Windows Azure Services Platform ist die Cloud Computing Technologie von Microsoft. Eine erster Community Technology Preview (CTP) wurde auf der Professional Developers Conference (PDC) im Oktober 2008 in Los Angeles, CA vorgestellt. Windows Azure Services Platform bietet eine Möglichkeit für Entwickler um Applikationen in der Cloud zu platzieren, Daten abzulegen und öffentlich zugänglich zu machen. Ausgeführt werden die Anwendungen auf vielen verschiedenen Rechnern in den diversen Rechenzentren von Microsoft. Innerhalb der Rechenzentren laufen die einzelnen Applikationen auf Virtual Machines.
Seit der PDC 2009 in Los Angeles vom 17. Bis 19. November 2009 ist die erste Version von Azure auf dem Markt.

Die Bestandteile der Microsoft Cloud (Architektur, Technologien, Sprachen) findet ihr unter:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure

Auf der PDC 2009 in Los Angeles wurde, wie bereits erwähnt die Release Version von Azure präsentiert. Videos der Vorträge, mit Implementierungsbeispielen, Erläuterungen zum Verkaufsmodell, findet ihr unter:
http://microsoftpdc.com/Search?term=azure

Die Einsatzgebiete von Windows Azure

Es gibt keine fixen Merkmale oder Szenarien für Applikationen, welche sofort ersichtlich machen ob es sinnvoll ist die Anwendung in der Cloud zur Verfügung zu stellen oder nicht. Grundsätzlich habe ich folgende Merkmale für Anwendungen extrahiert die für einen Einsatz von Windows Azure stehen:

• Hohe Verfügbarkeit
• Hohe Belastung durch Zugriffe (entweder durch Stoßzeiten oder in Form von laufenden Zugriffen über gewissen Zeitraum)
• Abspeicherung von großen Datenmengen (Storage von Microsoft kann benützt werden)
• Infrastruktur/Technologie von Rechenzentren in eigenem Unternehmen nicht vorhanden (Rechenzentren von Microsoft)

Business Modell

Einen Überblick über die Zahlungskonditionen für die verschiedenen Technologien der Microsoft Cloud findet ihr unter:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/

The Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 has been released and there is how an official release date: 22 March 2009. Why should you start to think about migration now? I want to give you ten good arguments for that.

Before I start, I want to tell you how I go to these 10 arguments. We got a lot of information about features and about lots of details during this summit. We also learned a lot about the market. Some of this stuff is non-disclosure information, I can’t tell you everything. But the ten arguments, I give you is the message between the lines, perfectly legal to be communicated and Microsoft would not say it as I do in public as this contains some statements that would not pass their PR.

1. VSStudio 2010 is based on managed code
Why does this matter? Okay, there are probably some nice WPF features in the editor, but this is probably a minor argument, but no killer argument. Well, think about one thing! How many big windows client based applications do you know that are based on .NET now? We talk about big applications for mass market like Adobe Acrobat or Photoshop. Of course, we include also the big Microsoft applications such as MS Office in our list.

Most of them are still based on COM Technologies. Why? I would risk my position in the partnership program if I address my assumptions directly. With Visual Studio, Microsoft moved one of their flagships to .NET. This means that a lot of effort has been included to develop this product with .NET. During this effort, Microsoft had to target also some weaknesses in .NET that will only come up in the most extreme scenarios. So .NET 4.0 includes a lot of general improvements and fixes to solve issues that had been in the earlier releases. So postponing a migration to .NET 4.0 with the argument that a new version is not as stable as the established one is not valid this time.

2. The Team Foundation Server is now part of the complete Visual Studio offer.
Not just in Visual Studio Ultimate, but also in Premium and Professional. Why does this matter?

Let’s be honest! Managing projects without ALM, but with MS Project or even worse with pure pen and paper is like moving from one place to another with a horse carriage. It may have some aspects of nostalgia and you can enjoy your view more as you move (unless it is raining of course). But if I can get a Ferrari to get from Hagenberg to Vienna, I’d sell the horse to the slaughterhouse.

So, don’t miss your chance, to get professional issue management, version planning, release management, project controlling with VS2010.

3. More Architectural support
When we were talking about architectural support, this was really painful until now without additional non-microsoft tools. There was no real professional tool from Microsoft available that satisfied the needs of a good architectural support. If you still believe that MS Visio is good, maybe you should start with the evaluation of the new architectural features right away. Because the new architectural features contain a lot of features that other products had already years ago. You never want to work again with visio to depict UML diagrams.

I will talk about this in an upcoming blog about these features.

4. Test Tools
Apart from architects, testers had a very poor support from earlier Visual Studio versions. The new test tools are part of an initiative of Microsoft to focus enforce quality and to compete with other products. This and other improvements in the code analysis are steps forward to reduce the number of issues in your code before they reach your users or customer.

5. Extensibility
Firefox became quite popular because of its add-ons. People did not want to miss their favorite widgets and became Firefox evangelists because some functionality of the addons was not available in other browsers. This was one main reasons besides the existence of Internet Explorer 6.

Microsoft Visual studio brings a lot of extensibility options. So be prepared to get your widgets.

6. Intellitrace
Intellitrace (or historical debugging) is a new technology from Microsoft to make the debugging effort more efficient. Once you have used it, you won’t want to miss it. No static stack trace analysis of your debug session is required any more. This is really an asset and will improve your bugfixing rate. I will add a blog on this later on.

7. Multicore development
Let’s be honest. Who has just only one core in his PC? As you are reading this blog, you are definitely none of these guys who just use their PC for mail or internet. And unless you are not the victim of your boss, you will have a multicore machine.

So if performance matters, it does matter how your cores will be used. There will be a lot of features in this with Visual Studio 2010.

8. Azure and Cloud Computing
This is really a big asset. Cloud Computing is the future. So move to Visual Studio 2010, you can be ready to move to the cloud whenever you want.

9. Ultimate offer
Everybody with an MSDN subscription receive equal or better edition in exchange. If you have for instance a Team Edition, you will get an Ultimate Edition. Don’t miss that chance.

10. Go Live License
There is a Go Live License on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. This means: Microsoft will support you, when you want to migrate to the final version in March, 22 2010. So if you start a new project now, you spare a lot of effort to migrate later.

Of course, a Beta is still a Beta. There are some drawbacks. I have to be honest, during a migration of a project to Beta 2, I experienced some crashes, but on the other hand, I had a performance gain and my productivity increased with Entity Framework 2.0, Intellitrace and other features. Another drawback is memory consumption. The beta 2 is still using more memory than Visual Studio 2008. The developers of microsoft want to change that. A goal is to use less memory than VS2008 (as the code base and the complexity of VS2010 is already smaller than 2008)

My recommended strategy is: Move to Visual Studio Beta 2 now, if you want to create new projects and if you do not have restrictions to use a specific Visual Studio version. You won’t regret it.

Hagenberg Software is looking forward to support you with your migration. No matter if you want to migrate now or in March. We have a lot of experience with migration in general and we will include VS2010 now to our new developments. In addition to this, we are using the Team Foundation Server since the first release.

In his key note, the guest star from Redmond spoke about hats. A hat represented a role in a team. He talked about designers, developers and architects. Although his colleague Sam Guckenheimer would probably add some more hats, such as the hat of business analyst or project manager, this model was a sufficient framework to differ between people, who tend to think how a solution should look like, people who are concerned what should be done under the roof to get the things done and those who are have the big picture and think more on an enterprise level.

So far so good, but talking about concerns of those roles, there was one baseline that was an essential for me in this key note. “A software architect, whose job (among other things) is to make sure that the solution must meet corporate requirements, must care to find a way to get the solution into the cloud.” Probably, even harder, some may interpret it as “as a good architects, someone knows that cloud computing is the technology of the future, the architect shall care to get new applications to this new technology as soon as possible.”

Well, Simon Guest, of course did not say it exactly in that way, but if I take the last statement, some people may find it appropriate, others will consider it provocative. (not considering the typical IT guy who tends to formalize his criticism in rather not so decent way). A lot of cloud computing technologies, no matter whether it is Microsoft Azure or one its competitors, are in its early stage. Why shall an architect devise cloud strategies for solutions needed today with technologies that will be able tomorrow? We do not know yet how long it takes to get this new technology to perform well and secure.

My answer is not “Yes, he can!”, my answer is “Yes, he should!” – An good architect is responsible for current company requirements, as he at the same time must be an evangelist for new technologies. We must not expect marketing managers, aales representatives, accountants or the company’s janitor to think about technical innovation. They all have a valuable job to do. We can probably ask them to understand the basic ideas of a philosophy such as cloud computing and to understand the difference between this and other approaches. But we will never get them to say: “Hey dude, this cloud computing stuff is awesome. After browsing through some whitepapers, doing some hardcore handsonlabs session and using the reflector to analyse the depths of the code, I agree this is the technology of the future, so let’s stuff some projects with it…”

It is the job of the architect to make sure that new technologies may get introduced into a company. Maybe someone should not start with the most crucial stuff in the company… But if nobody really cares about new technologies, you never get the chance to be ahead of your competitors. And in the end, this does matter…

So, all software architects or IT heads unite! Fight for your right to get new technologies!