The Ignition Showcase Windows Phone 7 app makes use of y our phone’s:

• data connection
• media library
• web browser
• owner identity
• phone identity

It allows you to follow all topics on Ignition Showcase or to focus on specific technology topic areas such as Windows Azure, Windows Phone, SQL Server, etc..

My reason for doing this is two-fold:

1. My role at Microsoft has changed from evangelizing to all Customer Architects and other Technical Decision Makers to evangelizing to Independent Software Vendors and Microsoft Partners alone.  If you enjoyed my posts on Cloud related  topics like Windows Azure you will continue to find them there. In addition I have expanded my posting scope to cover Microsoft Private Cloud topics (like Hyper-V Cloud and System Center) as well as other server technologies such as SharePoint and Lync.  As always my approach will be to identify interesting “stuff” that warrants your attention and blog about it.

2. I found that I was often making the same or nearly identical post to both blogs and that was a lot of work.  In the first two months of the new blog’s life we have reached the upper 9% of all MSDN blogs so there is a much bigger audience there than on my blog.

The overall mission of the Ignition Showcase blog as defined in it’s masthead is: is  Providing ISV's with the resources they need to create new opportunities on our emerging technologies.  Even though the blog is targeted at ISVs and Partners there should still be a lot of content that all architects and other technical decision makers will find useful.

Hopefully I will see you on the other side.

Bill

ISVs and Partners	An ISV in the Age of the Cloud Microsoft Partners: Gold & Silver Competencies Explained
Multiple Microsoft Technologies	Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform Reviewed
Windows Azure Updates!	The Proper Use of the VM Role in Windows Azure MSDN Webcast: Windows Azure Boot Camp: Connecting with AppFabric Microsoft Server Application Virtualization CTP Released – Run More of your Applications on Windows Azure
Education	More Clouds in New York

Like us on Facebook for a chance to win a copy of Glo Bible

Follow us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.

Developer? Sign up for Microsoft Platform Ready

Events	Mix11 News Update
CRM	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Release Candidate (RC) Latest Links Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Top 10 in 10 xRM Cloud Acceleration Lab Video: Permuta Technologies
Cloud/Windows Azure Updates!	Drive Demand and Close Sales for your Microsoft Infrastructure and Cloud Solutions Journey to the Cloud The Windows Azure Platform Appliance for Everyone? Not! Weekly Azure Updates from OakLeaf Systems Mark Russinovich on Windows Azure Free Windows Azure Webinars for ISVs
Visual Studio	Visual Studio LightSwitch – New .NET Development Paradigm (UPDATE)

Like us on Facebook for a chance to win a copy of Glo Bible

Follow us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.

Developer? Sign up for Microsoft Platform Ready

Bill Zack

[UPDATE: Added links to The Anatomy of a LightSwitch Application post series at the end of this post]

We will be talking specifically about:

• What it is
• Why it is a very significant development
• Why you as an Independent Software Vendor should care

Windows Azure LightSwitch is one of the most significant development products to come out of Microsoft in a long time. 

The .NET platform is an extremely rich, powerful and deep development platform.  The very richness of the platform has created criticism in some areas.  Many developers new to .NET have been faced with a steep learning curve. Many developers creating new applications (such as simple forms over data applications) have also felt strongly that developing these applications should be a lot simpler than it is.

LightSwitch combines the ease reminiscent of Access development with the sophistication of being able to customize those applications using standard .NET tools and techniques if those applications need to do things not directly supported by LightSwitch.

Via a wizard driven process you can create a forms over data application with a two or three tier architecture, choosing a user interface selected from one of  several pre-defined UI templates.  When you do that a standard .NET Solution is generated such that it can be enhanced via normal .NET development techniques if the generated solution does not do exactly what you want.

When you use LightSwitch to generate an application it automatically bakes in the use of proven design patterns (such as MVVM) and the use of proven .NET components such as Silverlight and RIA Services.  Because it is base on a data provider model it also supports easy connection to a myriad of data sources including SQL Server, SQL Azure, web services as well as other data sources.  In fact we expect a rich ecosystem of 3rd party add-ins to be developed to extend the product.  As one example Infragistics provides a touch-enabled UI template to easily touch-enable a generated application. 

Two very impressive features of LightSwitch are:

1. The ability to change your mind after development and generate a solution for a different deployment platform. For instance you can generate and deploy a desktop applications and then,by changing a parameter, regenerate it as a browser or Windows Azure application. Yes, even the cloud has been incorporated and baked into its design.

2. The ability to let you customize the user interface of the application while it is still running and see the results of the change immediately.  In a way this is like Visual Studio Edit and Continue on steroids!

Currently the tool is in beta so download it, try it out, give the development team your feedback and help us to shape the product.

For more details see Jason Zander’s blog post, this video of a talk that he gave at VSLive  and visit the LightSwitch web site for more details, how-to videos and to download the Beta.

Bill Zack

Continuing the story on Visual Studio LightSwitch, here is an interesting series of articles on The Anatomy of a LightSwitch Application. It is a fairly in-depth 4 part Series on the subject.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Bill Zack

Particularly snazzy is a Seadragon (Deep Zoom)  Hyper-V poster that will let you zoom in on any portion of the poster.

This blog post covers a wealth of Hyper-V related links to materials for planning, deploying, managing, optimizing and troubleshooting Hyper-V.  It is also chock full of links to videos, podcasts, blogs,and more. 

Bill

Events	Save $500 + One Night Hotel at MIX11
Silverlight	PDC 2010 & Silverlight 5 Firestarter Analysis on Connected Show 39
Windows Azure Updates!	Windows Azure Training Kit December 2010 Update Windows Azure Platform Learning & Readiness
Windows Phone	How Many Phone Apps Can You Write in 2 Weeks? .toolbox Design Tutorials for Windows Phone 7 Building high performance Windows Phone Applications that are Feature Rich and Azure Enabled
Windows Server	High Performance Computing ON-Premise and in the Windows Azure Cloud Hyper-V Survival Guide Designing, Developing and Deploying Solutions with BizTalk Server and Team Foundation Server

Like us on Facebook for a chance to win a copy of Glo Bible

Follow us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.

Developer? Sign up for Microsoft Platform Ready

In the current post:

• Azure Blob, Drive, Table and Queue Services
• SQL Azure Database and Reporting
• Marketplace DataMarket and OData
• Windows Azure AppFabric: Access Control and Service Bus
• Windows Azure Virtual Network, Connect, and CDN
• Live Windows Azure Apps, APIs, Tools and Test Harnesses
• Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Windows Azure Infrastructure
• Windows Azure Platform Appliance (WAPA), Hyper-V and Private Clouds
• Cloud Security and Governance
• Cloud Computing Events
• Other Cloud Computing Platforms and Services

This compendium of Windows Azure, Windows Azure Platform Appliance, SQL Azure Database, AppFabric and other cloud-computing articles can be found here. 

It is worth subscribing to.

Bill Zack

The appliance, as announced at WWPC,  is a turn-key cloud solution based on highly standardized, preconfigured hardware. Think of it as hundreds of servers in pre-configured racks of networking, storage, and server hardware that are based on a Microsoft-specified reference architecture.

What this means for Independent Software Vendors and Partners is that we have truly entered a new generation of Information Technology. No product or service can be successful without taking the cloud into consideration.

You can leverage the cloud in 3 key ways.  You can move things to the cloud like outsourcing email with Office 365. You can utilize the cloud by running applications in the Windows Azure Platform. And/or you can build your own private cloud on-premise and deliver IT as a service. You can also build Hybrid Clouds that combine the best of both on-premise and public clouds.

Outsource to the cloud – Using Microsoft’s Software as a Service (SaaS) public cloud offering Office 365 (Office, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online) you can purchase a business process such as email  which is delivered at a business relevant SLA. 

In addition to the components of Office 365 Microsoft also offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the cloud with CRM Online and all the consumer focused Live Services such as Bing, Hotmail, Messenger and more.

You can also outsource processing to one of the many 3rd party hosting companies that base their offerings on the Microsoft product stack.

Leverage the cloud – Using Microsoft’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) public cloud offering, the Windows Azure Platform, you can build and run applications on a Microsoft provided service oriented global data center infrastructure. 

Be the cloud –  You can build your own Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) private cloud in your own data center utilizing Hyper-V and the Hyper-V Cloud tooling, guidance and partnerships.

For more on your cloud options see the Microsoft Cloud Power web site.

To the Cloud.

Bill Zack