Windows Azure is Microsoft's new cloud computing services platform. Hosting in Microsoft data centers around the world, Windows Azure provides hosting capabilities, developer services (for .NET, PHP and other environments), and data storage services that can be scaled dynamically to adapt to changing scalability needs. And that is pretty close to the official definition. But what _is_ Windows Azure…?

My team and I seek to answer that question with our Real World Road Show event series. Our team has already run ten events in August across five cities, one IT professional and one developer event per city. We have 24 more events planned, starting back up the week of September 14, spanning 12 cities. I've listed our schedule on my events page, plus a couple of additional Live Meeting-based Firestarter events hosted by peers across the US. But let me tell you a bit more about our events.

Real World Azure Road Show
Come spend a day with us to explore Windows Azure™ – Microsoft’s platform for building and deploying cloud based applications – from a real world point of view!

During this event, we’ll review critical lessons Microsoft IT has learned migrating internal line-of-business applications to Windows Azure™.

What is Windows Azure™? When should I use it? How does it apply to my job? Whether you’re an IT Professional, Developer or Architect, we’ll address your top of mind questions about cloud computing.

TechNet Presents Real World Infrastructure
These sessions focus on the architecture decisions and infrastructure impacts Azure represents. They start at 8:30am and run until noon. In this session, we will discuss:

• Azure architecture from the IT professional’s point of view
• Why an IT operations team would want to pursue Azure as an extension to the data center
• Configuration, deployment and scaling Azure-based applications
• The Azure roles (web, web service and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premises applications
• How operations teams can manage and monitor Azure-based applications

MSDN Presents Real World Development
These sessions focus on the architecture tradeoffs and development techniques. They start at 1pm and run until 5pm. In this session, we will discuss:

• Cloud computing architectures in general and the Azure architecture in particular
• Several aspects of Azure from the developer’s and architect’s perspective
• Azure roles (web, web service and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premise applications
• Configuration, deployment and scaling Azure-based applications
• How development teams can optimize their applications for better management and monitoring

Our events also feature a real world case study by Microsoft IT as well as Microsoft customers. These case studies illustrate real world decisions and tradeoffs made by Microsoft IT and our customers, covering several things you should know as you consider cloud computing in general and Windows Azure in specific.

It's been quite a while since I last posted to my blog – July 10th to be exact. I've had a couple of good reasons, such as Microsoft's year-end review period (I have 12 to write), finalizing our FY10 business plans (we have events to plan, including a couple of product launches, community events to support and some online strategies to develop; my blog loosely falls under our online plans… other than the fact I've probably lost all my subscribers in the past nearly two months), and some much-needed vacation (10 days!).

Shortly after getting back from vacation I went to devLink 2009 in Nashville, TN. When I got back home it was time to celebrate my 16th wedding anniversary. (Trust me, I'll tie this back to Bing. Be patient.) As my wife and I were planning our evening (flowers, some shopping, dinner, and a movie), we decided to go to see Julie and Julia. (See: clever cooking reference.) I used Bing to search for movie times, and Bing delivered, making my life easy. Not only did it return the top results (every bit as accurate as other search popular engines), it's "deep search" feature returned movie times for theaters in my area (all I needed to do was configure my location).

Bing was so efficient I didn't even have to follow the results. We saw the times of all the theaters within a roughly 30 minute drive, made our decision, and left for dinner.

Cooking with Bing… Give it a try. Click the image to see the Julie and Julia results in your area – just be sure to configure your location first if needed. Bing does IP reverse-lookup, but that usually maps back to your ISP's home location.

Today (July 10, 2009, for the record) we (or, more accurately, Microsoft, also for the record) announced the general availability of Silverlight 3 and the soon-to-release of the Expression 3 suite of tools. ScottGu offers a lot of details, but I'll summarize some of the more salient points here. (ScottGu, for those who do not know, is Scott Guthrie, a VP in our Developer Division. He's in charge of the teams that built little things like the .NET runtime, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF and the tools for said runtimes.)

Silverlight 3
You can install the Silverlight 3 runtime from almost anywhere on Microsoft.com and on numerous third-party sites (like my personal favorite, SGU: Stargate Universe, which uses Photosynth to allow you to explore the Ancient ship Destiny; I love those shows). One of the powerful new features of Silverlight 3 is the out-of-the-browser application capabilities. With a deft set of changes to an app's config files, you can have your Silverlight 3-powered application deployed via the browser but run standalone on a desktop that has the Silverlight 3 runtime. It's a similar to click-once deployed Windows Forms applications or XBAP (XAML browser application) deployment.

Expression 3
Expression tools are built for designers through and through, enabling them to quickly design rich, interactive user experiences. But unlike other design tools, Expression uses the same solution and project formats as Visual Studio, enabling much improved workflow between the colorful, hippy, happy designer type and the black-text-on-white-background developer type. Guess which type I am. (Okay, for the smart-alecks out there, management is actually a correct type for me. But I try to hold onto my developer roots. So there!) The main cool thing Expression 3 introduces is SketchFlow, a rapid prototyping tool for user interface and user experience design.

Of course there are loads more, and the Expression site lists all the details on Expression Web (for CSS and HTML), Blend (for XAML design), the aforementioned SketchFlow, Expression Design (for creating graphics content), and Expression Encoder (for video encoding).

Although they aren't quite yet available, they will be available soon and are, in fact, available for pre-order from a number of different online retailers.

Thrive for Developers launched earlier this week, and I wanted to make sure _everyone_ heard about it. Why do I care so much? Is it because the content is good, unique, and valuable? No, not really (though the content is good, unique, and valuable; more on that in a moment). It is because three of my teammates, Brian Prince, Clint Edmonson, and Zain Naboulsi, helped build some of the content, and I worked with a great team of Microsoft evangelists (G. Andrew Duthie, Brian Hitney, and Mike Benkovich) to build the Silverlight-enabled user group/event map on the Connecting with Your Community page. So I have some personal stake in the the Thrive for Developers effort.

In addition to my personal stake, there are three areas to Thrive for Developers – Advance Your Career, Enhance Your Skills, and Connect with Your Community – each with valuable content and information.

Advance Your Career
This area features information on free and paid training options, print and e-books options (and opportunities to buy at discounted rates), as well as career resources. This area also links to resources on CareerBuilder and Dice. The career resources section features some of that new content from Brian, Clint and Zain I mentioned. Here are some details on what they've built for Thrive…

Brian has created a 32-week series of audio podcasts on developing soft skills.

Driving Your Career - Soft Skills to Move You Forward
Sit shotgun with Brian Prince in "Driving Your Career" – a 32-week screencast series that explores the new skills developers need to thrive. Brian will tackle relevant topics including quick learning techniques, how to manage your career, how to build consensus, and the always-tricky task of talking to humans. Brian will share his expertise of being a manager, a consultant, and many other roles over his career, to help you succeed in yours.

Clint has produced a three-part screencast series on organizational politics (all in MWV: part 1, part 2, and part 3).

Organizational Politics: A Survival Guide
You're smart. You deliver. What more could your company want from you? Why don't they come to you for the big technical decisions? Why won't they listen to your proposals? It seems like everyone has an agenda and they're doing everything they can to kill your great ideas. This series examines the dynamic nature of large organizations – their structures, decision making processes, and political landscapes. We'll discuss the goals of key business and technical decision makers and their influence on architects and software projects.

Zain is host of a series of webcasts on getting a job in the current economy.

Getting a Development Job in the Current Economy
Given the current state of the economy, how can you find a job? Join us for this webcast discussion with recruiters from across the country, and find out what it takes to get a job in today's market. We cover the top five things every developer needs to know when looking for a job, and then we have an open question and answer session so you can ask questions that are important to you. The discussion is moderated by Microsoft developer evangelist Zain Naboulsi, and it is one webcast you don't want to miss.

Enhance Your Skills
This area features a series of learning resources for web development and Windows client development. The both offer task-oriented approaches to learning more about building web or Windows-based applications, such as building web site security or getting the most out of your VB6-based applications. Each task-oriented topic contains several step-by-step resources, aggregating resources from the MSDN Library, webcasts, podcasts, and more.

Connect with Your Community
Not only does this area contain the very clever Silverlight application I mentioned above, it also links to features blogs from Microsoft evangelists from across the US (by state, no less!) as well as blogs from people in the Microsoft product groups. There is also a special podcast series by the .NET Rocks team called "Development in a Downturn" as well as resources to connect with your local user groups.

In Conclusion ('cause I have a compulsive need for a closing header)
So go check out Thrive for Developers. Not only are some of my colleagues featured, but there are also a load of great resources. And I have a personal stake in people seeing all this great material.

If you got hold of a beta of Windows 7 way back in January of this year, it's important for you to know that the install will expire in in one week from the day I'm authoring this post. So here's your one week warning: Windows 7 Beta expires July 1, 2009.

The good news is you're not totally shafted. It's pretty easy to get your hands on a copy of the Windows 7 RC. Although the upgrade scenario isn't supported (my personal policy is to always start fresh when using beta software, especially when it's the OS), the Windows engineering team has written a blog post that describes how to attempt to perform an upgrade.

Anyway, the moral of the post is this: if you are still running the Windows 7 Beta, the clock is ticking. Back up your data and either move to the Windows 7 RC (it works *great*, by the way) or back to an RTM version of Windows.

A couple of weeks ago I requested feedback on topics we should put forward for our August and September event dates. Unfortunately that call for feedback only generated one piece of feedback – the really good topic of Commerce Server 2009.

So I'm curious again… Tell us what topics you would like to see in our late summer events. Is Commerce Server a good topic? Or should we dig deep into Azure and what it means for architects, developers and IT/operations professionals?

Direct message me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

I've linked up several new 10-4 videos to the webcast and video archive listing on my web site. I also have several (now somewhat dated) presentations as well as upcoming events and upcoming webcasts listed up there as well.

Hopefully, if I manage to carve out some time later this today or this week, I will write a post that lists a load of readiness resources for IE8, Azure, ASP.NET AJAX, and Visual Studio 2010 I've been hoarding. Yeah, some of them date back a couple of months, but these are readiness resources (translation: light training resources) scattered hither and yon across our various Microsoft.com sites and properties. I thought I'd collate them together into a single post or few (topically grouped, of course) to make it easier for you to find them.

Before that post I need to share an update on my experiences with the Windows 7 RC I have running on my Dell Latitude E6400 work laptop. Very, very nice… Powerful, fast, and quite robust. I am very pleased, even though it took me the better part of a month getting it set up and configured with all my preferred apps and customizations. If I didn't tweak everything like crazy, I swear I could be more agile.

We've locked in late summer and early fall dates for our ArcReady, MSDN Events Unleashed, and TechNet Events Unleashed series. They will be starting roughly mid-August and running through the end of September. As of now we will be visiting all of our usual cities, and – based on feedback from people in the community – we are looking at the possibility of visiting other cities than our core 16 or 17.

ArcReady
This is our event series for architects and the more senior developers interested in architecture or people interested in becoming architects. We predominately focus on overarching themes and topics, such as cloud computing, web site performance and scalability or – the current event series topic – architecting for the client. We explore architectural paradigms, key concepts, and patterns and how you can apply them to your business initiatives or challenges.

MSDN Events Unleashed
These events are an extension of the nationally-planned and -run MSDN Events. They focus in on one or two core development topics, digging deep into developing solutions using Silverlight and Blend, producing client applications using WPF, or how to best exploit Windows 7 in custom-developed applications. This is our bread-and-butter development event series.

TechNet Events Unleashed
Similar to our locally run developer events, these are an extension of the nationally-executed TechNet Events. These events deliver topics relevant to the IT professionals, from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to Exchange and SharePoint to System Center. These speakers are the experts, and will help IT professionals plumb the internals of our core infrastructure products and technologies.

A Request for Feedback
Here's the rub – we have not chosen topics yet. As the manager in charge of audience and community engagement in the Central Region (which involves running these events, amongst other things), I would like to hear from you.

Do you have any suggestions? Are there any topics or products you would like to see us cover? If so, leave a comment at http://twitter.com/briandmoore or on the old blog here.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard by now that the Windows 7 Release Candidate is available for download for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Tomorrow, May 5th, it becomes available broadly for everyone. I spent some time this past weekend installing the 64-bit version fresh on my Dell Latitude E6400 as well as my wife's Dell Inspiron™ 15. Both installs went pretty much flawlessly.

My E6400 – The Work Laptop
On my work computer, the Windows Experience Rating (how well the system performs) increased from 3.5 with Windows Vista to 3.8 on Windows 7. The low scoring component was a business-class graphics adapter, which isn't terribly relevant as I don't play games on my work computers. As a counterpoint, everything else (CPU, memory, disk IO, etc.) all jumped from high 4.x and low 5.x scores to high 5.x scores with the move to Windows 7. Unlike my M1330, this E6400 is ripping fast with a speedy Core Duo processor, great cache, and a 7200RPM SATA drive. The laptop is a rocket with Windows 7.

Install only took about 15 minutes, and every device except one (a fingerprint reader) was found with 64-bit drivers. All were found from the install media, and only the graphics adapter had a Windows Update push a few minutes after getting the network up and running. I will have to hunt down that fingerprint reader driver, but even in this the Action Center knew what was missing so I didn't even have to troll through Device Manager to find out. (Honesty time: I did check Device Manager, too, but that's just because I'm a geek.)

I've had a chance to play with it a bit today and it's every bit as fast, if not faster, than the beta. Even more impressive, this OS is solid. With a good 9 hours of straight use it's still running like a champ, performing strong and no glitches encountered thus far.

My Wife's Inspiron – The Family Laptop
On my wife's computer, the Windows Experience Rating went from 3.5 under Windows Vista to 4.0 under Windows 7. That's a pretty hefty jump. The install was quite fast, from FDISK to boot in roughly 20 minutes. Every single device was recognized and supported (yes, this is x64). All 4GB of RAM is recognized, and almost all of her core applications installed fine. Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Flash all worked great, though I did have to change the defaults for Adobe – their site thought I was running Windows NT 4.0; a quick change to Vista 64-bit and everything installed and ran fine.

I only had one issue with the initial setup: Norton Internet Security 2009. The installer blocked on Windows 7, claiming it was an unsupported system. Easy to correct with the Compatibility Troubleshooter (right-click the executable). I selected Windows Vista SP1 mode, launched the installer, and it installed just fine and is running nicely.

I will point out that, once I turned the laptop over to her, she did run into a glitch installing the Java runtime from a website plug-in. I didn't have a chance to troubleshoot, but I suspect it's something that can be either worked around by getting the runtime direct from Sun or otherwise addressed. I am confident she can still do most if not all of the things she is used to doing in Windows Vista. I'll update with a post to let you know how things are running for her.

One Last Plug
Did I mention Windows 7 fast? Very, very fast…

Update – 4/14: An event has been added (ArcReady in Grand Rapids, MI) and two event dates (Nashville and Knoxville) have swapped dates. See below...

Spring brings not only rain and flowers (you know, April shows and May flowers), it also brings our spring technical events. And this time our technical events are taking on a slightly different form.

Okay, to be completely honest, we are still calling the sessions ArcReady (our event for architects and those who want to become architects), MSDN Events Unleashed (for the developer), and the new TechNet Events Unleashed (for the IT Professional). But we are also doing something different for the spring event series: there's a single, connected theme running throughout all events.

And what is that theme, you ask? It's all things next generation Windows client, featuring Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8!

ArcReady – Brain Food for the Architect
The client (or presentation) tier of our applications is taking on an increasingly important role. Users are expecting more compelling user interfaces, but they also want more functionality from their applications. In this ArcReady we examine how to design and deliver well architected client applications that will be easy to maintain and extend.

Topic 1: Trends and Patterns on the Client Tier
In our first topic we will take a vendor and platform neutral look at some of the trends and emerging technologies that can be used on the client tier. We will look at techniques like Mashups, technologies like Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and the increasing importance of the mobile platform. We will also look at some common patterns that can be used in the architecture of the client tier.

Topic 2: Applying Microsoft Technology on the Client Tier
In our second topic we will take some look at how we can use Microsoft technologies to create well architected and compelling client applications. We will look at technologies like Silverlight and WPF that can be used to create compelling clients. We will also look at technologies that can be used to make your applications more extensible for future development. We will also examine some architectural guidance developed by the Microsoft Patterns and Practices group.

MSDN Events Unleashed – Get Your Dev On
Internet Explorer 8 recently released to the web, and with that release comes a wide range of new capabilities that developers can exploit. Of even more impact to developers everywhere is the upcoming release of Windows 7, also bringing with it several new capabilities for consumers and developers.

Topic 1: Internet Explorer 8 for Developers
The Windows Internet Explorer 8 browser makes it easier to explore and interact with the web. Did you know that there will be a new standards mode by default? While it can easily be turned off, knowing the potential to impact this may have on many sites that have been crafted around various features in past versions is a good idea. Attend this session to learn which current practices you need to change and how the new standards mode affects your development techniques and your existing sites. We review tools that are built into Internet Explorer 8 to help developers debug and create Web pages. We also discuss Web Slices, Accelerators, and Search Suggestion – all of which are key new features in this latest release.

Topic 2: Developing on Microsoft Windows 7
Building applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance is a challenge that developers face every day. Innovative applications can greatly improve the user experience, empowering companies to differentiate their services and solutions. However, developers are increasingly asked to do more in less time, while also optimizing the power and performance requirements of their applications. The Windows 7 platform makes it easy for developers to create engaging, user-friendly applications by providing familiar tools and rich development features that allow them to take advantage of the latest PC capabilities. In this session we will explore the new Taskbar and Jump Lists, the Scenic Ribbon, file management with Libraries, and Windows Web Services among many other enhancements to the new operating system.

TechNet Events Unleashed – Supporting the Backbone of the Industry
Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, and Internet Explorer 8 represent both a wave of change and disruption to IT operations as well as an opportunity for IT professionals to have a big impact on their organizations.

Topic 1: Windows Server 2008 R2 – Optimize Your Time
Get a jump start on your peers with Windows Server 2008 R2 by joining us for this no nonsense technical session, where we will discuss the critical improvements in the next version of Windows Server. Some have argued that, given the impressive scope of new functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2, it should not be an “R2” release, but rather should be given a completely new name. They point to features such as Direct Access, Branch Caching, Live Migration, Powershell 2.0, and VDI that will help you cut down on the amount of time you spend doing mundane tasks, reduce end user frustration and support headaches, and give your mobile workforce a competitive edge through ubiquitous access to company data. There’s a good chance that by attending this session you’ll find a way to save time and money with Windows Server 2008 R2, and so you’ll get the time you spend with us back many times over.

Topic 2: Windows 7 – Maximize Your Potential
In designing Windows 7, the engineering team had a clear focus on what we call ‘the fundamentals': performance, application compatibility, device compatibility, reliability, security and battery life. Early reviews of Windows 7 seem to indicate that the choice to focus on the fundamentals is resonating well with many users and professionals. And, IT professionals will further benefit from the enhancements to manageability and security. You’ll also learn how your investments in testing and evaluating Windows Vista will pay off in the transition to Windows 7. Come see firsthand what all the buzz is about in this demo-intensive session where we explore the UI improvements, performance gains, and manageability enhancements in the next client operating system from Microsoft.

Topic 3: Internet Explorer 8 – Get Excited About the Browser Again
Internet Explorer is currently the most widely used browser in business, and while we’ve seen nice incremental improvements to IE in recent history, we haven’t seen as many truly earth shattering changes. Well, many agree that the next release of IE, Internet Explorer 8, provides the most compelling upgrade to IE in many years. In a typical day, users spend 2 hours or more per day in the browser, so significant improvements here can have tremendous impact on productivity and the way we work. The browser needs to be thought of in the same terms as an operating system—it has to be rich, robust, interoperable, easy to use and secure. Internet Explorer 8 is a browser that meets these needs and more for users, enterprises, IT professionals and developers alike. Come learn how the new improvements, too numerous to mention here, are driving many to get excited about the browser again.