Posts Tagged ‘application development’

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 […]

A lot of JavaScript incoming! With the rise of SharePoint Online, custom search solutions through JavaScript have become a staple for the development work for clients. While a lot of your search basics can be handled through simple modification of Display Templates (see some of my previous blogs for some basics there), the opportunity still […]

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 […]

First of all, congratulations to my colleague, Ryan Duclos, who received the Microsoft MVP award on January 1, 2014. You can read more about the announcement in the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog here: These individuals were chosen because they have demonstrated their deep commitment to helping others make the most of their technology, voluntarily […]

Pilots require dashboards. Carpenters depend on a great set of tools. Software artisans working with Sitecore need both. Scott Hanselman published his 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows this past Saturday. I look forward to this blog post because it is a great gut check to review the tool set I like […]

Introduction Over the years as a consultant in the IT field, I’ve worked on quite a few health care related projects.  None have been as large or interesting as my current engagement. I am part of a team working with ProHealth to stand up and extend a new third party data warehouse offering called Cogito.  […]

With the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 comes many great new features, including a improved virtual machine named generation 2. Generation 2 virtual machines provide quite a few enhancements across the spectrum of Hyper-V VM technology. Perhaps most notable is the removal of legacy emulated hardware. Removal of the legacy network adapter, IDE controller, […]

Every year, Microsoft awards a group of Developer MVPs with an additional recognition. It has become a tradition to recognize those MVPs who have demonstrated exceptional community effort by inviting them to a special dinner during the yearly MVP Summit event located at the Redmond headquarters. Technical Fellows Anders Hejlsberg and Brian Harry were hosts […]

On a recent client engagement working with an existing Sitecore multi-site instance, a discussion took place on how to better manage the current translations process. The primary issue to be resolved was the overwriting of translation values on deployments. This was happening for translations entered during a specific time window between deployment label creation and actual […]

What is Platform as a Service (PaaS)?  How does it differ from Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)? Let’s start with IaaS.  When “The Cloud” first became popular IaaS was the target.  The point of IaaS is to migrate a company data center into Windows Azure.  This involves converting whatever physical servers you have to Hyper-V […]

Windows Azure has many different devices for publishing and consuming content.  Two of those which are often confused are web roles and web sites.  The two are very similar and share some common strengths, but given specific conditions one may fit your need better than the other.  For example, web roles and web sites will […]

Xamarin and Microsoft have teamed up to make all other development platforms irrelevant.  Xamarin is the creator of popular cross platform development tools that allow developers to create iOS, Android and Windows applications all in C#.  With the launch of Visual Studio 2013, Xamarin and Microsoft announced a partnership that will significantly improve the experience […]