Single sign-on from Active Directory to Windows Azure: big feature, still challenging

By tim, on December 22nd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has posted a white paper setting out what you need to do in order to have users who are signed on to a local Windows domain seamlessly use an Azure-hosted application, without having to sign in again.

I think this is a huge feature. Maintaining a single user directory is more secure and

…continue reading Single sign-on from Active Directory to Windows Azure: big feature, still challenging

Salesforce.com acquires Heroku, wants your Enterprise apps

By tim, on December 8th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

The big news today is that Salesforce.com has agreed to acquire Heroku, a company which hosts Ruby applications using an architecture that enables seamless scalability. Heroku apps run on “dynos”, each of which is a single process running Ruby code on the Heroku “grid” – an abstraction which runs on instances of Amazon EC2

…continue reading Salesforce.com acquires Heroku, wants your Enterprise apps

Reflections on Microsoft PDC 2010

By tim, on October 30th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m in Seattle airport waiting to head home – so here are some quick reflections on Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2010.

Let’s start with the content. There was a clear focus on two things: Windows Azure, and Windows Phone 7.

On the Azure front, the cloud platform, Microsoft impressed. Features are being added rapidly,

…continue reading Reflections on Microsoft PDC 2010

AppFabric – Microsoft’s new middleware

By tim, on October 29th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I took the opportunity here at Microsoft PDC to find out what Microsoft means by AppFabric. Is it a product? a brand? a platform?

The explanation I was given is that AppFabric is Microsoft’s middleware brand. You will normally see the work in conjunction with something more specific, as in “AppFabric Caching” (once known

…continue reading AppFabric – Microsoft’s new middleware

Microsoft PDC big on Azure, quiet on Silverlight

By tim, on October 28th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m at Microsoft PDC in Seattle. The keynote, introduced by CEO Steve Ballmer, started with a recap of the company’s success with Windows 7 – 240 million sold, we were told, and adoption plans among 88% of businesses – and showing off Windows Phone 7 (all attendees will receive a device) and Internet Explorer

…continue reading Microsoft PDC big on Azure, quiet on Silverlight

QCon London 2010 report: fix your code, adopt simplicity, cool .NET things

By tim, on March 12th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m just back from QCon London, a software development conference with an agile flavour that I enjoy because it is not vendor-specific. Conferences like this are energising; they make you re-examine what you are doing and may kick you into a better place. Here’s what I noticed this year.

Robert C Martin from

…continue reading QCon London 2010 report: fix your code, adopt simplicity, cool .NET things

Microsoft maybe gets the cloud – maybe too late

By tim, on March 5th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a talk on the company’s cloud strategy at the University of Washington yesterday. Although a small event, the webcast was widely publicised and coincides with a leaked internal memo on “how cloud computing will change the way people and businesses use technology”, a new Cloud website, and a Cloud

…continue reading Microsoft maybe gets the cloud – maybe too late

Google storage 10 times cheaper than Azure – but not as cheap as Skydrive

By tim, on February 5th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

According to Jerry Huang of Gladinet, whose Cloud Desktop exposes a variety of cloud storage services as mapped drives in Windows Explorer, Google storage is “about 10 times cheaper” than Windows Azure. Since Amazon S3 has similar prices to Azure, I imagine Google undercuts that by some margin as well.

Gladinet compares Google and

…continue reading Google storage 10 times cheaper than Azure – but not as cheap as Skydrive

Windows Azure is too expensive for small apps

By tim, on January 22nd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m researching Windows Azure development; and as soon as you check out early feedback one problem jumps out immediately. Azure is prohibitively expensive for small applications.

Here’s a thread that makes the point:

Currently I’m hosting 3 relatively small ASP.net web applications on a VPS. This is costing about $100 per month. I’m considering

…continue reading Windows Azure is too expensive for small apps

Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Archives