Avanade recently released their 2009 Cloud Computing survey.
Joe McKendrick has provided some good commentary on some of the key scenarios in his blog post earlier this week. What’s clear from the survey is:
a) there is a lot (and growing) interest in cloud
b) it’s still very early days
Companies in general are not running their business in the cloud just yet:
“Only 5 percent of companies surveyed currently rely solely on cloud computing technologies for their IT needs”
I expect even that 5% may really be lower if you drill into it and fully consider client technologies. However cloud is certainly forming part of the application mix for early-adoption scenarios as companies take more of a hybrid approach and mix of on-premise and cloud services.
I’m attending PDC 2009 in Los Angeles along with 40 or so (as at last week) customers and partners from Australia.
If you haven’t registered yet and want to deep dive on any of our latest developer technology and be there for Windows Azure’s commercial launch there is still an earlybird discount open until October 30th.
There is a strong set of Windows Azure content sessions at PDC and also a pre-day Architecting and Developing for Windows Azure workshop that I’ll be helping manage.
Chris Auld is our trainer for the workshop. Chris has been doing some great early work on architecting scale Windows Azure solutions and has plenty of real-world insights on the patterns required to really take advantage of cloud deployment. Here’s the official workshop description:
Gain the skills to architect and develop real-world applications using Windows Azure. Going beyond ‘demo-ware’ we examine the theory and technical implementation of large scale elastic applications. It is expected that attendees have some prior experience with Windows Azure, and the Azure Services Training Kit is a recommended prerequisite. During this full-day workshop, we discuss approaches to delivering the best raw performance from our Windows Azure applications, and how to achieve linear scale-out through the use of additional instances. We also discuss data management approaches using Windows Azure and SQL Azure’s partitioning capabilities. Lastly, we examine patterns for deploying Windows Azure applications reliably and with minimal or no impact on the end user experience, and the security environment within which Windows Azure operates, along with ways to provide a bridge between on-premises and cloud-based identity assets and applications. Want to learn more about this workshop? Check out the Channel9 Knowledge Chamber interview here.
If you have registered for PDC already and are attending from Australia feel free to ping me or reach me on twitter @gwillis so we can try and connect there as well.
Well I think we all know by now that Oracle’s Larry Ellison is no fan of the cloud computing hype. No comment on whether that reflects Oracle’s capability in that area. Be sure to check out Larry’s comedic skills in this latest episode:
Talking with one of my colleagues, it did strike us that there are uncanny similarities between the ambitious CEO and another leader, Hank Scorpio.
Separated at birth? – you be the judge…
I’m pleased to announce that the winner of the new CloudApp() Australian side-bet is an application called Traffic in the Cloud; built by Brisbane-based developer, John O’Brien from Soul Solutions.
Included below is John’s description of Traffic in the Cloud which gives a good idea of the architecture of his solution and the client and cloud technologies he used:
| “Traffic in the Cloud brings the context of location to webcams throughout the world. Powered by Silverlight DeepZoom the user is presented with a seamless, slick interface to browse and discover what is happening right now in their city or anywhere around the world. An Azure worker process is actively polling webcam images submitted to the application at desired intervals. The images are composed into an optimised sprite to bring movement and importantly, some perspective to the temporal images. Even though the original source of the webcam images do not provide it, this application shows the last ten frames from each camera as a highly optimised animation. The public can add and then manage their webcams by authenticating with LiveID and completing a simple form. A moderator must approve the submission before it goes live. LiveID provides a secure mechanism to identify a user and leverages Microsoft’s user management tools while never storing or dealing with any personal details in the application. The maps are provided by Bing Maps for Enterprise and all the Silverlight controls used have been made open source through the DeepEarth project on codeplex. Each camera is stored in one row of an Azure Table, each sprite is stored as one blob in Azure Blob storage and is publically available. The site runs from an Azure Web Role, the custom domain name simply points back at Azure. One Azure Message queue is used to manage the worker process. While Azure worker processes typically process jobs as quickly as they can, here we are dealing with something a little different, time. An elegant solution was found: A single queue of all image jobs to be processed, a worker is both a consumer and a producer. Essentially the worker takes the job off the queue, processes it and then puts the next job on the queue before confirming it has completed the original job. Each job contains a timestamp for when the job should be executed; if it is taken off the queue too early the worker process puts it back. This application has the potential to scale to host every public webcam in the world, or it could go nowhere. Only a cloud solution that has the ability to scale beyond the limits of a single server and even a single web farm while only requiring you to consume what you need at any moment can allow this. By using powerful and scalable services like Bing Maps, LiveID, Azure Tables, Blobs, Workers and Web roles the application delivers an impressive user experience while itself being small, elegant and single purposed. "Traffic in the Cloud" would simply not be possible with Windows Azure. The slick Silverlight interface brings a powerful user experience to a scalable, high performance application making use of many Windows Azure features. I hope you and your friends enjoy the application and add your local webcams to share with the world.” |
Congratulations John! Go and check out the winning entry at http://tc.soulsolutions.com.au/ hosted by Windows Azure.
Microsoft recently announced new CloudApp(), a developer challenge for both .NET & PHP developers creating cloud applications or services on the Azure Services Platform. Follow on twitter (#newCloudApp).
There are categories for both US and International entries and you can register and submit your application here. The submission deadline for international entries is July 9th (US) so you need to get started ASAP. The competition FAQ and official fineprint.
But wait, if you’re an Australian resident, there’s more…
The Australian ‘side-bet’
In typical Australian fashion for any good competition, we thought it would be interesting to have a little side-bet on the action to showcase to the world some great Australian cloud developer talent.
How it works
From all of the entries from Australia submitted into the International category of new CloudApp() we’ll locally judge the best application from the Australian entrants as at July 21st. Make sure you indicate Australia when you register for the competition.
The local winner, as decided by our judges, will receive:
- One (1) Full Conference Registration for Tech.Ed 2009 Australia (valued at AUD $1999)
- Be featured on www.azure.com and/or at a major Australian Microsoft event
- Be announced and featured in the Australian Edition of MSDN Flash newsletter in August 2009
All Australian entrants will still be in the running for the main International Category prize in the competition as voted for by the community.
Our local judges for the best Australian new CloudApp() will be:
Gianpaolo Carraro – Director, Microsoft Australia
Gianpaolo recently joined Microsoft Australia to run the developer and platform evangelism group. Prior to that, Gianpaolo spent several years at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, with his head in the clouds, thinking, writing, developing cloud solutions.
Before Microsoft, Gianpaolo helped inflate and maybe even more so, burst the .com bubble as co-founder and CEO of a SaaS startup. Gianpaolo started his career in Research where he was looking for random ideas that could be patented or discussed in academic circles as a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories.
You can learn more about him through his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/gianpaolo
Dr Anna Liu – Associate Professor in Services Engineering, University of New South Wales
Anna Liu holds an Associate Professorship in Services Engineering at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of NSW, and is a Research Leader at the Smart Services CRC. Her current research interest is in Cloud Computing and evaluating Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Prior to returning to academia, she held Principal Architect and Group Management roles at Microsoft Australia, leading efforts on SOA, EAI and Emerging Web innovations. Before joining Microsoft, she was a research leader at the CSIRO, working with Middleware technologies. She views the world through her software architect's lenses...
Greg Willis - Architect Evangelist, Microsoft Australia
Greg Willis is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft in Sydney with over 17 years commercial experience in the media, telecoms and finance industries.
Greg's previous experience includes architecting high-traffic (and in other cases high-hype) web sites in the halcyon days of Web 1.0 before the web world generally worried about such trivial matters as business models, revenue etc. He now focuses on the challenges of Software + Services, particularly distributing applications to the cloud in the context of enterprise architecture.
Getting Started
- Sign up for the Azure Services
- Develop using Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition or Visual Web Developer Express Edition.
- Download the SDKs and Tools
- Learn more about the Azure Services
- Tutorial videos are also available here
- More info on deploying PHP applications on Windows Azure
Any questions or comments please let me know! Good luck in the clouds.
Please see below for the official terms and conditions for the Australian competition:
Best Australian new CloudApp() – Official Terms and Conditions
1. Instructions on how to enter form part of the conditions of entry. By participating entrants agree to be bound by these conditions.
2. The promoter is Microsoft Pty Limited, ACN 002 589 460 of 1 Epping Road, North Ryde, New South Wales, 2113.
3. Entry is open to Australian residents aged 18 years and over. Employees and their immediate families of the promoter, its retailers, suppliers and associated companies and agencies are not eligible to enter.
4. The promoter reserves the right to verify the validity of entries and to disqualify any entrant who the promoter believes either has tampered with the entry process or has submitted an entry that is not in accordance with these conditions of entry.
5. Entry to the competition commences at 5.00pm (Sydney time) on June 12th 2009 and closes at 5.00am (Sydney time) on July 10th 2009 – the deadline for entry of submissions at http://www.newcloudapp.net
6. Only one entry per person is allowed and all entries to newCloudApp() are subject to the official rules at http://www.newcloudapp.com/official-rules.html.
7. The Australian winner will be judged from all valid entrants in the new CloudApp() competition International category who indicate in their entry that they are Australian. Details of how to enter the new CloudApp() competition and its full terms and conditions can be found at http://www.newcloudapp.com. The official rules are at http://www.newcloudapp.com/official-rules.html
8. All valid entries submitted by the closing date will be reviewed by the judging panel. This is a game of skill and chance plays no part in determining the winners. Each entry will be individually judged based on the most innovative and original use of the Azure Services Platform. The local Australian winner will be judged from the registered entries on July 22nd 2009 Sydney time (after the community voting period has ended in the main competition).
9. The best entry will win One (1) Full Conference Registration for Tech.Ed Australia 2009 to be held on September 8th – 11th 2009 at the Gold Coast, QLD. Total number prizes = 1. Total prize value = AUD $1999. Prizes are not exchangeable, transferable or redeemable for cash.
10. Travel and accommodation costs to the Gold Coast, QLD are not included in the prize. If the promoter is unable to supply the nominated prize, the promoter reserves the right to supply another prize of greater or equal value.
11. All entries become the property of the promoter. The promoter’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. No responsibility is accepted for entries not received by the promoter. Entries will be deemed void if stolen, forged, mutilated or tampered with in any way.
12. All entries are deemed to be received at the time of receipt into the promotion database and not at the time of transmission by the entrant. Any form of automated entry using other devices or software is invalid.
13. The stated prize value is the recommended retail value (including GST) in Australia as provided by the supplier and is correct at the time of printing. The Promoter accepts no responsibility for any variation in the value of the prize. The Promoter and its associated agencies and companies accept no responsibility for prizes damaged or lost in transit.
14. Winners of all prizes will be notified via email and the winner of the competition will be announced in the first edition of the Australian MSDN Flash newsletter published after the prize is claimed.
15. In the event that a prize is not claimed by 1st August 2009 the judges will select an alternate winner to receive the prize.
16. Any costs associated with entering the competition and accessing the website are the responsibility of the entrant.
17. The promoter assumes no responsibility for, and the entrant releases the promoter from responsibility for, any failure to receive an entry or for inaccurate information or for any loss, claim, damage or injury to person or property (including computer systems and servers) as a result of the entrant’s participation in this promotion or the conduct of the promotion generally or as a direct or indirect result of an entrant’s error, any technical problem of any kind including communications or network failure, unauthorised access to, transferring or theft of data, whether caused by the entrant or associated with the equipment or programming used in the conduct of this promotion. If, because of any such problem, this promotion is not able to be conducted as planned and/or the promotion’s administration, security, fairness or integrity are compromised or affected, the promoter may cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the promotion and/or disqualify any entrant involved in interfering or tampering with the conduct of this promotion in any way.
18. Details from all entries will be collected and used for the purposes of conducting this promotion (which may include disclosure to third parties for the purpose of processing and conducting the promotion) and for publicity purposes surrounding this promotion. By entering this promotion entrants consent to the use of their information as described. Entrants may access and/or change their data by following the procedures in the promoter’s privacy policy which is available at www.microsoft.com/australia/privacy. The promoter will only use your personal details for marketing purposes outside those described above if you “opt in” to join the mailing list when prompted.
Tech•Ed 2009 season comes to Australia on Sept 8th – 11th. There are 13 content tracks planned and I’m the owner for our track on the Azure Services Platform. My colleague Nigel Watson is owner of the general Architecture track. For the full set of tracks / owners Andrew Coates has the full story and some good tips on creating a successful submission suitable for Tech.Ed.
This year is the first time we’ve opened up the Call for Content publically and we’re likely to receive more proposals than we’ve got slots to fill, so please don’t be disappointed if your submission isn’t selected. See end of this post for links to submit a topic.
My Track: Azure Services Platform
With the new Azure Services Platform, developers can take advantage of an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centres to build new applications in the cloud or extend existing applications quickly and easily, using a flexible and interoperable platform. The Azure Services Platform track explores Azure's cloud operating system and set of developer services, including Windows Azure, SQL Services, .NET Services, and Live Services. Sessions provide an overview of services currently in Community Technology Preview (CTP) and beta release, in addition to discussions on the future of the Azure Services Platform and the possibilities it provides for your business to reduce costs and accelerate innovation.
So how do you go about submitting your great Azure session? Go to the Call for Content tool and register with your email address and the RSVP code TechEdANZ. Fill in all the details and hit submit. You can come back to that site at any time to update or review the progress of your submission. Here are the rules for submitting content and what we’ll cover/not cover if we are able to include your session.
Good luck and I look forward to reviewing the proposals!
Recently I delivered an overview talk at JAOO in Sydney and Brisbane on Azure Services Platform, and specifically Windows Azure. As always an interesting crowd with good questions at JAOO - thanks to Dave Thomas and the rest of the JAOO team for the invitation.
I’ve published a copy of the slides on slideshare.
FAQ: Where do I find out more about architecting and developing apps for Azure?
Well there is www.azure.com, but specifically two of the best places to get up to speed are the “How Do I?” videos and the Azure Services Training Kit.
The How Do I videos are short and sweet (typically 5 – 15 minutes) demos that illustrate how to get started with a particular aspect of Azure. The training kit is the base of the material we use to train early adopter ISV’s and customers over a 3 day workshop and contains technical presentations and Hands On Labs for most parts of the Azure Services Platform.
Both great ways to find out more and get started.
If you'll be at JAOO Sydney or JAOO Brisbane come along and see my talk The Cloud is Azure.
I will be talking about how Microsoft's cloud platform fits in with the emerging cloud taxonomy as well as discussing some of the key elements of the platform and patterns to consider in building and deploying with the cloud.
Always a great audience at JAOO - hope to see you there!
One of the more unique elements of the Azure Services Platform is .NET Services.
Much of the current discussion around Cloud Computing focuses on moving certain IT workloads to the cloud (for example email like Microsoft Online) or cloud compute and storage services (like Windows Azure). In contrast, .NET Services sits in the cloud platform/middleware category – with capabilities that will often be used to extend existing ISV and enterprise applications leveraging our cloud services for interoperability and scale. These applications themselves may also reside in the cloud (cloud-based) or on-premise but making use of the cloud (cloud-aware).
Today’s release of the .NET Services March CTP (that’s a Community Technology Preview – ie pre-release) focuses on interoperability and includes improved support for web standards such as REST, ATOM, SOAP, and HTTP. This means that all developers extending applications – whether they are .NET developers or not - will now find .NET Services easier to use because they can utilise industry standards and protocols to interface to our services.
Some of the specific enhancements in the March update:
- A new management service for Access Control (now supports REST and ATOM for managing the rules)
- Discoverable and durable Service Bus queues for reliable pull message delivery (support both SOAP and HTTP)
- Discoverable and durable Service Bus routers which provide message storage, control and delivery in unidirectional publish and subscription solutions (support SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2 and HTTP)
- Push delivery to HTTP endpoints and Solicit/Push delivery to Service Bus listeners
- Workflow Service now offers improved integration with Service Bus. Message-based activation allows the creation of new instances on-demand and direct communication with these instances
- Workflow REST-Client enhancements with the addition of PUT, GET, POST, DELETE, custom verbs as well as parameters and header support to the HttpSend activity.
The latest Microsoft .NET Services SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sdk.mspx
As always we’re keen to hear your feedback and how you’re using these services to extend and simplify your applications.
For the last week I’ve been working with the shy and retiring web guru Michael Kordahi on a solution to deliver enhanced coverage of the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade to the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and Fairfax’s other Australian newspapers like The Age.
The idea was simple – to deliver a compelling, ‘sticky’ user experience around several hundred past and current images from Fairfax’s digital archive. We wanted the solution to scale for traffic and be quick and easy for them to deploy in time for the parade weekend.
After some discussion about possible architecture we decided this would be a good scenario to deploy against application infrastructure that could scale in a elastic fashion based on demand – especially as expected traffic would clearly peak over the few days around the Mardi Gras parade and then drop back to a low-level as a historical link.
The eventual solution was built (from start to finish in one week – Michael didn’t sleep much building that client) using rich client software – Silverlight exposing a DeepZoom image collection – delivered over HTTP from a scalable cloud technology service - Windows Azure.
In the end we deployed the Silverlight application - and the approximately 32,000 small image objects that make up the underlying collection - onto Windows Azure Storage Services within containers and blobs.
The basic Windows Azure storage concept is illustrated below.
For a detailed overview of Windows Azure Storage from Brad Calder, one of the key architects and Director of Cloud Storage, check out the PDC 2008 session recording.
As Windows Azure is currently in what we term Community Technology Preview - i.e intended only for development and testing - we checked-in with the product team in Redmond before putting an application live on the web that would be visited by thousands of people in a short time… Big thanks to David Lemphers for his support.
Even in its current early state the Windows Azure platform is showing its able to scale and deliver what we needed. A week well spent and a great looking client application that wows most people that see it.
Happy Mardi Gras Sydney!
We have a couple of last-minute spots available on an Azure Services Platform developer training course next week (March 10th – 12th) in Sydney City. If you’re a hands-on Solutions Architect or Senior Developer this is a great chance to spend some time understanding and trying out various aspects of Azure.
The 3 day course will explain the Azure Service Platform offerings and provide you with information and guidance through presentations and hands on labs.
Topics covered include:
Familiarity with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 is desirable to get the most from the course.
If you have a great idea for how the Azure Services Platform can help you build or enhance an existing application and could attend the training course please ping me your details. The course is free of charge.
First come, first served!
At the end of last week I was busy with our Steve Ballmer Power to Developers event here in Sydney. Here is the complete video from our cloud development overview session.
During Gianpaolo’s visit we had some good local discussions with the customer architecture and developer community about their initial ideas on how to make use of various aspects of the Azure Services Platform.
Please ping me if you have any interesting use cases for some early adoption to discuss while we’re in Technology Preview.
Live Services form a core part of our Azure Services Platform.
If you want to get your hands dirty with the Live Services API’s, Sydney has one of the 11 worldwide training sessions coming on December 8th and 9th. It’s 2 days of deep-dive technical training on all you need to know about Live Services.
Technical Level: 300-400 with hands-on development against the Live Services and all attendees get access to the Live Services CTP!
Sign up at: http://www.lsjumpstart.com
