Author: colinizer

Microsoft’s Opening Package Offers for the Windows Azure Platform

colinizer Azure, Cloud Applications, Microsoft

Today is the official launch date for Windows Azure Platform and Microsoft is offering 4 packages:

  • $0 – Introductory Special – A (not very useful) level of free consumption until June 30 2010
  • $59.95 – Development Accelerator Core
  • $109.95 – Development Accelerator Extended
  • $Varies – Consumption – pay for what you use

Check out the official comparison table.

For a minute, I thought Microsoft was really serious about promoting this, but the Introductory Special is somewhat pointless – it’s more of a discount or minor test package.  It includes 25 computer hours which is just over one day of operation per month on one node – think of it as one free day on one node.  It does come with 1GB of SQL Azure, but that’s also only for 3 months :(.  There’s also 100,000 AppFabric messages and a measly 1/2 GB of data transfer in/out.  So, you can do some testing with this, although if you are an MSDN subscriber you have addition options.

Now the next two packages are better with both packages offering 750 hours of Windows Azure compute time which equates to 1 node for a month, e.g. a website.  The Extended plan includes a 10GB SQL Azure database, normally priced as $99.95 per month on its own.

The Consumption plan is apparently what you pay if you go over the included quantities.  With some other providers, the overage fees go down as one moves to higher pre-paid packages.

Microsoft can beat other providers when it comes to the SQL Azure offering.  Other providers, who have to license SQL Server to customers through Microsoft’s Service Provider License Agreement, may pay Microsoft over $200 a month for a SQL Standard processor license.  Microsoft is offering a 1GB SQL Server for $9.99 per month and $10GB for $99.99.

I need to do further analysis on provider price comparisons in the future.  I make solid use of GoGrid who consider themselves an infrastructure provider and Microsoft to be a platform provider, though they both offer cloud computing.  With GoGrid, I do all the server admin (while they provide cloud nodes, network, admin UI/API and other services) while Microsoft is aiming to cover lots of the redundancy infrastructure automatically.

In addition to these offers and the MSDN subscriber offer, there’s also a special rate version of the 3 paid plans for Microsoft Partner Network members – currently stated as being 5% off the regular rates (but not applying to data transfer or Windows Azure storage).  It’s not clear yet how all these offers/packages operate together if at all.  Do the MSDN subscriptions provided with Partner accounts each qualify?  According to the notes on the offer pages for migration a CTP account to, “Your CTP account(s) are automatically associated with the first offer you purchase with that Windows Live ID.”

I have not yet received any information on how to upgrade to a commercial account and the Billing link on the portal goes to the Microsoft Online Services portal which doesn’t show anything about Azure.  I can hear the Microsoft elves sweating right now along with the patter of tiny feet to refill the free soft drinks 🙂

P.S.  Hopefully the grammer elves will ‘shoot’ the ignorant Microsoft website elves using the phrase “a …savings” 😛

Windows Azure Platform Goes Live Today

colinizer Azure, Cloud Applications, Microsoft

Today is the day for Azure to go live.

What this means (according to communicating to Community Technology Preview participants) is that Microsoft should start issuing instructions this week on how to move from CTP to a commercial account.

It’s also not clear yet, how the relationship will work yet (and there are some broken links from the Azure portal) between billing, portal account and login ID, but I imagine there needs to be Live IDs for the billing accounts and then permitted administrator Live IDs for the portal.

The Windows Azure Platform continues to be free until Feb 1 2010, during the first billing on-ramp phase.

If you are interested in giving Windows Azure a spin while it’s still free in January then you may want to try this Azure deployment guide with included sample application, successfully used by hundreds of people.

More posts soon on some of the insights of building a Silverlight application and hosting it on Windows Azure…

2010 New-Year Prediction: Silverlight + Azure = The New Windows

colinizer Azure, Microsoft, Silverlight, Windows 7, Windows Mobile

It has probably not escaped many of you that Windows’ market share (and that of related editions) is being eroded and is potentially under threat to varying extents in some markets as we role into 2010. 

  • iPhone is whipping ‘Windows phones’ such that Windows Mobile 7 will likely be a do or die mission in in 2010 (or more realistically 2011)
  • Android is nibbling at Windows phones too
  • Zune is nowhere near iPhone
  • Netbooks with non-Windows OS installs are creeping into the remaining markets
  • Mac is constantly barking its commercials
  • LAMP is still thriving
  • Google is trying to satisfy basic user requirements will a wafer-thin OS or by being OS-independent

I think however, that Microsoft has the opportunity to really drive adoption of Windows, but not in the way it has before.  The real opportunity for Windows’ continued prosperity lies in the cloud.  Even though this may happen, I do not however think it will be seen as a success – at least not initially (and doomsayers for Windows will jump on this).  The resulting public attitude will probably really grate at Microsoft for some time.

The money may continue to stream in because Microsoft has (or is now planning) a story whereby more people can begin to use, or will continue to use Windows but it would be more so Windows Azure (not the client OS) and they will not be paying for it directly.  The indirect payment may lead to less consumer-based visibility, which may create a negative trend in public opinion (which is what matters in today’s Internet-temperature-measured society).  Few people care how their cool app works.  Azure may be a great back-end for a web-based iPhone app, but it would probably be seen as a point for iPhone/Apple, not Windows/Microsoft.

Microsoft has a ‘Good, Better, Best’ mantra for client richness, but it has previously focused its attention on the ‘Best’, aka Windows ‘proper’.

An application with a Windows 7 client and a Windows Server + Windows SQL Server back (and other servers), and perhaps Office apps as optional clients, is the ideal for Microsoft revenues, but Microsoft is starting to see that serving the ‘Better’ experience is necessary and potentially even more profitable if they can’t get you to effectively subscribe to a ‘Windows’ license by helping to make sure your application/service provider uses Azure.  These providers are paying the real fees to Microsoft while collecting their own revenue stream from users through fees and/or ad-supported revenues.

Silverlight equates to a compact yet rich UI experience that will broaden in future versions and is, or will be, available on many platforms, serving as a great gateway to the Windows Azure Platform.  WPF applications on Windows available via ClickOnce installations (or as XAPs via IE/Firefox) also represent revenue suckers on the tentacles to Azure.    Ray Ozzie flat-out said at PDC09 that Internet Explorer 9 and Silverlight (preferably on Windows 7 of course) are the future for all 3 screens.  That of course leaves IE9 on Windows (or the lesser IE versions on other Windows platforms) or other browsers as the ‘Good’ option which again can also be services on the back-end by Windows Server or Windows Azure.

Microsoft has of course already been collecting service-provider style licensing fees via its SPLA program.  My company has been a licensee for some time in fact.  A cohesive and (almost, but not quite yet) affordable cloud offering for small ISVs opens up the flood gates to licensing Windows (in it’s Azure form, along with SQL Azure) to many more end users who can be consuming ‘Windows’ on any platform, even a Google Chrome browser.

To make this work, Microsoft really needs to up its game for developers in terms of tools and offerings…

It doesn’t help that Silverlight tool support in Visual Studio has been non-existent; forget Expression Blend that developers haven’t had the time or perhaps money to conquer.  WPF applications have also been few and far between; likely for similar tool-support reasons.

Visual Studio 2010 may be just in time, and Microsoft is clearly taking no chances, having recently announced a delay to the RTM in order to improve performance.  This is the first version of the IDE using WPF and Microsoft can’t have poor IDE performance be the reason that developers shun VS2010 en mass.  Adoption of 2010 is crucial because Microsoft has invested energy into integrating tools for their new technologies/platforms and making them easier to target (e.g. SharePoint 2010 and Azure).  The announced delay seems like the smartest move to me.

The included Azure consumption units being added to MSDN Subscription are a tiny and insufficient token.  The initial offering for the highest level subscribers covers one Windows Azure server for 8 months and then goes down.  This simply isn’t high enough to encourage people to get something off the ground.

Microsoft needs to do well with Windows Mobile 7.  This is rumoured to have a Silverlight-based interface which would be more of a plus if the tools had matured already.  If Microsoft could get all the Internet-connected apps for WM7 to be hosted on Azure, maybe they could give away the WM7 license?  You currently need a non-free Visual Studio edition for client-based Windows Mobile development.  Perhaps adding a free Visual Mobile 2010 Express Edition would help push things along?

So the more precise prediction is that Silverlight+Azure = Windows in terms of revenue to many more end-users (who may not be on Windows or have no prior computer), as well as potentially preventing loss of net revenues if people move off the Windows Client.  It may be hard to measure initially like Obama ‘creating or saving’ x million jobs.  It may not happen in 2010, but the seeds must be sewn in 2010.  The real key advocates for this maneuver are the ISVs and service providers and its (and the predictions) success or failure will ride on motivated these parties are to go down this route as well as how easily they can execute it.  Microsoft has to do more to provide solid timely tools, communicate the benefits, educate developers and provide substantial/usable offers for Azure adoption.  Microsoft has not announced a PDC 2010 which means it falls to Mix (not clearly a transition-to-cloud conference) and TechEd conferences (often seen as more IT Pro than developer), regional evangelism, local evangelism and blogs 😉 to help them along…

Azure Platform Billing On-Ramp

colinizer Azure, Cloud Applications, Microsoft, SQL Azure, Windows Azure, Windows Azure Storage

Here’s the timeline for the ramp-up of Azure Platform Services billing:

  • Jan 4 2010 – CTP accounts can be upgraded to commercial accounts in the countries listed below.
  • Feb 1 2010 – Billing starts for upgraded accounts and non-upgraded accounts are disabled with Windows Azure Storage going read-only and no new database creation in SQL Azure. 
  • Mar 1 2010 – non-upgraded SQL Azure databases will be deleted
  • Apr 1 2010 – non-upgraded Windows Azure Storage will be deleted

Available Azure Platform Services billing locations from Jan 2010

  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Ireland
  • India
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Portugal
  • Singapore
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Microsoft Delays Visual Studio 2010 Release

colinizer .NET 4.0, Microsoft, Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft’s Corporate VP of the Developer Division, Scott Guthrie today announced on his blog that the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 will be moved back ‘a few weeks’.

On the other hand, there will now be a public Release Candidate in February with a ‘broad go-live license’.

This previously unintended RC and final release delay are apparently to test out resolutions performance issues encountered by beta users and get final feedback.

I’m also wondering if a Silverlight 4 final release may also sync up with the VS final release.

The Mix 2010 conference is in the first half of March 2010, so I’d expect final schedule announcements of both at that point.

Silverlight 4 Sample Source Code from PDC 2009 Now Available

colinizer Microsoft, PDC09, Silverlight, Silverlight 4

Head over to the blog of Microsoft’s Corp VP Scott Guthrie for the details on getting the source code for the demos he used in his PDC 2009 Day 2 Keynote.

These demos include local webcam still and recording capture with effects, a barcode reading demo, rich text support and the ever popular jigsaw puzzle brush demo but this time with a live embedded web page that can even contain a live flash movie!

A notable omission is the code for the Facebook integrated app.  That demo showed an application that ‘picked up’ picture files from a memory card storing pictures of the PDC audience just takes with a camera.  I couldn’t find the help resources for this kind of ‘device access’ feature that was announced.  I’m thinking that perhaps this feature was not included in the publically downloadable beta.  Scott did say that the Facebook app sample would ship later, but I guess not just yet.

Deploy This Silverlight Application on Windows Azure in 10 minutes – no Tools Required!

colinizer Azure, Silverlight

This post guides you through the process of deploying and configuring the provided Silverlight application on Windows Azure through the Windows Azure Platform web portal using just your compatible web browser.  You do not need any development tools…

The included Guest Wall application is a Silverlight app hosted in a ASP.NET website that runs on Windows Azure Hosted Services and uses the Windows Azure Cloud Storage to store messages that anyone can post.  You can configure it to some extent as explained below.

image

Continue reading →

Microsoft Tech Days Canada

colinizer Azure, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Windows 7

Today was the 2nd and final day of Microsoft’ Tech Days conference in Ottawa (the 6th city on the 7-city tour).  I had the opportunity to speak about two great topics:

What’s new in Silverlight 3

This talk focused on new features in Silverlight 3.  It was clear that many people have yet to take a look at any version of Silverlight.  This made for a fun challenge – trying to explain new features, while also explaining Silverlight basics, and say how it compares to JQuery with HTML 5.  Ottawa’s government-worker-centric population may explain the results of my straw-poll survey with the audience.  The snow-storm in the morning made a little dent in attendance, and given the audience make-up, a general introduction session for Silverlight would likely have received a bigger audience (and would probably still do so a year from now when talking about what’s new in Silverlight 4).

Optimizing your apps for the Windows 7 user experience. 

This session seemed to get a very positive response, most likely due to the fact that the Windows API Code Pack is available which provides managed wrappers to the Windows 7 native APIs such that making use of new Windows 7 features (like the Taskbar) is practically trivial.

 

It was a great experience working with the Microsoft Canada guys and my friends in the community.  I look forward to doing so again next year on topics such as Silverlight 4, Azure, Office 2010, VS2010/.NET 4.0, and hopefully in multiple cities.

Silverlight 4 Beta Available

colinizer Microsoft, RIA, Silverlight, Silverlight 4

Oh yes – announced at PDC yesterday.

I think perhaps March 22nd with VS 2010 fir the RC or final at a squeeze.  According to Scott Guthrie, the RC may have more hardware accelerateion.

Silverlight 4 features:

  • Webcam & Microphone on the machine (including raw access); multi-cast streaming; offline DRM support
  • Printing; rich text; clipboard access; right click; mouse wheel; implicit styles; drag/drop; bidi & rtl; html hosting (including content as brush); commanding/mvvm; additional controls (including rich text)
  • Compile once, use in both SL and .NET 4; UDP multicast (p2p); rest protocol enhancements; improved WCF support (inc. TCP channel support); RIA Services; works better with OData (Astoria)
  • Offline features include: Windowing APIs; Notification popups; HTML hosting; Drop Target
  • New offline ‘elevated’ features include: Custom Windows Chrome, Local File System, Cross-Site Network; Keyboard in Full Screen Mode; Hardware Device Access; COM Automation of local objects (and location APIs).
  • Twice as fast; 30% faster startup; new profiling support
  • Support for Google Chrome.
  • Under 5MB to install.
  • Will ship the Silverlight 4 Facebook-integration demo as reference sample
  • 70% of voted-for Silverlight 4 features (including 9 of top 10) included

Visual Studio 2010 Silverlight support: WYSIWYG Design Surface (not news), XAML IntelliSense Improvements; Improvements for Data Binding, Layout & Styles; WCF RIA Services Integration

Check out the PDC sessions (video showing up in the near future) on Silverlight 4:

Check out further PDC coverage

PDC09 Announcements – Day 2 Keynote

colinizer Cloud Applications, Desktop Application, IE 9, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Office 2010, PDC09, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Web Application, Windows 7

Blogged live – now completed.

Check out further PDC coverage

Background

  • Everything is about 3 screens (desktop, phone and TV) and the cloud.
  • Day 1 focus – Backend, i.e. Azure.
  • Day 2 focus – Office, Silverlight & Windows focus on Day 2.
  • Microsoft emphasis will be on IE + Silverlight for all 3 screens – desktop, phone and TV.

Announcements

  • Not going to announce Windows 8 stuff in the interests of being ‘responsible’ and ensuring that what is disclosed is actionable – not ready for that yet.
  • FREE Windows 7 ‘PDC laptop’ (Acer machine with Microsoft’s preferred software image, resistive multi-touch, accelerometer) available to all paying PDC attendees (!!!).  Conditions apply ;).  Is this Oprah?
  • ‘3 weeks’ into IE 9 development – Standards progress (HTML 5); performance improvements in JavaScript; Hardware-accelerated DirectWrite/Direct2D Graphics & Text
  • IE9 already on 32/100 on Acid3 test, up from 20/100 on IE8
  • Channel9 videos on IE9 being posted today
  • Silverlight will be used this Winter for Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and Winter Olympics
  • Silverlight will be used by Bloomberg, National Instruments, Siemens (medical diagnostic imaging)
  • Silverlight now on 45% of the world’s internet-connected devices (up from 33% in the summer)
  • Silverlight 4 – Media, Business Applications, Beyond the Browser
  • Silverlight 4: Webcam & Microphone on the machine (including raw access); multi-cast streaming; offline DRM support
  • Silverlight 3 media framework on codeplex this week
  • Next version for IIS Media Services will support IPhone clients as streaming client – see iis.net/iphone.
  • Silverlight 4 introduces support for: printing; rich text; clipboard access; right click; mouse wheel; implicit styles; drag/drop; bidi & rtl; html hosting (including content as brush); commanding/mvvm; additional controls (including rich text)
  • Silverlight 4 includes: compile once, use in both SL and .NET 4; UDP multicast (p2p); rest protocol enhancements; improved WCF support (inc. TCP channel support); RIA Services; works better with OData (Astoria)
  • Visual Studio 2010 Silverlight support: WYSIWYG Design Surface (not news), XAML IntelliSense Improvements; Improvements for Data Binding, Layout & Styles; WCF RIA Services Integration
  • Silverlight 4 offline includes: Windowing APIs; Notification popups; HTML hosting; Drop Target
  • Silverlight 4 offline ‘elevated’ includes: Custom Windows Chrome, Local File System, Cross-Site Network; Keyboard in Full Screen Mode; Hardware Device Access; COM Automation of local objects (and location APIs).
  • Silverlight 4: Twice as fast; 30% faster startup; new profiling support
  • Silverlight 4 supported on Google Chrome.
  • Silverlight 4 still under 5MB to install.
  • Will ship the Silverlight 4 Facebook-integration demo as reference sample
  • 70% of voted-for Silverlight 4 features (including 9 of top 10) included
  • Silverlight 4 Beta – announced as NOW AVAILABLE!!!!!!! at http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/ and see http://channel9.msdn.com/learn include (what’s new)
  • Silverlight 4 RC – No Date
  • Silverlight 4 Final Release – No Date (I think perhaps March 22nd with VS 2010)
  • Office 2010 Beta and SharePoint 2010 Beta general availably announced – http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx – no new announcements yet though
  • Silverlight can use client-side object model to talk to SharePoint 2010
  • Office 2010 Mobile available on Windows Market Place for Mobile on 6.5 devices
  • Outlook Social Connector (part of Office 2010 Beta): Get social networking in Outlook with people info, history, activities; SharePoint 2010 Provider, Windows Live Provider in 2010; Linkedin Provider in 2010; has general SDK for making providers

Demos/Information

  • Silly video from Windows Management Team about collecting feedback/error report information – new non-lethal torture methods? 😉 – complete with entertainment-only disclaimer
  • Lots of telemetry data from the Windows development cycle – they even monitored stuff like number of presses on Start button and Aero Snap/Shake uses.
  • They analyzed the audio of the audience at the last PDC – best reaction was to the new Windows 7 slider control for UAC levels.
  • Various usability study videos cut out from live feed to protect IP.
  • Various demos of W7 new hardware-supporting features – touch, sensors, hardware-accelerated encoding, directx 11, etc.
  • Using yesterday’s IE9 build: Acid3 test results’; GDI vs. Direct2D smooth text rendering and animation; Bing maps jittery in software vs. smooth in hardware (60fps)
  • Recap video of SketchFlow in Expression Blend 3.
  • Silverlight 4 demos: video/image capture from local webcam; live preview of effects on webcam capture (incl. chromakey, bulge effect based on sound level, alien effect) using pixelshader effects; opensource barcode scanning with demo of scan of barcode goes to amazon page.
  • Silverlight 3 Demo (not shown on live stream) of PVR functions including pause and slow motion on live and pre-recorded events.
  • Silverlight 4 Demo of rich text control (including direct copy from grid selection in Excel)
  • Silverlight 4 Demo of Bing, Flash and even Silverlight hosted inside Silverlight including using it as a live brush (!!!).
  • Demo of VS2010 features for Silverlight 4: RIA data services; OData in data sources (and drag/drop to design surface); datagrid; implicit styles; new resource picker; new databinding picker; client-side validation from entity attributes
  • SnapFlow Silverlight app that allows building of online business applications hosted on Azure: DirectBuy example; HR example
  • Silverlight 4 Demo of elevated app integrated with Facebook including: local automation of Office; webcam photo upload; supper thumbnail listing performance; drag and drop of pictures; direct device photo import (!!!)
  • Demo of SharePoint 2010 Development with race track engineering/telemetry app: SharePoint on Vista/Win7; Sandbox solutions; VS Debugging; Read data from Azure; SP 2010 & Excel 2010 Client Object Models in Silverlight; show telemetry against video playback