IaaS, PaaS, and the Windows Azure Platform
In this post I want to publish an article I originally wrote for the white papers section of www.Azure.com. The final version was not a good fit for Azure.com - so I am publishing it here. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an objective comparison between the Windows Azure Platform and an Infrastructure as a Service offering. (PDF Version)
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What is the Windows Azure Platform?
In this post I would like to focus on the Windows Azure Platform which is Microsoft’s Platform as a Service offering. I want to do this for two reasons. First, at the present time I am working for Microsoft (what can I say) and it is my job to research and describe their technologies. Second, I think there is a lot of confusion in the industry with respect to exactly what the Windows Azure Platform is all about. This confusion exists because ...
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Understanding Public Clouds: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
In this post I would like to describe Cloud computing again. I’ll do this by describing each of the offerings shown in the image to the right. To guide this discussion I will answer the following questions for each of these Cloud offerings: Who is the customer? What service is being provided? What is being hosted? What is the pricing structure? What are some real world examples?
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A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform
On Tuesday I keynoted the Cloud Track of Microsoft’s Enterprise Developer Conference in New York city. You can find my PowerPoint here.
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Workflow Foundation's SQL Persistence Service
In my last post on Workflow Foundation I introduced the workflow runtime and its default “in-memory” lifecycle. I also presented a lifecycle that saves and unloads idle workflows. This is the lifecycle used when a persistence service is added to the workflow runtime.
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The Many Flavors of Cloud Computing
Word choice is important when giving a new idea a name. However, sometimes an idea is so big and far reaching that no collection of words can accurately describe it. Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software Plus Services (S+S) are all ideas that are too big for their names. In this post I want to go beyond the words and get at the core ideas behind SaaS, PaaS, and S+S.
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Understanding the Lifecycle of a Workflow
In my last post I built a simple sequential workflow. I introduced all the details needed to use Visual Studio 2008, a few WF activities, and the workflow runtime to build and run a simple expense report approval workflow. In this post I want to step back from the mechanics of building workflows and look at the workflow runtime and the lifecycle of workflows when they are managed by the workflow runtime.
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Building Sequential Workflows
In this post I’ll continue where my last post left off by building a Sequential Workflow and discussing it in more detail. The sequential workflow built in this post will be simple and will use the Code Activity and the IfElse Activity. I’ll limit myself to these activities because they are intuitive to use. I’ll also show how to pass parameters to a workflow and how to execute a workflow using the workflow runtime.
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S+S and Breakfast on Broadway
I covered Software Plus Services at Telehouse’s Breakfast on Broadway series yesterday. Telehouse provides Data Center Services and Managed Services. This was a fun and intimate event. You can read more about them at www.telehouse.com and you can download my presentation at the link below.
Giving a concise and compelling message about what Microsoft is doing with respect to Software Plus Services (S+S) is one of the more challenging things I have done at Microsoft. The reason, S+S permeates everything we are doing at Microsoft. All of our existing products will someday be in the cloud as on line services. Eventually even our application development platform will be in the cloud as a Cloud Platform – the implication here is that custom line of business applications will be able to run on this Cloud Platform. (Think about that for a moment.)
So the talk I gave at Telehouse is my attempt to tell this story in a time frame that fits into the attention span of an executive. Roughly 30 minutes. I like to refer to these types of talks as conversations that use small words that lead to big ideas.
One word of warning – I try to avoid using PowerPoints that abuse bullet points. Excessive bullet points always give the audience a headache because it is hard to read a complex slide and listen to the presenter at the same time. I like simple graphics. So when you download my PowerPoint presentation make sure that you read the comments section of each slide to ascertain what each slide is all about.
Enjoy
-Keith
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My Talks on REST and S+S at VSLive New York 2008
I covered two sessions yesterday at VSLive New York. Navigating the Software plus Services Landscape and RESTful Services with Windows Communication Foundation. Below are links to my PowerPoints from both sessions and my code demos from my talk on RESTful services.
During my talk on RESTful services I used "Web Development Helper" which is an HTTP trace tool for Internet Explorer. Below is a link to this tool.
I also referenced that HTTP specification and recommended checking out the sections of the specification that deal with caching. You can read more here:
Finally, be sure to check out Rob Bagby’s blog and some of the material he has put together for RESTful services. Rob is a colleague of mine that covers the western part of the United States. (Sorry Rob – I don’t even know what city you live in.) He has a 10 part blog series on REST in WCF and he has done several screen casts. I have copied the complete index of his content below.
Blog Series:
Screencast Series:
Thanks to all who showed up to my sessions and asked insightful questions.
Keith
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