We’ll be watching

There’s been tons of blog posts, articles, video interviews and general opinion on Azure this week. And understandably so, since this will likely be looked back on as one of the biggest turning points for Microsoft in their entire history.

An interesting point to note in the posts has been how so many have written about their understanding of what Azure is, without taking the time to actually read up on it. So, we’ve seen videos with people being interviewed about their reactions and thoughts on what it will include, how it might be applied, and how to use it. This is very strange. Why? Because everything you need to know is clearly articulated here on the Azure site. There’s even a whitepaper covering all the minute details.

We’re going to dive into it a little in this post, but as a general community service here’s the links you need to read:

• What is Azure?
• Why use Azure?
• Azure and Software plus Services
• Pricing and Licensing

You’ll notice that all four of these links come from Microsoft’s own Azure site. Amazing! Microsoft actually explaining what they are are doing. Who’d have thought?

Well, us actually. But apparently not most of the journalists and prominent commentators. But enough of our complaining.

Digging into Azure

If you are too lazy or time poor to read through the site (even the FAQ) then here’s the essentials you need to know.

Here’s the pretty diagram everyone has been using (straight from the Azure site)

Obviously the first thing you notice is that there is an operating system component – called Windows Azure – and a bunch of services. The combination of the services and the operating system are collectively referred to as the Azure Services Platform or more simply just: Azure.

Azure is all hosted in Microsoft’s data centers and is their cloud offering. It’s basically a cloud services platform. It’s reasonably open in the protocols it supports, and whilst initially targeting .NET and Microsoft developers, is designed to support other platforms in the future (eg Ruby and PHP).

Windows Azure – the operating system part – is what was referred to last month as Microsoft’s Cloud OS (and even Windows Strata for a time). It is all the glue that manages resources in the cloud.

The rest are the services. Live Services is a growing area, and one that will become prevalent on all devices. The .NET services and SQL services are no real surprise to watchers of the space. Even SharePoint services is an understandable offering since Microsoft is pushing SharePoint big time these days.

The one that caught us by surprise was the inclusion of Microsoft CRM in Azure collection.

Yes, hosted CRM is here and logical, but adding a complete service component for CRM in the Azure space is interesting. It shows that Microsoft is placing a big bet on CRM – a component that has had numerous adoption problems in the corporate space. Perhaps this will be its break out opportunity. We know many companies have changed their strategy on CRM in the last week, from having it as a minor piece of their consulting work, to now being an important strategic practice.

Our opinion: Microsoft has changed the game completely. This is a revolution. Amazon and others have been providing excellent token offerings (eg with EC2) leading up to this point in time. But now Microsoft has come in and demonstrated they have the vision, capability and passion to completely dominate the cloud. They’ve been at it for a while, and now its time to get on board. We are in awe.

Apparently the Blue Monster idea has been around for 2 years.

We have to admit this is a piece of marketing that we’ve never really understood. In fact we don’t even like it. But it seems to be popular. And getting more so.

Initially we thought it was a bizarre case of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but now we are happy to admit that. we just don’t get it. Steve Clayton does, it seems. And Happy Birthday Steve, we love your blog. Most of the time.

Well it looks like the rumour page was correct. SQL Server 2005 SP3 is almost upon us. The CTP of SQL Server 2005 SP3 has been announced, and you can download it here. Doesn’t look like there’s too much to write about just yet though.

Thanks to Angus Logan for letting us know about this exciting news, as announced by James Senior. There is now a Mac client for Live Mesh.

First Look: Live Mesh Client for Mac

Important to note that the Mac client needs to sync via the cloud, whereas on Windows the latest version will allow peer-to-peer sync (ie no need to store in the cloud). This is basically due to the code base on the Mac side being a little behind the Windows version. But the Mesh development has been very quick this year, so we don’t anticipate much delay in the Mac version. Oh, it ‘works’ on the iPhone.

OK, so PDC is over and we are back in the swing of things.

We won’t be dwelling on all the technical issues we had this past week, and the resulting silence on our blog. Frustrating? Very.

There’s too much news to cover. We are back home and back in action and will be going through all our notes and posting updates today and tomorrow. You’ve probably seen most of the news anyway – it was pleasing to see a mini-blogging revival over the last few days.

There’s a new project on DevLabs called Small Basic. Here’s the intro:

Small Basic is a project that’s aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.

Source: DevLabs

Thank goodness someone is bringing ‘fun’ back – obviously we’ve all been hating programming for the last few decades <g>.

With only 15 keywords, and minimal concepts, even a newbie like me could get productive. There’s a 62 page Getting Started guide that covers all manner of things like For Loops, While Loops, graphics and mouse event handling. There’s even a built in function for retrieving Flickr photos.

The actual installer is a very reasonable 4MB download.

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The Windows Server blog confirms what we’ve been discussing for the last week or so. Yes, SP2 for Windows Server 2008 is being beta tested by a number of Technology Adoption Program customers, starting next week.

The main items: Hyper-V RTM is included, and a power profile enhancement.

The actual release date is likely to be months away (but no surprises there).

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Scott Barnes, a Microsoft Product Manager on the Rich Platform team, has shown us the new .NET logo. Here it is:

In his post he explains why they chose a new logo, using all kinds fluff about consistency, robustness and user experience. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. He also goes on to explain it needed to conform to the design principles of Microsoft (makes sense!).

Interestingly he notes they needed a logo that aligned with Silverlight, Surface and Strata. Could this be confirmation that Strata is a specific brand? We suspect so.

The result is what they are referring to as the ‘wave’.

No doubt we’ll see this featuring at PDC in just a day or so now. Can’t wait.

For the record: We love it.

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Ooops, that should have read Open Standards Messaging Software, but we fell asleep before we got to the end! Why? Because it sounds soooo boring.

In a press release today, Microsoft has announced its decision to join the Advanced Message Queue Protocol (AMQP) Working Group. Oh, sorry we drifted off again. Yes, this must extremely boring.

But actually it’s very important.

The group is trying to develop an open industry standard for ubiquitous messaging. Currently there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different messaging standards around. Most integration projects require some kind of interface between systems that handle messaging. Millions of dollars are spent every year just re-building the interfaces between this system to that. It’s all wasted money. Money that should be spent on innovation and real value to the customer, but is instead spent on ‘plumbing’.

The key is interoperability. That’s the goal. Imagine having a set of providers in your toolset that allowed simple connection between each and every system you need to message between. [As an aside, on the orchestration side of the coin this is something that BizTalk has been attempting to provide for years now.]

Microsoft joins the likes of Cisco, Novell, Red Hat, and a bunch of financial institutions in this goal.

Sure, it sounds boring, but this is something to be applauded.