Effective Thoughts

Update: 3/28: Thanks for joining us in Mason, OH. Slide deck is here and on Slide Share here . Thanks for joining us at ArcReady in Columbus, OH "Architecting for the Cloud". I hope everyone got some good information out of my "Cloud Services" session. I'll also be delivering this same session in Mason, OH this Friday. Thanks for coming and thanks to Brian Prince for offering the opportunity to present. Architecting for the cloud For our next ArcReady, we will explore a topic on everyone’s mind: Cloud computing. Several industry companies have announced cloud computing services . In October 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced the next phase of our Software + Services vision: the Azure Services Platform. The Azure Services Platforms provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on premises environments or the internet. Session 1: Cloud Services In our first session we will explore the current state o...

I'm getting up to speed on Azure and the other cloud SDKs and need to configure an environment for development, demos and learning. My experiences... First off, if you've read my blog, you know I haven't installed non-productivity software on my core OS for years . Further, I don't get the warm and fuzzies installing CTP software on my core OS. I also love the recoverability and start-over-from-a-checkpoint features of virtualization. Virtual PC (VPC) houses all my development, demo and learning sandbox instances. So, let's start off with a VPC instance. For this to work well, ideally, you need a good 4GB of memory. Further to the ideal, you're running x64 so as to have access to the full 4GB of memory. ACQUIRE AN AZURE SERVICES DEVELOPER KEY To develop against Azure and/or .Net Services and SQL Services, you need an invitation code. Oooh, very exclusive. Pretty people to the front of the line! You can start the process here . If you run into problems, che...

Thanks to everyone who attended my firm's ( Cardinal Solutions ) / Microsoft joint-sponsored Developer Tools Roadmap event at the Columbus Microsoft MPR room. Thanks to Randy Pagels , Bill Steele and...(no, I won't thank myself) for speaking on C#/.Net 4.0 Futures, VSTS 2010 and Azure/S+S/Online Services, respecitvely. Please contact me or leave a comment with any questions!