Architect Council | 2010: A Cloud Odyssey

The forecast for 2010 is looking very cloudy, with every technology company delivering some type of cloud offering, and analysts estimating that almost everyone will try some form of cloud computing. But from a practical stand point, how should organizations leverage cloud computing effectively? Is it to simply host existing and legacy assets somewhere else, or to create next-generation applications that enable differentiated capabilities? In addition, what role does SOA play in the age of cloud computing? And does this impact the way we manage and interact with data?

Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this half-day event is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies and insights with peers. This forum will provide first-hand experiences and best practices intended to help the community to collectively discover and generate knowledge. Please join us for this opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other thought leaders.

Event Summary

§ Provide a clear and profound understanding of Microsoft’s cloud strategy and roadmap, and latest updates on the Windows Azure Platform

§ Discuss the state of SOA, and its relevance in the age of cloud computing

§ Review case studies and models of cloud usage, and examine approaches to build next-generation capabilities leveraging the cloud

§ Explore trade-offs, best practices, and guidance on today’s myriad of data storage options

§ Explain the differences and patterns of using various data interaction frameworks

Who Should Attend

Technology and business stakeholders, including CTOs, CIOs, VPs, Directors, Program and Product Managers, Architects, Lead Engineers, and IT Managers

Agenda

12:45PM: Introduction and Announcements

01:00PM: Windows Azure Platform – Overview of the Microsoft Cloud

01:30PM: SOA and Cloud Computing

02:00PM: Architecting Solutions Leveraging the Cloud

02:30PM: Making Sense of the Expanding Range of Data Storage Solutions

03:15PM: Best Practices with Data Interaction Frameworks

04:00PM: Groupthink

When & Where

Date: December 01, 2009

Location: Irvine, CA

Event ID: 1032350826

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350826&Culture=en-US

 

Date: December 2, 2009:

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Event ID: 1032350827

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350827&Culture=en-US

Date: December 3, 2009

Location: Phoenix, AZ

Event ID: 1032350828

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350828&Culture=en-US

Date: December 8, 2009

Location: Mountain View, CA

Event ID: 1032350833

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350833&Culture=en-US

Date: December 9, 2009

Location: San Francisco, CA

Event ID: 1032350830

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350830&Culture=en-US

Date: December 10, 2009

Location: Seattle, WA

Event ID: 1032350831

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350831&Culture=en-US

Date: December 15, 2009

Location: Denver, CO

Event ID: 1032350832

Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350832&Culture=en-US

Hosts

David Chou

Architect, Microsoft

http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou

David Chou is a technical architect at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.

Joe Shirey

Architect, Microsoft

http://www.joeshirey.com

Joe Shirey is a Senior Architect Evangelist for Microsoft based in the Denver area. In this role, Joe works closely with customers and the community to help them understand where Microsoft technologies fit into the architecture of their solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Joe was a Vice President at Interlink group where he was responsible for service and delivery for Interlink’s Denver market. In the past, Joe was a Microsoft Regional Director, a member of the Microsoft Architect Advisory Board, and sat on the .NET Partner Advisory Council. Joe has more than eighteen years of hands-on technical and functional experience in project management, systems analysis, design, development, and implementation. Joe attained his Microsoft Certified Architect award in 2005.

Azure Commercial Availability Confirmed, Business Model Announced and More..

Yesterday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, we announced the business and partner model for the Windows Azure platform including service level agreements and support programs.

Here are few highlights from the announcement.

· Commercial availability at Professional Developers Conference 2009 in November’09.

· SQL Azure will be available later this summer as a cloud-based relational database platform built on SQL Server.

· Free until the release in November. Now is the time to go check out the free CTP.

You can sign-up for the free CTP account for Windows Azure & .NET Services at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/register.mspx.

The Windows Azure platform, which includes a cloud services operating system – Windows Azure, a Web-based relational database in Microsoft SQL Azure (formerly SQL Services), as well as connectivity and interoperability services with .NET Services.

The pricing model will be a consumption-based pricing model, allowing partners and customers to pay only for the services that they consume.

Here is a summary of the pricing:

Additionally the service-level agreement will cover service uptime, connectivity, and data availability and will be backed by a enterprise-class guarantee as outlined in the Windows Azure blog:

“For compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains your Internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Additionally, we will monitor all of your individual role instances and detect within two minutes when a role instance’s process is not running and initiate corrective action. For storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. We also guarantee that your storage accounts will have connectivity to our Internet gateway.”