Jeff W. Barnes

Thoughts on PDC 2008 Keynote

Microsoft formally kicked off the PDC event this week with Ray Ozzie delivering the keynote address.  I was fortunate enough to land a seat on the front row.  As expected, some new initiatives were finally unveiled: Windows Azure.  Azure is the new cloud services platform, which has an extremely compelling story.  Essentially, this is an effort to push the hosting of application from inside the enterprise to the cloud.  Don't be fooled into thinking that this is only referring to web applications.  Azure expands well beyond the scope of mere web applications.  It will offer a platform for inexpensively hosting applications, databases, and more.

Based on what has been shown so far, it appears to be a very simple and seamless development experience.  Developers are still capable of locally developing and debugging applications on their desktop.  After the solution is ready to be deployed, you merely have to go to the Azure portal to create an application environment and upload the solution as a package. 

Where all of this stuff starts to get interesting is the scalability aspect.  So, you need to scale your application up for an increased number of users?  No problem.  All you need to do is modify your configuration to specify a higher number of nodes.  Azure takes care of all of the dirty work behind the scenes.  It will be interesting to see whether all of this works as well as advertised.  If it pans out, I can see this as being overwhelmingly compelling for small companies all the way to large enterprises.  Imagine not only the cost savings, but the how much easier it would be to avoid the headaches of setting up your own major infrastructure in house.

However, I still think trust is going to be a major factor.  There are many businesses that are understandably reluctant to let someone else house their data.  It will take some time to build up trust and convince many organizations that this is a viable option.  However, I am starting to believe that the cost savings could be a compelling argument to give it a try.  Nevertheless, security will be a concern at the forefront of this platform.  I am anxious to hear more about the security aspects of the platform later this week.  More importantly,I am incredibly eager to get my hands on the CTP and give it a test drive.

What do you think?  I'd love to hear the comments of others.

Next TechMixer Scheduled for Nov 13th

For those technology professionals in Birmingham and surrounding areas, take note that the next TechMixer has been scheduled for Thursday, November 13th.  It will be held at the Innovation Depot from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

In case you aren't familiar with it, this is one of the area's largest technical networking events.  There will be booths  to represent all of the area user groups as well as several technical companies.  Each iteration of the event has turned out a larger and larger crowd.  There is usually free finger foods as well as a cash bar.  So, load up on business cards and come on out to meet some new people.

Be sure to visit the registration site and RSVP.

PDC 2008 Is Approaching

It is getting close to time for PDC, and I have been giving some thought to the sessions that I want to attend.  There are too many scheduling conflicts to make all of the ones that interest me.  So, I have tried to strike a balance between my focus areas and some things a little outside of my comfort zone.  Given the breadth of the technologies that will be presented, I wanted to get a broad mix to try and understand the vision of where things are going over the next year or two.  Considering all of the pending announcements, it is certainly promising to be a very exciting week.

For those that are interested, I will be blogging and using twitter quite a bit for the duration of the event.  If you want to meet up and talk tech for a while, feel free to ping me.  Here is my tentative schedule of sessions that I plan to attend, but it is certainly subject to change.

MVP++

I was just informed that I have been awarded again as an MVP for 2009 in Connected Systems.  This is something that I certainly regard as an honor considering the extent of distinguished talent in the ranks of the MVP program.

It is going to be an exciting year for Connected Systems with Oslo around the corner among many other advancements in areas such as BizTalk, WCF, and WF.  Even outside of Connected Systems, there is a plethora of interesting topics: Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, F#, Parallel LINQ, Iron Ruby, Iron Python, etc.

It is an exciting time to be a developer on the Microsoft platform, and I am honored to be in a privileged position where I can leverage additional resources to engage and assist the community.