Latest News from Mario Meir-Huber

Cloud Computing and the Hype Cycle

Thu, 26 May 2011 12:15:00 EDT

I had the opportunity to talk to Mark Raskino, Vice President at Gartner. Mark is one of the authors of the book Mastering the Gartner Hype-Cycle. At the conference, Mark gave the keynote, and I presented a talk on Cloud Computing. This interview is about how to Master the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing. This represents Mark’s opinion, not the opinion of his employer Gartner. Mario Meir-Huber: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about Cloud Computing and the Hype Cycle. We currently have the IT trend “Cloud Computing” and it is interesting to compare this trend to the “Cloud.”. Where would you see this trend?

Windows Azure Series - Roles Offered by Windows Azure

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:45:00 EDT

Part 1 of the Windows Azure Series, provided an introduction to Windows Azure, and Part 2 provided a look inside the Windows Azure datacenters. Part 3 will continue with a look at the Windows Azure Roles and the Development Environment. The last one is especially important for the next couple of articles as we will look at the API as well. This article will focus on the “Compute” part of Windows Azure. The Roles Explained Windows Azure currently (April 2011) has three different roles. In case I didn’t mention it before, Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service offering. Therefore, developers have to think a little differently than IaaS Platforms. If you have more roles, Windows Azure does the load balancing for you. There is no need to pay extra money for a load-balancing service or to handle this on your own. But now back to the Roles, which are the WebRole, the WorkerRole and the VmRole. Each of the Roles serves a different need for modern Software as a Service applications.

Understanding Windows Azure

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:00:00 EST

To understand Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform, it’s necessary to understand how the Microsoft Datacenters work. In this article I will provide an overview of how Microsoft Designs their Datacenters and what is so revolutionary about the Generation 4 Datacenters. Microsoft built data centers for a long time. One of the best-known service Microsoft offers is Windows Update, which delivers updates as part of their content delivery network all over the world. But this is not the only product Microsoft’s Datacenters are famous for. Other important products are Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail and Windows Live ID. Windows Live Messenger is one of the largest IM software and Hotmail is a frequently used mail software. Microsoft authorizes millions of users every day with their Live Services, which is used for Hotmail, Messenger and a lot of other services. As you can see here, Microsoft is not new to building Datacenters. They are experienced with it but haven’t sold products like Windows Azure so far.

Windows Azure Series – Introduction to Windows Azure

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 06:00:00 EST

I’ve done a Windows Azure Series together with Mario Szpusta, Software Architect Evangelist at Microsoft Austria on Windows Azure. The Series is in German and I decided to bring it to Cloud Computing Journal. I will modify some of the articles to bring them up-to-date. This series will cover about 15 articles that will be published once a week. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s Platform as a Service offering for Cloud Computing. There are three major fields in Windows Azure. Figure 1 provides an overview of the platform. The three fields are Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Azure AppFabric. There are several other services that are part of each field. Windows Azure is a platform for web applications, SQL Azure is a comprehensive database in the cloud based on Microsoft SQL Server, and Windows Azure AppFabric contains enterprise techniques such as the service bus or access control. The name for Microsoft’s cloud platforms is “Azure Services Platform” and Windows Azure is one part of this platform. Nevertheless, most people say Windows Azure and mean all three parts. Let’s continue by examining each part of the Azure Services Platform.

My Top Five Cloud Predictions for 2011: Mario Meir-Huber

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:30:00 EST

Cloud Computing is growing fast and Companies will need more information and techniques on how to move to the Cloud. Companies will be very busy in 2011 with Outsourcing their IT to the Cloud.

NoSQL – The Trend for Databases in the Cloud?

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 04:00:00 EST

SQL seems to be somewhat old fashioned when it comes to scalable databases in the cloud. Non-relational databases (also called NoSQL) seem to take over in most data storage fields. But why do those databases seem to be more popular than the “classic” relational databases? Is it due to the fact that professors at universities “tortured” us with relational databases and therefore reduced our interest – the interest of the “new” generation for relational databases? Or are there some hard facts that tell us why relational databases are somewhat out of date? I was at a user group meeting in Austria, Vienna, one month ago where I talked about NoSQL databases. The topic seemed to be of interest to a lot of people. However, we sat together for about four hours (my talk was planned for one hour only) discussing NoSQL versus SQL. I decided to summarize some of the ideas in a short article as this is useful for cloud computing.

New Features and Updates to Windows Azure

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:15:00 EST

Windows Azure, a Platform as a Service offer, is Microsoft's cloud computing platform. It was announced at PDC 2008 where Microsoft announced some interesting improvements and additional features to its Windows Azure Platform. Microsoft is serious about its strategy on Windows Azure, as was demonstrated in the PDC keynote, which dedicated over one hour to Azure. But what exactly is Microsoft's cloud computing strategy? This article describes the new features that will be available soon on Windows Azure. A very interesting announcement was the VM Role for Windows Azure. This allows users to access their roles (both the Work- and WebRole) via a Remote Desktop. The Remote Desktop access makes maintenance of a role easier. A nice benefit is to enable developers to ease their “way into the cloud” by just moving existing virtual machines to the (Windows Azure) Cloud. The VM Role is not an IaaS offer; rather it’s an extension to the existing PaaS offer.