.NET News

Cloud Services with Windows Azure - Part 1
Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services strategy represents a view of the world where the growing feature-set of devices and the increasing ubiquity of the Web are combined to deliver more compelling solutions. Software-plus-Services represents an evolutionary step that is based on existing best practices in IT and extends the application potential of core service-orientation design principles. The Windows Azure platform represents one of the major components of the Software-plus-Services strategy, as Microsoft’s cloud computing operating environment, designed from the outset to holistically manage pools of computation, storage and networking; all encapsulated by one or more services.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/30/10 11:45 AM
CLM Matrix Joins Microsoft in the Clouds
Matrix-Online is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that runs on the Windows Azure and SQL Azure Platform as a Service (Paas). The solution provides a cloud-based contract management repository where companies can track, search and set alerts for all of your active contracts. No IT staff is needed, no additional licenses, access to all future upgrades and releases with minimal configuration. As Microsoft signs up additional customers on the Azure platform, CLM Matrix intends to broaden their customer reach by having the Matrix-Online service fully enabled within the cloud environment.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/30/10 10:30 AM
Microsoft’s Vampire OS
Microsoft was supposed to terminate so-called XP downgrade rights with the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which went to beta this week. But now it says it’s not going to because people continue to cling to the thing. With 74% of the enterprise still on XP, Microsoft has to pay attention when its business customers tell it, as it says, that “removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing, given the rights change would be made for new PCs pre-installed with Windows 7 and managing a hybrid environment with PCs that have different end-user rights based on date of purchase would be challenging to track.” So XP will continue to be installed until Win7 is in its grave in 10 years time.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/16/10 8:11 PM
Microsoft Helps Service Providers Capture Cloud Services Opportunities
Microsoft is highlighting market opportunities for hosting and communications service providers as adoption of cloud services among small and midsize business (SMBs) continues to rise. Microsoft is helping service providers take advantage of those opportunities through its software, services and programs that enable them to become trusted advisors and full-service IT providers to businesses. "Microsoft sees service providers becoming more important as the cloud becomes more predominant. Given their experience in deploying and selling infrastructure and software as a service, businesses will depend on them for IT as a service," said John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. "The next step for service providers is to look beyond their current hosted offerings to become full-service IT providers and trusted advisors to businesses."

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/15/10 1:15 AM
Azure Cloud Platform Deployable to Enterprises
Microsoft has announced and released a new version of its Windows Azure platform which will operate as an appliance.  This platform, which is supported by a strong partner community (including Dell, Fujitsu and HP), provides enhanced means for enterprises to run cloud services, either internally or for their own customers. This is not, in my opinion, just your basic run of the mill IT news.  At least not to technologists who track and seek to implement enterprise based cloud capabilities. Background: Enterprises were the pioneers of enhanced delivery of capability via clouds, with modern enterprise data center environments providing many scalable, efficient, optimized resources.  But for the most part these capabilities have been focused on things that matter to IT departments more than to end users.  End users want continually increasing contributions to the mission and, for the most part, do not focus on cost savings, power savings or elastic computing constructs. Now consider the potential of this Azure announcement.  Microsoft’s platform for cloud computing is available in an appliance.  This means companies and government organizations can now buy something that delivers Azure capabilities from inside their enterprise.  And they can do that in a way that [...] Related posts:
  1. Cloud Computing vs. SOA: Look for a cross-over in hype
  2. Live from the Gov 2.0 Expo – Finding Value in the Cloud
  3. Live from the Gov 2.0 Expo – Security in the Cloud

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/13/10 12:00 PM
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Others Sued for Patent Infringement
NTP Inc, the patent troll that nicked Research in Motion and its Blackberry for a cool $612.5 million in 2006, sued Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, LG Electronics and HTC last Thursday charging their smartphones infringe the same Ur-wireless e-mail patents that RIM ran afoul of. In Apple’s case the suit names the iPhone, iPad, server software and MobileMe. The suits were filed in federal court in Virginia near where NTP lives. NTP is already suing AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Palm. RIM wound up settling because an injunction could have barred it from the market, a situation that’s unlikely to happen again thanks to a subsequent Supreme Court decision limiting the imposition of injunctions when the claimant is a “non-practicing entity.” So NTP’s chances of getting giant settlements from its new suits are supposedly slim and NTP said it would prefer to settle.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/13/10 11:45 AM
NetApp Integrates with Microsoft Toolkit
NetApp on Monday announced enhanced integration with Microsoft to deliver enterprise-class data protection solutions to cloud service providers by leveraging the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters. Although enterprise-class data protection has historically been too expensive for most small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) to implement themselves, NetApp and Microsoft now enable service providers to offer enterprise-class data protection to their SMB customers. Additionally, NetApp announced the availability of new professional service offerings and additional resources and guidance for service providers to build a variety of enterprise-class cloud services. "SMB customers have many of the same disaster recovery and business continuity requirements as large enterprise organizations, but often times don't have the necessary skill set or budget needed to achieve the desired results," said Laura DuBois, program vice president, Storage Software and Solutions, IDC. "Solutions that address this gap by providing enterprise-level data protection along with the support and guidance needed to deploy will be integral in helping SMBs realize the true benefits of a cloud infrastructure."

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/13/10 2:00 AM
Cloud Computing Creates Tremendous Value: Ballmer
"For customers, cloud computing creates tremendous value, which translates to massive opportunity for Microsoft and its partners," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today, in his keynote address at day one of the company's Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC). Ballmer highlighted the critical role Microsoft's partners will continue to play in driving the IT industry’s transformation to cloud computing and helping fuel economic growth and job creation in local communities around the world.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/12/10 6:00 PM
Microsoft and Fujitsu in Major Cloud Push
According to the Nikkei July 10 morning edition, Fujitsu and Microsoft are planning to share data centers worldwide in a bid to catch up to the world's Cloud computing pioneers in the business of providing software and computing services online. The two companies are considering joint investment in new data centers, the Nikkei reported. In the meantime, the report added, Fujitsu will begin to host Microsoft cloud services at its Tatebayashi center in Gunma Prefecture.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/12/10 11:15 AM
Microsoft's Cloud Services Approach
Twenty million businesses and over a billion people use Microsoft cloud services, and many of the Microsoft products that we know and trust are available in the cloud. Like SQL. Office. And Windows. In his general session at Cloud Expo East, Yousef Khalidi, Distinguished Engineer and lead architect for Windows Azure, discussed Microsoft's cloud computing vision and investments. He also outlined Microsoft’s cloud strategy and portfolio, then discussed the benefits to customers and partners such as business agility, and the array of choice from on-premise into the cloud. In addition, Khalidi detailed the Windows Azure platform pillars and how they fit into Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/7/10 12:15 PM
One Less Thing for Flash to Worry About
Move Networks, a once-promising adaptive bit-rate video streaming house whose pricey plug-in-based technology was used at least briefly by Fox.com and ABC.com, has hit the wall running taking over $90 million in investments from Microsoft and Cisco, Hummer Winblad, Comcast, Benchmark Capital and Steamboat Ventures and Televista with it. Officially it’s looking for a buyer after failing to raise another $20 million. Staff has been laid off and its CEO, former DirecTV COO Roxanne Austin, is gone, replaced by its biz dev guy.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/4/10 9:00 PM
EC Wants to Legislate Interoperability
Having forced a dominant player like Microsoft to open up some of its interfaces in the name of interoperability, the European Commission is now proposing to force any “significant” player like, oh, say, Apple and Adobe or RIM and Nokia to open up their proprietary interfaces so it can create a brave new kumbayah level playing field. It forced Microsoft to do it by dint of antitrust prosecution and heavy fines but now it’s proposing to legislate the licensing of interfaces and data formats outside of antitrust considerations by 2012. According to EC’s new digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes, who’s proving to be a very dangerous woman, “Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/3/10 4:00 PM
Windows 8 Slides Apparently Leak
Apparently Microsoft had a chin wag with computer makers in April about what Windows 8 might look like so they can make plans because a set of the “NDA” “Microsoft Confidential” PowerPoints used at the meeting seem to have turned up on an Italian web site called Windowsette over the weekend. They are evidently real. At least they are widely accepted as genuine and seem to have been in the possession of an HP engineer named Derek Goode. Not that they’re all that revealing or even a “plan of record,” but it looks like Microsoft is expecting to release the next-generation operating system some time in 2012 and that Internet Explorer 9 will hit beta this August.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 7/2/10 4:54 PM
How ASP.NET PostBacks and Redirects Work
Last week I got the following two questions from one of our clients * “We use ASP.NET PostBacks but can’t find the PurePath for the request triggering the PostBack handler – any hints?” * “We see many ThreadAbortExceptions in our ASP.NET Application and we are not sure why they happen – are they expected?” Time for a little blog that gives some internals on PostBacks as well as Redirects (which are commonly used in PostBack handlers).

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/30/10 9:39 PM
Salesforce Sues Microsoft Back
In what has become a typical negotiating tactic in patent cases, salesforce.com has answered Microsoft’s charge of patent infringement with a countersuit. For amusement’s sake, it’s using Microsoft’s old nemesis David Boies for the job. He’s the hired gun the Justice Department brought in to argue its antitrust case against Redmond. Oracle just hired Boies too. It wants him to win in its great billion-dollar IP theft suit against SAP and its now-defunct TomorrowNow maintenance subsidiary. Not winning SCO’s litigation against Novell and IBM seems to have worked wonders for Boies and his firm. He didn’t win the presidency for Al Gore either and the Microsoft break-up order handed down at trial didn’t stick.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/29/10 2:15 PM
Salesforce Sues Microsoft Back
In what has become a typical negotiating tactic in patent cases, salesforce.com has answered Microsoft’s charge of patent infringement with a countersuit. For amusement’s sake, it’s using Microsoft’s old nemesis David Boies for the job. He’s the hired gun the Justice Department brought in to argue its antitrust case against Redmond. Oracle just hired Boies too. It wants him to win in its great billion-dollar IP theft suit against SAP and its now-defunct TomorrowNow maintenance subsidiary. Not winning SCO’s litigation against Novell and IBM seems to have worked wonders for Boies and his firm. He didn’t win the presidency for Al Gore either and the Microsoft break-up order handed down at trial didn’t stick.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/28/10 1:27 PM
Amazon S3 for C# Developers
Amazon S3 is a simple storage service that can be used for storing key-value pairs or files. So it can be used as a static HTTP server. But it has some other interesting features. I like to find things that are easy themselves and that can be easily used. Amazon S3 is a convenient place to store data in. But I found that it's not simply a storage.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/23/10 7:51 PM
Amazon S3 for C# Developers
Amazon S3 is a simple storage service that can be used for storing key-value pairs or files. So it can be used as a static HTTP server. But it has some other interesting features. I like to find things that are easy themselves and that can be easily used. Amazon S3 is a convenient place to store data in. But I found that it's not simply a storage.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/23/10 7:51 PM
Let the Games Begin
Office 2010 went on sale to consumers and small businesses Tuesday and Microsoft’s free lightweight Office Web Apps version of Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint, its answer to the three-year-old Google Apps, was made generally available. The webby stuff is good on Macs and phones as well as PCs and users with a Hotmail account can make use of SkyDrive, the 25GB of free storage Microsoft offers. To recap, the Home and Student version cost $150 ($120 downloaded); the Home and Business edition, which adds Outlook, is $280 ($200 downloaded); Office Professional, which includes Publisher and Access, lists for $500 ($350 downloaded). Office has traditional accounted for half of Microsoft’s earnings and a third of its revenue, which may explain why it’s spending a reported $80 million to advertise the new stuff.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/20/10 9:00 PM
Let the Games Begin
Office 2010 went on sale to consumers and small businesses Tuesday and Microsoft’s free lightweight Office Web Apps version of Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint, its answer to the three-year-old Google Apps, was made generally available. The webby stuff is good on Macs and phones as well as PCs and users with a Hotmail account can make use of SkyDrive, the 25GB of free storage Microsoft offers. To recap, the Home and Student version cost $150 ($120 downloaded); the Home and Business edition, which adds Outlook, is $280 ($200 downloaded); Office Professional, which includes Publisher and Access, lists for $500 ($350 downloaded). Office has traditional accounted for half of Microsoft’s earnings and a third of its revenue, which may explain why it’s spending a reported $80 million to advertise the new stuff.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/18/10 8:05 PM
Many Companies Caught in Lurch as Microsoft Ends Support for Windows XP 2
On July 13, Microsoft will officially retire Windows XP Service Pack 2. Although it will continue to provide security updates for XP Service Pack 3, it will stop providing patches for the older SP2. Microsoft offers support for its products for five years and extended support for another five years. For XP SP2, that journey comes to an end on July 13. Windows XP 3 will be supported until April 2014. Microsoft issues security updates and other core operating system patches every second Tuesday of the month, known as Patch Tuesday. Whereas most home users typically install these patches automatically, corporate users usually install service packs and security updates manually and only after extensive testing. For large corporate environments, operating system upgrades are often a very perilous and expensive exercise.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/17/10 4:08 PM
Many Companies Caught in Lurch as Microsoft Ends Support for Windows XP 2
On July 13, Microsoft will officially retire Windows XP Service Pack 2. Although it will continue to provide security updates for XP Service Pack 3, it will stop providing patches for the older SP2. Microsoft offers support for its products for five years and extended support for another five years. For XP SP2, that journey comes to an end on July 13. Windows XP 3 will be supported until April 2014. Microsoft issues security updates and other core operating system patches every second Tuesday of the month, known as Patch Tuesday. Whereas most home users typically install these patches automatically, corporate users usually install service packs and security updates manually and only after extensive testing. For large corporate environments, operating system upgrades are often a very perilous and expensive exercise.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/17/10 4:08 PM
Managed Runtimes Suck; Azul Organizing Rescue Party
Azul Systems, the Java server appliance house, says Java, Ruby and, for that matter, .NET managed runtimes are pushed to their limits and basically crippled. Their response times are inconsistent, their scale is limited, and they’re unable to exploit modern commodity hardware with its multi-cores and memory. They’re unstable and need continuous tuning. They suffer from daily restarts, garbage collection pauses and out-of-memory errors. Operating systems aren’t optimized for them and virtualization and the cloud aggravate the scaling issue.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/17/10 7:30 AM
Managed Runtimes Suck; Azul Organizing Rescue Party
Azul Systems, the Java server appliance house, says Java, Ruby and, for that matter, .NET managed runtimes are pushed to their limits and basically crippled. Their response times are inconsistent, their scale is limited, and they’re unable to exploit modern commodity hardware with its multi-cores and memory. They’re unstable and need continuous tuning. They suffer from daily restarts, garbage collection pauses and out-of-memory errors. Operating systems aren’t optimized for them and virtualization and the cloud aggravate the scaling issue.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/17/10 7:30 AM
Fast & Secure Computing Using the Cloud at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Like other desktop-centric technologies such as anti-malware, PC tune-up utilities (disk de-fragmentation, registry cleaners, junk removers, etc.) have primarily been a localized technology that relied on the user installing software on the computer to analyze and resolve problems that affect performance. This session will introduce a new approach that takes PC tune-up and security strategies to a new level utilizing the power of the cloud as a means of delivery. In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Ryan Sherstobitoff, Chief Corporate Evangelist at SafeKidZone and CEO of ForwardK, will introduce new methodologies to use the intelligence of the community and the power of the cloud to accomplish computer maintenance at a lower total cost of ownership than traditional desktop technologies.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/15/10 11:00 PM
Enterprise Usage of OpenNebula at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Future enterprise data centers will look like private clouds supporting a flexible and agile execution of virtualized services, and combining local with public cloud-based infrastructure to enable highly scalable hosting environments. The key component in these cloud architectures will be the cloud management system, also called the cloud operating system (OS), which is responsible for the secure, efficient and scalable management of cloud resources. Cloud OSes are displacing "traditional" OSes, which will be part of the application stack. In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Ignacio M. Llorente, Professor of the DSA Research Group at UCM, will discuss the OpenNebula Ecosystem, which was recently established in order to promote the different tools, extensions and plug-ins that are available to complement OpenNebula from a wide variety of projects, companies and research centers.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/15/10 10:00 PM
Get These Web Development Tools for Free
You are a developer and you are short of cash (who is not in these days of gloom and doom with millions out of jobs)to buy all the fancy software. You could go to Open Source, or get programs for free. The evaluation editions are great but they can be a headache. By evaluating, you are helping the company make a better product in exchange for your headache. They have expiration dates and you have to fiddle with your control panel. I almost don't use evaluation software with less than 120 days of useful life.

Now come the express editions. They are free and you do not have to worry about the expiration date but the downside is some features are not there in the express series. Well, beggars or not choosers.

Microsoft started making these express editions (others also like Oracle and IBM) a while ago and now all of this is consolidated on thier web site expressely set for the express series.

Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Default.aspx

Here you can find the latest express editions as well as the Microsoft Web Platform Installer which will bring home all the goodies to your desktop/laptop/notebook.

You can get express programs for all of these in one place:

Web                                  Visual Studio 2010 Express

Windows Microsoft           VB, C# and C++ Express

Phone                                Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone 7

Database                           SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (x32 and x64)

These same products can be used for developing applications for Windows Azure as well. This is a good selling point.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/14/10 2:02 PM
Get These Web Development Tools for Free
You are a developer and you are short of cash (who is not in these days of gloom and doom with millions out of jobs)to buy all the fancy software. You could go to Open Source, or get programs for free. The evaluation editions are great but they can be a headache. By evaluating, you are helping the company make a better product in exchange for your headache. They have expiration dates and you have to fiddle with your control panel. I almost don't use evaluation software with less than 120 days of useful life.

Now come the express editions. They are free and you do not have to worry about the expiration date but the downside is some features are not there in the express series. Well, beggars or not choosers.

Microsoft started making these express editions (others also like Oracle and IBM) a while ago and now all of this is consolidated on thier web site expressely set for the express series.

Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Default.aspx

Here you can find the latest express editions as well as the Microsoft Web Platform Installer which will bring home all the goodies to your desktop/laptop/notebook.

You can get express programs for all of these in one place:

Web                                  Visual Studio 2010 Express

Windows Microsoft           VB, C# and C++ Express

Phone                                Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone 7

Database                           SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (x32 and x64)

These same products can be used for developing applications for Windows Azure as well. This is a good selling point.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/14/10 2:02 PM
I/O Logical Check Failure Causes SQL Server Database Corruption
Like other databases and files, Microsoft SQL Server database may also come across various corruption issues. The corruption can take place due to various reasons, including the internal database or SQL Server application issues and system related problems. One major system related problem, which can cause MDF (Master Database File) corruption, is I/O logical check failure. In such situations, the database becomes totally inaccessible and you come across severe data loss situations. In order to get your mission critical data back, you need to repair and restore the corrupt database using SQL database recovery solutions.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/14/10 7:22 AM
I/O Logical Check Failure Cause SQL Server Database Corruption
Like other databases and files, Microsoft SQL Server database may also come across various corruption issues. The corruption can take place due to various reasons, including the internal database or SQL Server application issues and system related

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/14/10 7:22 AM
Why Google Apps? Why Not Microsoft Web Apps? and Behold the Dark Horse!
Come June 15, Google's Office Docs will be challenged by Microsoft's Web Applications (Word, Excel, Power Point and One Note) working off the web and Microsoft expects to make money from Ads. Microsoft will challenge Google and steal away the Google crowd while injecting new blood into its Window Live at the same time, the core behind the Microsoft web applications. Microsoft is already an undisputed leader in Entreprise Office. With this new offering Microsoft will have the best of both worlds, keep the cake while eating it.
But behold the dark horse! I was recently testing out the OpenOffice and came away vastly impressed. I wonder how Microsoft is planning to challenge this one.
All these happenings keep me wondering why does the CNBC's talking heads miss Microsoft's serious foray into the unknown open spaces and the cloud. In a recent Power Lunch (I think it was) after a recent Ballmer's speech the talk turned to Google, Apple and Microsoft. They heaped praise on Google and Apple and showed rather an embarassing financial (earnings per share) comparsion of Apple and Microsoft and completly ignored Microsoft's spending on its Cloud Platform, CDNs, Data centers etc. How did this happen with an untold number of Microsoft Evangelists milling around? May be Microsoft should change its game plan and become more visible on Wall Street.
Disclaimer: I am neither a Microsoft employee nor hold Microsoft stocks but just a concerned webizen (Web Citizen)

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/12/10 1:53 PM
Why Google Apps? Why Not Microsoft Web Apps? and Behold the Dark Horse!
Come June 15, Google's Office Docs will be challenged by Microsoft's Web Applications (Word, Excel, Power Point and One Note) working off the web and Microsoft expects to make money from Ads. Microsoft will challenge Google and steal away the Google crowd while injecting new blood into its Window Live at the same time, the core behind the Microsoft web applications. Microsoft is already an undisputed leader in Entreprise Office. With this new offering Microsoft will have the best of both worlds, keep the cake while eating it.
But behold the dark horse! I was recently testing out the OpenOffice and came away vastly impressed. I wonder how Microsoft is planning to challenge this one.
All these happenings keep me wondering why does the CNBC's talking heads miss Microsoft's serious foray into the unknown open spaces and the cloud. In a recent Power Lunch (I think it was) after a recent Ballmer's speech the talk turned to Google, Apple and Microsoft. They heaped praise on Google and Apple and showed rather an embarassing financial (earnings per share) comparsion of Apple and Microsoft and completly ignored Microsoft's spending on its Cloud Platform, CDNs, Data centers etc. How did this happen with an untold number of Microsoft Evangelists milling around? May be Microsoft should change its game plan and become more visible on Wall Street.
Disclaimer: I am neither a Microsoft employee nor hold Microsoft stocks but just a concerned webizen (Web Citizen)

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/12/10 1:53 PM
Windows 7 SP1 Beta Due
Microsoft expects to have a public beta of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) out by next month. There won’t be any new Windows 7-specific features and most of the bug fixes have already been released making it a largely ceremonial milestone that many companies like to pass before they deploy. There will be some new Hyper-V features apropos of cloud computing and graphics acceleration widgetry for remote desktops. A public beta of a service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2 is also due in July. By the way, Windows Server AppFabric has RTM’d. It’s supposed to simplify the development and management of composite applications by improving speed, elastic scale and high availability through distributed caching capabilities and new tools.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/11/10 7:03 PM
Windows 7 SP1 Beta Due
Microsoft expects to have a public beta of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) out by next month. There won’t be any new Windows 7-specific features and most of the bug fixes have already been released making it a largely ceremonial milestone that many companies like to pass before they deploy. There will be some new Hyper-V features apropos of cloud computing and graphics acceleration widgetry for remote desktops. A public beta of a service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2 is also due in July. By the way, Windows Server AppFabric has RTM’d. It’s supposed to simplify the development and management of composite applications by improving speed, elastic scale and high availability through distributed caching capabilities and new tools.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/11/10 7:03 PM
Pentaho Open Source BI Goes On-Demand
Pentaho has taken its open source business intelligence (BI) widgetry and, through the wonders of VMware virtualization, made it into an on-demand subscription service that it fancies will remove critical barriers to BI adoption by giving customers control over how the solution is deployed and managed – by Pentaho, by the customer, or by both. See, it’s solved the portability issue because the customer can move the image in-house. It’s also turned the venture into a marketing gimmick called the 72-Hour Challenge. For a couple thousand bucks, window shoppers can send Pentaho their data and it promises to have an evaluation project up and running with key performance indicators and relevant dashboards in three days. The potential customer can then show the prototype around in a live webinar and test-drive it for three weeks, even expand it, without commandeering any of its own hardware or personnel.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/10/10 9:00 PM
Windows Phone 7 Devices
It’s been an interesting handful of weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the field with our country managers as we get ready for the coming launch of Windows Phone 7. That’s a post for another day. I’m here at TechEd, and there’s a lot of talk about Windows Phone 7 devices and when they are going to be made available. One cool thing that the team is doing is handing out coupons to event attendees redeemable for general availability devices when they start shipping. We’re only handing out around 50 or so of these coupons, so it’s definitely not a broad distribution. It’s meant for people who are attending sessions or wearing Windows Phone hats around the show floor.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/8/10 9:07 PM
Windows Phone 7 Devices
It’s been an interesting handful of weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the field with our country managers as we get ready for the coming launch of Windows Phone 7. That’s a post for another day. I’m here at TechEd, and there’s a lot of talk about Windows Phone 7 devices and when they are going to be made available. One cool thing that the team is doing is handing out coupons to event attendees redeemable for general availability devices when they start shipping. We’re only handing out around 50 or so of these coupons, so it’s definitely not a broad distribution. It’s meant for people who are attending sessions or wearing Windows Phone hats around the show floor.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/8/10 9:07 PM
Office Web Apps Inch Out
Ahead of general release June 15 and following release to the corporate world last month, Microsoft Monday said its browser-based Office Web Apps on SkyDrive are now available to everyone in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland, SkyDrive being its free browser-based storage and document sharing service. The lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are accessible through OfficeLive.com and require an Office Live account.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/8/10 7:27 PM
Microsoft, Novell Develop Cross-Platform HPC Widgetry
The unholy alliance of Microsoft and Novell says it’s got some HPC supercomputing cross-platform widgetry developed in their joint Interoperability Lab in Massachusetts that’s good for customers deploying server workload management across SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Windows HPC Server. It should tickle their infrastructure efficiency and cost savings by simplifying systems management through dual-boot and hybrid cluster solutions. They can balance server workloads using both SLES and Windows HPC Server and switch between the two environments. The pair has got a list of highfalutin brand name customers already using the stuff.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/7/10 4:30 PM
Microsoft, Novell Develop Cross-Platform HPC Widgetry
The unholy alliance of Microsoft and Novell says it’s got some HPC supercomputing cross-platform widgetry developed in their joint Interoperability Lab in Massachusetts that’s good for customers deploying server workload management across SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Windows HPC Server. It should tickle their infrastructure efficiency and cost savings by simplifying systems management through dual-boot and hybrid cluster solutions. They can balance server workloads using both SLES and Windows HPC Server and switch between the two environments. The pair has got a list of highfalutin brand name customers already using the stuff.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/7/10 4:30 PM
Ballmer Gets His Two Cents in at D8
On Steve Jobs’ contention that this is now a post-PC world: “I think that people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come.” But PCs will look different. They’ll evolve. They’ll get smaller, get touch, get different interfaces, their insides will change. “The real question is what is a PC? Nothing done on a PC today will get less relevant tomorrow. I think there will exist a general-purpose device that does anything you want, because people don’t want multiple devices, or can’t afford them. I think the PC as we know it will continue to morph in form factor. So the real question is where do you push?” Addressing Job’s truck analogy he says, “Windows machines will not be trucks.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/5/10 4:00 PM
Ballmer Gets His Two Cents in at D8
On Steve Jobs’ contention that this is now a post-PC world: “I think that people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come.” But PCs will look different. They’ll evolve. They’ll get smaller, get touch, get different interfaces, their insides will change. “The real question is what is a PC? Nothing done on a PC today will get less relevant tomorrow. I think there will exist a general-purpose device that does anything you want, because people don’t want multiple devices, or can’t afford them. I think the PC as we know it will continue to morph in form factor. So the real question is where do you push?” Addressing Job’s truck analogy he says, “Windows machines will not be trucks.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/5/10 4:00 PM
Apprenda Offers Free SaaS Scaffold for .NET Apps
Apprenda, a cloud middleware start-up, has released SaaSGrid Express, a free, downloadable version of its flagship SaaSGrid application server for software-as-a-service (SaaS). SaaSGrid Express is supposed to be a complete foundation for delivering .NET applications as a service and you can’t beat the price. The package, essentially three servers and a billing system, is supposed to be enough for a few hundred end users. Apprenda’s reason for being is save others from having to invent and maintain their own SaaS architecture and delivery systems. For its trouble it would like to become the de facto standard.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/4/10 4:25 PM
Apprenda Offers Free SaaS Scaffold for .NET Apps
Apprenda, a cloud middleware start-up, has released SaaSGrid Express, a free, downloadable version of its flagship SaaSGrid application server for software-as-a-service (SaaS). SaaSGrid Express is supposed to be a complete foundation for delivering .NET applications as a service and you can’t beat the price. The package, essentially three servers and a billing system, is supposed to be enough for a few hundred end users. Apprenda’s reason for being is save others from having to invent and maintain their own SaaS architecture and delivery systems. For its trouble it would like to become the de facto standard.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/4/10 4:25 PM
Google Seeks to Create an Army of Google Apps Pushers
To encourage companies to adopt Google Apps, Google has tricked out a Go Google cloud calculator that’s supposed to help them understand the benefits of working in the cloud by taking a “test drive.” The graphics projects potential time and cost savings based on how many employees the company has. All you do is type in your company name and how many people you’re talking about (valuable data right there). For example, it claims a 50-man operation could save $31,000 a year and be 2.8 times more productive. It dangles the thought of 1,225GB of e-mail storage and the idea of saving 1,390 hours not wrestling with spam or wasting 50 hours on updates. It claims the user could avoid losing 30GBof data on lost or stolen laptops pocketing the $141,000 it would cost not to mention the $7,500 needed for data recovery.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/3/10 10:45 PM
Enterprise Architecture with PowerDesigner 15.1
This article will discuss what Enterprise Architecture is, why you need it and how you can achieve it. The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) can mean different things to different people. For the confines of this article, we will use a definition from Paul Weill, Director of MIT Center for Information Systems Research, which states, “Enterprise Architecture is the organization of logic for business processes and IT infrastructure, reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operation model.” In breaking EA down we understand that “enterprise” equals “business” and “architecture” is “how things are designed and constructed”; you can start to see that EA in basic terms is about “how businesses are designed and constructed.” Businesses are designed and constructed based on their information and/or metadata and how it is managed. The way to manage metadata is through models. Models provide abstraction to simplify complexity, increase understanding through visual representations, and provide governance to increase consistency and reusability throughout the organization.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 6/3/10 4:00 PM