Ben Riga's Deep Shift

One question that is often asked is how hosters can benefit from the Windows Azure Platform.  While the platform can be used to deploy many types of web apps we expect many partners including hosters to develop on top of the Windows Azure platform infrastructure.  In this episode of Azure Lessons Learned I chat with Paul Lappas, VP Engineering at GoGrid and Mehul Shah and Madhavrao Pachupate from Blue Star Infotech.  GoGrid has been working on a hybrid solution that builds on the GoGrid infrastructure to assist in development and load testing of Windows Azure applications.

For more information on the GoGrid solution for Windows Azure have a look here: http://www.gogrid.com/azure/

In this episode of Windows Azure Lessons Learned I chat with Paul Forney, System Architect for Invensys and Aleksey Savateyev, Senior Architect in Microsoft’s Global ISV group working with Invensys.  Invensys is well known for industrial automation and control systems.  They’ve been working to develop a system for the power industry to manage the large network of smart meters that will be used to build out smart grids delivering electricity from suppliers to consumers.  To do this Invensys is using Windows Azure AppFabric (formerly called “.NET Services”).  The AppFabric Service Bus is the magic that allows this type of application.  It allows those meters not only to connect across the cloud to on-premises systems but also does it a way that can scale to the millions of homes and businesses that will form the smart grids.

Channel 9: Windows Azure Lessons Learned: Invensys

Database tooling is important for many developers and DBAs as they manage numerous databases across the enterprise and the cloud.  In this episode of Azure Lessons Learned I chat with Scott Walz, Sr. Director Product Management at Embarcadero Technologies responsible for the DBArtisan product.

Scott walks us through the DBArtisan product to show how SQL Azure integrates seamlessly into this cross-DBMS product.  It was interesting to hear how quickly the effort to add SQL Azure went.  I think that bodes well for other tooling in general for SQL Azure.  Since SQL Azure is so very close to SQL Server it should be relatively simple for ISVs to add SQL Azure support to products that support SQL Server today.

Channel 9: Azure Lessons Learned: Embarcadero

Scott mentions a DBArtisan download for SQL Azure.  You can grab that here.

As always let me know your comments below.

I’m back with another episode of Azure Lessons Learned.  In this one I discuss building apps that need to be able to scale very highly very quickly.  Jim Zimmerman, the CTO and Lead Developer for Thuzi, walks me through the Facebook application his team built for Outback Steakhouse.

Thuzi specializes in building social media applications for large organizations to connect with their customers on sites like Facebook.  The concern with these types of applications is the possibility that the offer will go viral as it gets passed from customer to customer and potentially swamp the servers to the point that they are not responsive and ultimately disappoint customers.  Thuzi chose to use Windows Azure since the Windows Azure platform has ample capacity and they could scale up or down the solution based on the current demand of the market.  The Outback Steakhouse offer in this case was a free Bloomin’ Onion at any of the thousands of Outback Steakhouse restaurants.

Facebook apps don’t actually run on Facebook.  They are embedded using an iframe into a Facebook page.  The app that is running in that iframe must be hosted somewhere else.  In this case, Thuzi hosts that in Windows Azure. They actively monitor the campaign and turn on or off web and worker role instances as required.  In order to scale they used Windows Azure table storage and queues.  They also use SQL Azure to perform reporting and analytics on the results of the campaign.

Channel 9: Azure Lessons Learned: Outback Steakhouse Facebook App

In this episode of Azure Lessons Learned I chat with Stephan Friedl, Chief Architect at Quark Software.  Quark (of Quark XPress fame) has been built a new business called Quark Promote for small and medium business to design and print high-quality collateral (brochures, business cards, postcards etc) to promote their business. 

In and of itself this is an interesting Software + Services solution built with a compelling WPF design client and a high performance ASP.NET server.  Quark chose to deploy this solution using Windows Azure.  In that way they could build out their business to handle the numerous relationships they’ve setup neighborhood printers.  The architecture is service-based specifically so they could handle these type of relationships and host the solution on the partner’s site and in fact host on multiple sites from that same single multi-tenant solution running on the Windows Azure platform.

Channel 9: Azure Lessons Learned: Quark Software

As I mentioned, over the past few months I’ve been working on a number of activities related to the Windows Azure Platform.  In particular, I’ve been working with several partners as we prepared for the PDC’09 conference.  While we were preparing for the conference we welcomed a few partners to a deep-dive event in Redmond where they did some architectural reviews and met with various members of the product team in the final sprint to releasing solutions.  While they were in Redmond I took advantage to record a few videos for Channel 9.

Kelley Blue Book stands out as they were featured on the main stage during Bob Muglia’s keynote on day 1 of PDC (Andy comes on at about 1:27).  In this video with Andy Lapin, Director of Enterprise Architecture spent a few minutes showing off the site and then discussing some of the lessons the KBB team learned as they ported their site from a hosted facility to the Windows Azure Platform.

Channel 9: Azure Lessons Learned: Kelley Blue Book

I had been maintaining a list of Dynamics CRM-related blogs that I tried to read on a regular basis.  I thought I’d make that list available to folks in the community as I’m sure others will find that interesting.  I haven’t been maintaining this since I moved out of the Dynamics world a few months ago.  These are primarily developer-focused.  By that I mean they are mostly blogs that discuss developer CRM/xRM topics as opposed to end-user CRM topics. 

I’ve divided these into the following categories:

• Microsoft Employee Blogs
• Community Blogs
• Non-English blogs

I’ve put this into an OPML file so that you can import it into pretty much any modern RSS feed reader.  You can grab the OPML file here:

I’ve been busy.  For the past 5 months or so I’ve been working on something completely different.  I moved out of the Dynamics world :( and into the Azure world :) .

In July I was asked to help out with the PDC planning.  David Aiken’s team were doing a great job with technical evangelism so I was mainly responsible for supporting the Microsoft field evangelists by engaging with key projects, helping to recruit target customers/partners, engaging customers and partners with feedback on business models and managing the all-up engagement pipeline across the TAPs, Metro and Bizspark.  As you can imagine with a mandate that wide I did a lot of cross-group work.  One of the key tasks was helping with partners in the PDC day 1 keynote (see my video of backstage PDC).  Another was helping with the partner-specific sessions (i.e. the Lunch sessions).

PDC was a blast.  I spent so much time with partners that in the end I only had time to get to 2 sessions (and that includes the one where I was speaker).  The time I spent meeting with partners was fantastic.  I shot almost 17GB of video for a Channel 9 series I’m putting together (more on that soon). 

Here’s a video I shot of a discussion I had with a couple of partners (Rob Fraser of Risk Metrics Group and Richard Prodger of Active Web Solutions) about what they found interesting about PDC this year.

Catching Up and PDC’09: So many sessions; so little time

Since I didn’t get a chance to get to many of the sessions I’ll be watching them online.  All the sessions include full streaming or downloadable video and slide decks.  Here’s the complete list of Windows Azure Platform sessions:

Getting Started

• Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform
• Windows Azure Present and Future
• Introduction to Building Applications with Windows Azure
• The Business of Windows Azure: What you should know about Windows Azure Platform pricing and SLAs

Windows Azure

• Patterns for Building Scalable and Reliable Applications with Windows Azure
• Developing Advanced Applications with Windows Azure
• Windows Azure Monitoring, Logging, and Management APIs
• Automating the Application Lifecycle with Windows Azure
• Building Hybrid Cloud Applications with Windows Azure and the Service Bus
• Enabling Single Sign-On to Windows Azure Applications
• Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud
• Tips and Tricks for Using Visual Studio 2010 to Build Applications that Run on Windows Azure
• Storing and Manipulating Blobs and Files with Windows Azure Storage
• Windows Azure Tables and Queues Deep Dive
• Developing PHP and MySQL Applications with Windows Azure
• Building Java Applications with Windows Azure

Codename “Dallas”

• Enrich your Applications with Data from Microsoft Project Code Name “Dallas”

SQL Azure

• SQL Azure Database: Present and Future
• Using the Microsoft Sync Framework to Connect Apps to the Cloud
• The Future of Database Development with SQL Azure
• Microsoft SQL Azure Database: Under the Hood
• Scaling out Web Applications with Microsoft SQL Azure Databases
• Petabytes for Peanuts! Making Sense out of “Ambient” Data
• Development Best Practices and Patterns for Using Microsoft SQL Azure Databases

Identity

• Windows Identity Foundation Overview
• Software + Services Identity Roadmap Update
• Enabling Single Sign-On to Windows Azure Applications
• REST Services Security Using the Access Control Service

Customer & Partner Showcases

• Lessons Learned: Building Scalable Applications with the Windows Azure Platform
• Lessons Learned: Building On-Premises and Cloud Applications with the Service Bus and Windows Azure
• Lessons Learned: Building Multi-Tenant Applications with the Windows Azure Platform (I highly recommend this one ;)  )
• Lessons Learned: Migrating Applications to the Windows Azure Platform

As always comments are welcome below or directly via the contact form.

Sitting in the audience of the keynote I never had any idea how much work and how many people were involved in pulling together that one event. This year at PDC, when Ray Ozzie's keynote kicked off, I pulled out my video camera and walked around back stage recording the organized confusion.  You'll be amazed at the number of people involved and the amount of equipment.  There were a ton of demos this year so you'll get a kick out of the incredible number of PC's and servers we had set up.

Channel 9:  PDC09 Backstage during the keynote

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

I had some fun and met some interesting folks last night at the SDForum Windows SIG meeting.  I presented a trimmed down version of the Business Action World Tour content but still had to cut myself off at 9:00pm.  Nobody seemed to mind though and I got some great feedback.

I also got a few requests for the slides so I’ve posted them (in various formats) up on my SkyDrive:

I had a blast as folks seemed engaged throughout the event.  There were lots of great questions.  Thanks to William Leong and David Korn for inviting me to speak.

If you have additional questions from the event please post them below or use the contact form to email me directly.

Ok; so maybe I got a little overexcited in the final installment to this 5-part series.  <Jazz Hands!> This time around we spend time talking about how to use Silverlight to build experiences that will compel users to want to come back again and again while differentiating your application from those of your competitors.

In this episode we spend most of our time in the part of the demo related to the conference attendee portal.  The portal is meant to be the place where returning attendees go to review information about the conference (maps, weather, schedule, travel ,etc).  This would be similar to a SharePoint page but built with a consumer in mind so including animations, drag and drop and generally having more sizzle. <Jazz Hands!>

Channel 9: Dynamics Duo: Silverlight and Jazz Hands

The information in the modules is coming directly from Dynamics CRM Online via web service calls.  That information is data-bound to the Silverlight controls we used to allow users to display and manipulate that information.  The ecosystem around Silverlight is exploding and as result there is a wide variety of controls that can be used to accelerate the design and development of solutions.  In our case, much of the UI work on the attendee portal is based on a control built by a team led by Martin Grayson.  Have a look at the various other controls available in the suite on the Blacklight showcase site. The full source code is available on CodePlex.  Nice work on these, Martin! <Jazz Hands!>  As we discussed in the last episode the separation of code and UI makes is easy for developers and designers to work together to build something cool really fast.

Girish promised to share the code for this on his blog here.

Watch in the embedded viewer above or on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/Dynamics-Duo-Silverlight-and-Jazz-Hands/

This episode is part of a 5-part series.  In this series we’ve tried to explain how you can combine the Microsoft Web Platform with Dynamics CRM to quickly build and deploy self-service solutions.  The full set of videos include:

1. Dynamics Duo Rides Again
2. Dynamics Duo: Everybody needs an Identity
3. Dynamics Duo: Wide World Importers Code
4. Dynamics Duo: Composition with Third-Party Web Services
5. Dynamics Duo: Silverlight and Jazz Hands (this video)

Both Girish and I enjoyed recording this series.  We hope you enjoyed them as well.  If you have comments or suggestions for other topics, feel free to add comments below or email Girish or me (Ben) directly.

Sorry if I went a little over the top with all that Jazz Hands thing.  <Jazz Hands!> :)

In this episode we talk about a variety of topics including using Silverlight for UI, composing using 3rd party web services and storing complex information in Dynamics CRM.

We spend most of our time on the flight booking page. This page was built using Silverlight to demonstrate some of the simple experiences that can be designed. In this case the UI was built in Expression Blend. Designers and developers work together closely on projects. In fact, developers and designers work on the exact same project files but stay in their own environments; Developers stay in Visual Studio, Designers stay in Expression. We’ll talk a lot more time about Silverlight in the final episode of this series tomorrow.

Dynamics Duo: Composition with Third-Party Web Services

In our example we use a third party web service run by ezGDS to present the conference attendee with a list of flight options. ezGDS takes care behind the scenes to retrieve that flight fare information from various global distribution systems including Amadeus, Worldspan, Sabre and others. The attendee sees none of that complexity since we’ve built all of that directly into our system. Even though the information coming back can be very complex, including ticket information and various inbound and outbound flight segments, Dynamics CRM easily handles storing this information in a custom entity.

Watch in the embedded viewer above or on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/Dynamics-Duo-Composition-with-Third-Party-Web-Services/

In this episode we dive into some of the real code behind Wide World Importers Conference site.  Girish walks us through the code-behind for the contact/profile and conference registration options pages.

There’s not really a lot of magic here.  In fact, I would say it’s quite simple to understand.  If you’ve used ASP.NET before it’s not much different when you’re writing for Windows Azure as we are here. 

Dynamics Duo: Wide World Importers Code

The only difference is that here we’re sending the data to Dynamics CRM using the SDK.  That’s infinitely more useful for your customers as the information becomes actionable immediately.  We should mention that, in this case, we’re using a 3rd party toolkit by Microsoft Gold Partner, ADXSTUDIO.  Shan McArthur and his team at ADXSTUDIO helped us to put this site together and their toolkit naturally uses the CRM SDK.  It abstracts the SDK it out a little more to make writing and reading the code even simpler.

We use the Live ID token that we’re getting from the Live ID service, as we discussed in the previous episode, to allow the user to retrieve and update their profile information.  It’s the unique key, of sorts, to their record in the CRM data store.

Girish promised in this episode to publish the code so expect to see that soon on his blog.  We’ll have to hold him to that.  :)

Watch in the embedded viewer above or on Channel 9:
http://blogs.msdn.com/benriga/archive/2009/06/16/dynamics-duo-wide-world-importers-code.aspx

The good folks from the SDForum Windows SIG asked me to present at their meeting next week in Mountain View.  If you’re in the area drop by:

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Microsoft Silicon Valley
1065 La Avenida Street
Building 1 (SVC-1)
Mountain View, CA  94043

Join us at the Windows SIG meeting on Wednesday, June 24, at the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View.  Please note the date.  This is a one-time change to accommodate a SDForum event on Thursday.

Food and drinks will be served starting at 6:30 PM.  The meeting will begin at 7:00 PM.  Please RSVP to WindowsSIG@SDForum.org so we can order the appropriate amount.

Dynamics CRM provides the platform for getting your line-of-business applications to market fast.  In this session, we'll discuss how the Dynamics CRM platform (XRM) supports a wide range of business applications with the essentials required for building, delivering and maintaining them in multi-tenant Software+Services environments.  We will also cover how solutions built on the XRM platform benefit from other Microsoft technologies to provide compelling experiences (using WPF or Silverlight), build on familiar skills (using Office or SharePoint) and give your customers the power of choice.

http://sdforum.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=654&parentID=483

In yesterday’s episode we very briefly touched the identity and authentication part of the demo where, on the self-service site, the attendee registers using Windows Live ID. In this episode we go a lot deeper.

Identity and authentication is hard. Simple, scalable and secure login capabilities require a great deal of experience to build and a great deal of effort to maintain and keep running. Windows Live ID provides you a proven solution for building identity-aware applications and is used today by over 460 million users.

In our case, since we’ve integrated Live ID into the system, we let Microsoft manage all the details related to identity and authentication. Live ID assigns each of our users a token that is specific to our site. That means Microsoft lets us know that the person coming to the site is the same person that registered. That token is unique to our site so that from the perspective of the user their privacy is protected (e.g. they cannot be tracked across multiple web sites). In fact, the token is the only thing the site will see. So even though the user may use an email address and password to login to Live ID the site never sees that unless the user explicitly provides that information (as in our example by typing it into a profile page).

Dynamics Duo: Everybody needs an Identity

The simplicity of this is just amazing. As a developer I just have to register my site with Windows Live ID and then redirect my users to the Live ID login page whenever I need them to be authenticated. Live ID handles the authentication and then redirects back to a page that I’ve registered. You can even brand the Windows Live ID login page that your users will see so that it will appear as if it is your own login page. Nice!

While Windows Live ID does a great job of helping me as a conference organizer to identify and authenticate my conference attendees, we also need to authenticate the Windows Azure site to the Dynamics CRM site so that they can exchange information. We’re obviously not going to have CRM licenses for all our self-service users (the thousands of conference attendees in this case) so we use a certificate on the Windows Azure site to ensure that only that site has access to the CRM data. Once the certificate is on my Azure site, we use a Live ID service account to handle the authentication between the two servers.

Watch in the embedded viewer above or on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/Dynamics-Duo-Everybody-needs-an-Identity/