumbersome installation processes.
System Data Access
LightSwitch supports exporting data to Excel, and you can also attach your application to existing data sources like SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Azure, SharePoint, Microsoft Office Access (post-Beta), and other third-party data sources.
Lightswitch will also allow developers to create custom applications in tune with the way you do business. This will let developers build a scalable application that matches your current needs now and in the future. This doesn’t tie developers down to current technologies. Indeed, applications can grow to meet the technical demands of applications using the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Hosting option.
Extend Applications
The development environment for LightSwitch is Visual Studio. With this tool LightSwitch includes a lot of pre-built components . LightSwitch applications will support extensions for templates, data sources, shells, themes, business data types and custom controls. Get extensions from component vendors or develop them yourself using Visual Studio Professional, Premium or Ultimate.
You can compare Lightswitch with Visual studio.
You can download the Lightswitch Beta Version.
Lightswitch, a developers tool, will launch on July 26
Are you a SQL Express user? We would like to understand your usage of SQL Express database and your interest in cloud through a very short and simple survey. Survey Link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/580520/sql-express-customer-market-research
If you are not a SQL Express customer just blog/tweet/facebook the above link and help us reach as many folks as you can.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Another great solution build on BizTalk RFID by S3Edge.
BloodCenter of Wisconsin Blood Center Expects to Automate Product Tracking, Cut Costs with RFID Solution BloodCenter of Wisconsin provides blood and blood products to hospitals for patients in need throughout the state. In consortium with partners, the center wanted to create an automated, efficient way to reconcile and track blood products and containers. It plans to deploy a radio frequency identification solution based on Microsoft BizTalk Server RFID 2010. Once the solution is implemented, the organization expects to streamline processes, reduce errors, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
BloodCenter of Wisconsin provides blood and blood products to hospitals for patients in need throughout the state. In consortium with partners, the center wanted to create an automated, efficient way to reconcile and track blood products and containers. It plans to deploy a radio frequency identification solution based on Microsoft BizTalk Server RFID 2010. Once the solution is implemented, the organization expects to streamline processes, reduce errors, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
Microsoft Case Study: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - BloodCenter of Wisconsin