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My good friend and colleague, David Chou (Microsoft Architect Evangelist) was interviewed recently by Jeremy Geelan at Sys-Con Media on the topic of Cloud Computing.
While acknowledging that lots of work is currently being done to differentiate and integrate private and public cloud solutions, David believes that Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the area of Cloud Computing that will make its impact most noticeably in 2010 – especially for startups, and small-medium sized businesses.
You can find the interview here.
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ARCHITECT CAFÉ | Webcasts
DAY 1 – September 28, 2009 at Noon PST
From the Trenches: Using Architectural Skills to Increase Solution Adoption Success Rates
Event ID: 1032424600
Jim Wilt
Products, Solution Frameworks, and Development Tools are too often touted by vendors and development teams as solutions to customer business problems. Why do development teams, customers, and users seek products to fill this gap? When solutions fail is it too easy to blame a given platform than for those really responsible to take responsibility? It more often has to do with one’s level of problem solving skills, planning, and ability to align technology with business strategy. This session introduces proven field architectural practices in leadership, communication, and some strategy tools that will assist stakeholders in becoming owners of their solutions–taking responsibility for their outcomes. This results in greater customer satisfaction, as the focus is all about enabling problem solvers, not expecting products to deliver successful solutions.
Link to Register: Day 1 Registration
DAY 2 – September 29, 2009 at Noon PST
Software as a Service in the Cloud
Event ID: 1032424657
Michael Stiefel
Architecting and building a Software as a Service application requires solving a series of problems that are independent of a particular software platform. First, SaaS architecture follows directly from the fundamental principles of the business model. Second, a series of difficult technical problems must be solved in addition to providing the business functionality. These include certificate security, low-IT-capable clients, business continuity when connectivity is lost, provisioning of services, scalability as the number of clients increase, database design for clients, how to use virtualization, and how to integrate and release service functionality over several different client applications. Third, you have to effectively use the platform technology such as WCF and ASP.NET. If you approach building a SaaS application on these three levels, you can then leverage your work into new platforms such as Windows Azure.
Link to Register: Day 2 Registration
SPEAKER BIOS
Jim Wilt
Chief Software Architect for Metrics Reporting, Inc.
Michael Stiefel
Principal of Reliable Software, Inc. is a consultant on software architecture and development, and the alignment of information technology with business goals. He is also a Microsoft Solutions Architect MVP.
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a Interdisciplinary PhD degree in Nuclear Engineering, Political Science, and History of Technology; M.S. in Nuclear Engineering; and B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He is an active member of the IEEE Consultants Network.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced the first community technology preview of SQL Azure Database, a cloud-based relational database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. With SQL Azure Database, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to the cloud, and take advantage of globally distributed data centers that provides enterprise-class availability, scalability, and security with the benefits of built-in data protection, self-healing and disaster recovery.
To register for the free trial, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dataservices/default.aspx.
To learn more about SQL Azure, visit http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sql.mspx.
Additionally, see the updated SQL Azure content in the August release of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit.
SQL Azure documentation on MSDN is also a great learning resource.
More information at the SQL Azure Team Blog here.
Adverse times are also best times for innovation! Choosing the right battles to fight, and reinventing ourselves with less resources are par for the course today. However, not all innovation needs to be revolutionary or transformative. In fact, in the current economic crisis, opportunities for innovation can be found in aspects of our core competencies, and implemented as incremental and iterative changes.
For this series of Architect Council LIVE WEBCASTS on August 24 and 25, 2009, we will discuss two of the many ways architects can innovate by recognizing the impact to architects, and learning how to effectively leverage cloud computing beyond just another place to host existing assets.
DAY 1 – August 24, 2009 at Noon PST
Role of the Architect in Turbulent Times – Event ID: 1032423112
Miha Kralj – Architect, Microsoft
With faltering economies and the resulting shift of priorities – architects must be ready for change in their role. Innovative new technologies such as Cloud Based Computing, Software as a Service and Virtualization open up new and exciting opportunities for architects to show value in their organizations. In this session we will discuss how the role of the architect has changed, introduce new architectural patterns, and show how to “do more with less”.
Link to Register: ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Innovation is the Name of the Game Day 1 Live Meeting
DAY 2 – August 25, 2009 at Noon PST
A Closer Look at an Internet Service Bus – Event ID: 1032423113
Clemens Vasters – Program Manager .NET Online Services, Microsoft
Look under the hood of the Microsoft .NET Services service bus – the protocols we use- and how to use the services from non-Microsoft platforms and languages. Learn which part of the messages and requests the Building Block service inspects, which parts are not inspected, and how you can verify this. Also, learn how to work through NAT and Firewall limitations. Lastly, hear about architecture on the Data Center side that enables “Internet scale”.
Link to Register: ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Innovation is the Name of the Game Day 2 Live Meeting
SPEAKER BIOS
Miha Kralj
As a senior architect on the Microsoft Platform Architecture Team, Miha Kralj is responsible for leading architectural communities, helping the architectural profession to mature and grow, and coordinating activities within professional architectural organizations and bodies. Miha is a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). He was also a founding member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) chapters in Slovenia and Yugoslavia.
Clemens Vasters
Clemens Vasters is a Principal Technical Lead in the .NET Services team, working in an architect role on the ‘Service Bus’ feature area and acting – more behind the scenes – as the architect for the Billing feature area and as the architect/lead developer for the internal Provisioning infrastructure of .NET Services. Before joining Microsoft some 3 years ago, Clemens spoke at many conferences, taught technology, and helped companies with software architecture in over 35 countries.
Today, at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, we announced the business and partner model for the Windows Azure platform including service level agreements and support programs.
The Windows Azure platform, which includes a cloud services operating system – Windows Azure, a Web-based relational database in Microsoft SQL Azure (formerly SQL Services), as well as connectivity and interoperability services with .NET Services. Today, we announced a consumption-based pricing model, allowing partners and customers to pay only for the services that they consume. Here is a summary of that pricing:
Windows Azure:
- Compute @ $0.12 / hour
- Storage @ $0.15 / GB stored
- Storage Transactions @ $0.01 / 10K
SQL Azure:
- Web Edition – Up to 1GB relational database @ $9.99
- Business Edition – Up to 10GB relational database @ $99.99
.NET Services:
- Messages @ $0.15/100K message operations, including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens
Bandwidth across all three services will be charged at $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB.
Additionally, the Windows Azure blog outlined an enterprise-class guarantee backed by a service-level agreement that covers service uptime, connectivity, and data availability:
“For compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains your Internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Additionally, we will monitor all of your individual role instances and detect within two minutes when a role instance’s process is not running and initiate corrective action. For storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. We also guarantee that your storage accounts will have connectivity to our Internet gateway.”
Today, we also announced that Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and .NET Services will be commercially available at the Professional Developers Conference 2009, which goes on between November 17 and 19, 2009.
I have written about cloud computing and specifically Azure Services Platform several times in the past. As we approach the market release of Azure Services Platform (Microsoft’s Windows cloud platform as a service) I thought it might be a good time to step back and write about the business value of cloud computing.
Why Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the new computing platform shift. The cloud is really just a metaphor for the Internet and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it runs on. It is a style of computing in which users (and developers) access technology-enabled services from the Internet without the knowledge of, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports these services. Its built on technology, but it really comes down to a new operational model (more about that below).
Enterprises are interested in Cloud computing because it comes with several potential benefits. The Pay-As-You-Use consumption model can now be applied to IT – to both the hardware (IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service) and, perhaps even more interestingly, to the business applications themselves(SaaS – Software as a Service & PaaS – Platform as a Service). Cloud computing transfers the traditional capital expenditure (CapEx) model common in data centers today to an operational expenditure (OpEx) model. Cloud Services like Azure Services Platform and Microsoft Online Services allow CIOs and CFOs to control costs more effectively through these cloud computing service offerings.
Additionally, for business software ISVs (Independent Software Vendor), Cloud computing is a potential new distribution channel for their applications. Building business software for the cloud allows them to hook into new business models, like subscription, transaction or even ad-based revenue models. It is clear that the concept of cloud computing is gaining traction and provides unique benefits. The flexibility of an access-anywhere, highly scalable, pay-as-you-go computing model has benefits for both vendors and clients.
With the Azure Services Platform, businesses are enabled to develop and deploy critical and non-critical applications with a higher performance/price ratio by running them on Microsoft’s platform data centers on a pay–as-you-go basis. Whether you are building new applications, augmenting / cloud enabling existing systems, or connecting with trading partners, you can take advantage of the Azure Services Platform to do it quickly, inexpensively, and across the Web and a range of connected devices. For ISVs, they can take advantage of the Azure Services Platform to deliver software as a service without having to maintain data centers or build new capabilities on existing investments in on-premises applications, while leveraging the same Microsoft development tools and technologies they are familiar with.
CFOs will care about Cloud Computing and Azure Services Platform.
Enterprises have grown increasingly comfortable with Pay-As-You-Use methods of consuming business and computer services. Decisions to go this route are often made (or greatly influenced) by the CFO, not the CIO, and are largely based on cost control and the ability to translate CapEx into OpEx that look better on a balance sheet.
The ability to pay for services based on usage, and for the provision of those services to be very scalable (‘elastic’) so as to increase and decrease with that usage, ensures minimal waste and redundancy. Also, the ability to scale in support of new product and service offerings or geographic expansion provides “cash-flow-friendly” ways to increase resource availability. This ability to commission additional capacity without significant capital outlay is particularly attractive to CFOs and especially in difficult economic conditions where upfront funding is harder to obtain.
The ability to apply Cloud economics to core enterprise applications provides new ways for CFOs and CIOs to optimize and boost the cost efficiency of IT service delivery.
Cloud Computing is an Operational Model
What makes cloud computing cloud computing is the fact that the physical resources used are operated to deliver abstracted IT resources “on-demand,” at scale, and usually in a multi-tenant environment. It is how you use the technologies involved that matters most. For the most part, cloud computing uses the same operating systems, management software, middleware, databases, server platforms, network cabling, storage arrays, and so on, that we have become familiar with in enterprise IT. Sure, Azure Services Platform, Google App Engine, Amazon EC2, and others, have different technologies and IP implemented, but in the end, its not significantly different than what enterprise IT is familiar with. Its the scale and elasticity, and the pay–as-you-go model that makes the difference. The combination of on-demand, at scale, in a multi-tenant infrastructure is the reason why cloud computing is disruptive today, rather than just another technology fad!
Azure Services Platform
Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Azure offers a range of flexibility, control, and is an affordable solution for running Web-scale applications. The services reduce tedious and expensive infrastructure management and planning and are built with security and reliability in mind, along with the option of a pay-as-you-go model.
You can learn more here.
If you missed the “Pragmatic Patterns for Architects” webcasts last week, you can go to the Strategy and Architecture Council (Microsoft Developer & Platform Evangelism U.S. West Region) site and view the slides or view the recordings.
You will find all 3 days there:
Day 1 – Patterns for Moving to the Cloud
Day 2 – Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism
Day 3 – Patterns for Parallel Computing
“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.
To address this, and trying to be a bit more green, our team is hosting a series of live webcasts at noon PST on June 9th – 11th, 2009, which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. Just another excuse to have lunch at your desk (if your time zone is nearby)! 
Patterns for Moving to the Cloud – June 9
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner
Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.
Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism – June 10
David Hill
Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications. These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications. Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application. It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight. This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.
Patterns for Parallel Computing – June 11
David Chou
With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors, etc., we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum, and towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, etc. But the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing, approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance and optimize use of existing infrastructure, and how concurrency can be applied towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.
For more details and registration, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009q2.aspx
new CloudApp(), a US based developer challenge, was launched today. Its focus is to promote applications running on the Azure Services Platform. This contest will have three categories of winners for applications running on the Azure Services Platform:
- best .NET application,
- top PHP application, and,
- community winner
The winning submissions will:
- Be featured on www.azure.com as well as at major Microsoft events
- Be featured in a video interview on Channel 9 with the application author
- Winners will be announced at Structure 09
- Receive cash ($):
- .NET Applications Category winner: $5,000 Visa gift card
- PHP Applications Category winner: $5,000 Visa gift card
- Community winner: $2,500 Visa gift card
Contest dates?
How do I get started?
- Join BizSpark if you’re a startup or an entrepreneur, to get access to tools for development and test
- Register to join the contest
- Sign up for the Azure Services
- Download the SDKs and Tools
For more information see newCloudApp().com.
Recently, at Mix09 actually, there were a few important updates to the Windows Azure CTP (Community Technology Preview). Here are a few key updates:
- Fast CGI. Allows developers to deploy and run web applications written with 3rd party programming languages such as PHP.
- .Net Full Trust. Provides developers with a level of flexibility in Windows Azure that removes limitations on .NET Libraries which require full trust (including .NET Services).
- Geo-Location. Provides developers with the ability to specify a location for their applications and data to build responsive services with lower network latency as well as the capability to meet location-based regulatory and legal requirements.
Keep up with the Windows Azure blog.
