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Microsoft announced today that Windows Azure has met two significant milestones. The milestones are related to compliance and security. The lack of PCI compliance is one thing that has kept some potential Windows Azure customers away from building services and applications on the platform. Compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) will allow you […]

Microsoft is offering several opportunities to get up to speed on Windows Azure. I’m listing just a few options available this month (January 2014). The below items are available via the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) or via webinars. Also coming up in March is the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp (#GWAB), a full day of hands […]

Web Sites are by far one of my favorite features on Windows Azure. As a developer, I didn’t like having to manage the infrastructure. Web Sites allow me to focus on my application and data and let the platform manage the rest. In the last couple of updates there have been a few improvements to […]

In the past, it has been a bit of a pain to move large amounts of data from on-premises to the cloud. As of the end of October Windows Azure released a new service to make the transition a lot smoother. Now you can securely ship hard disk drives to the Windows Azure data centers. […]

I’ve been using Twitter for some time. While I don’t normally take part in all the conversations, I do know how to get help from colleagues in the community. Hashtags have been around for several years and are now used in most main stream social networks. Hashtags are mainly used for joining people with similar […]

One of the primary methods that schools can innovate is with technology. I live in an area where they’re trying to provide technology to all students by providing laptops or tablets from kindergarten to seniors in high school, all grades K through 12. In any one school district they now have to manage these devices […]

Microsoft and the Windows Azure team are acting on their Cloud OS Vision. In a previous post I talked about the site improvements made as part of Microsoft’s vision. Microsoft I believe is truly committed to it’s customers and partners. The enterprise cloud in several cases is ready. Are you ready for the enterprise cloud? Besides […]

I’ve seen several articles talking about the Surface “Blade” concepts. I truly believe this is a great innovation on Microsoft’s part. The possibilities are truly endless. I truly believe the Surface is the best tablet for those who want a device that can be used for work, play and entertainment. Having different “Blades” as accessories […]

Earlier today Scott Guthrie let everyone know about the new improvements to Windows Azure. Below is the bullet list straight from Scott’s blog. This week we released some great updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Compute: New 2-CPU Core 14 GB RAM instance option Virtual Machines: Support for Oracle Software Images, Management Operations […]

Microsoft announced today that the Power BI for Office 365 preview has been updated. One of my colleagues, Andrew Tegethoff, previously mentioned the compelling features in a previous post. The features were not all available in the preview at the time of the earlier posting. They have added natural language search with Q&A, as well […]

A little over a month ago I had a post about Windows Azure supporting Java and Oracle. I had mentioned that pre-configured options should become available. That day is now upon us. There is several pre-configured options for Java, Oracle Database, and Oracle WebLogic Server. Not just on Windows operating systems either, there is a […]

Microsoft  and AT&T announced today they are working together to deliver private networks for businesses to connect to Windows Azure. Windows Azure already has virtual networking capabilities.  So now customers will have multiple options for connecting on-premises to Windows Azure.

Jaspersoft is an open-source business intelligence suite built on Java. Jaspersoft put together a video of using MongoDb with it’s suite on Windows Azure. MongoDB is a NoSQL based system, which stores data like JSON.  I found an article about this on MS Open Tech’s site. I just wanted to share it here to let […]

I cam across an article on InformationWeek “Microsoft Azure Grows More Open.” From what I know and the people I talk to, I truly believe Microsoft has been opening up over the last several years, especially for developers. The rate tools and frameworks are built and supported by Visual Studio is one key sign of […]

Microsoft earlier this week made multiple improvements to their site based on their Microsoft Cloud OS vision.  The main focus is based on UX to improve user experience and increase engagement. The site is very responsive and adaptive based on the devices you are using as well as when re-sizing or panning. There is even […]

Canonical working with Microsoft announced today (9/17/2013) the Juju fully supports deploying service on Ubuntu into Windows Azure. Juju provides an intuitive GUI for designing and deploying applications into Windows Azure. From today’s news release which can be read here Latest Ubuntu Certified images for all supported Ubuntu releases are currently available on Windows Azure, […]

Well guess what I think is the best alternative, are you ready? It is Office Web Apps!  Office Web Apps are free versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. If you’re like me, I like to use application that have the same look and feel as the applications I’m used to, in this case it […]

Microsoft just a few days ago announced a new program for research. They have partnered with several researchers over the last 3 years to experiment with the cloud. With the success of the research projects already completed Microsoft found value in the research. To support scientific research in many disciplines Microsoft launched the Windows Azure […]

Windows Azure is a great environment for your applications. It can also house applications that aren’t ready to be consumed by your clients whether internal or external to your organization. What makes this more compelling is that as of June you now pay by the minute vs. by the hour for compute as well as […]

A little over a year since the release of Visual Studio 2012 (VS2012) and we already have a release candidate for Visual Studio 2013. If your interested in the Virtual Launch keep up to date on the event page, you can also download the Release Candidate. You can install it over the preview and along […]