PDC 2008 Day 1: It's all about the cloud

27. October 2008
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I'm in breezy, smoggy Los Angeles, CA for Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2008.  Just got done listening to the Ray Ozzie's Keynote address, which focused largely around Windows Azure -- Microsoft's new Windows OS for "the cloud".

I hear a lot about cloud computing these days, and Ozzie even gave big credence to Jeff Bezos and Amazon for popularizing cloud computing with Amazon EC2.  What makes Windows Azure different?  It's simple really -- Microsoft.

With Azure, Microsoft is defining cloud computing as highly available clusters of network computers connected via the Internet and available to consumers or business (at a price still to be named by Microsoft).  Azure is different from EC2 or GData (in the cloud data services) because it combines a technology stack with an established base (the .Net Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server) with a Windows OS that understands how to scale and distribute computational payload across the Internet.

This still sounds too 50,000 foot-ish to be blogging about, so I'll re-cap one of the ways Azure was demonstrated at this morning's keynote.

  1. Internal company (Contoso) has an AD-infrastructure in place, but wants to leverage software that lives "in the cloud" on Microsoft's server.  Azure provides simple identity federation through an Active Directory connector.  The setup is basically 2 steps and took a Microsoft VP about 5 minutes to complete.
  2. Contoso buys Microsoft Dynamics CRM (as a Microsoft Online service) and as a result of the federated identity provided by .Net Services, Contoso's local Active Directory infrastructure is leveraged for login and security.
  3. Joe Developer can now deploy additions to CRM, albiet data model or workflow in the cloud courtesy of Azure and CRM Online.


It's still entirely too early to know if cloud computing will revolutionize software the way Ozzie says it will, but it's safe to say that Microsoft is pioneering the first completely integrated cloud computing development experience with Visual Studio 2010.

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