OakLeaf Systems: Windows Azure and Cloud Computing Posts for 1/6/2010+

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Windows Azure and Cloud Computing Posts for 1/6/2010+

Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database and related cloud computing topics now appear in this weekly series.

Moved updated articles previously marked • on 1/8/2010 to Windows Azure and Cloud Computing Posts for 1/8/2010+ because this issue ran too long with them included.

Note: This post is updated daily or more frequently, depending on the availability of new articles in the following sections:

Azure Blob, Table and Queue Services
SQL Azure Database (SADB)
AppFabric: Access Control, Service Bus and Workflow
Live Windows Azure Apps, Tools and Test Harnesses
Windows Azure Infrastructure
Cloud Security and Governance
Cloud Computing Events
Other Cloud Computing Platforms and Services

To use the above links, first click the post’s title to display the single article you want to navigate.

Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform published 9/21/2009. Order today from Amazon or Barnes & Noble (in stock.)

Read the detailed TOC here (PDF) and download the sample code here.

Discuss the book on its WROX P2P Forum.

See a short-form TOC, get links to live Azure sample projects, and read a detailed TOC of electronic-only chapters 12 and 13 here.

Wrox’s Web site manager posted on 9/29/2009 a lengthy excerpt from Chapter 4, “Scaling Azure Table and Blob Storage” here.

You can now download and save the following two online-only chapters in Microsoft Office Word 2003 *.doc format by FTP:

Chapter 12: “Managing SQL Azure Accounts, Databases, and DataHubs*”
Chapter 13: “Exploiting SQL Azure Database's Relational Features”

HTTP downloads of the two chapters are available from the book's Code Download page; these chapters will be updated for the November CTP in January 2010.
* Content for managing DataHubs will be added as Microsoft releases more details on data synchronization services for SQL Azure and Windows Azure.

Off-Topic: OakLeaf Blog Joins Technorati’s “Top 100 InfoTech” List on 10/24/2009.

Azure Blob, Table and Queue Services

Jim Nakashima’s Walkthrough: Windows Azure Table Storage (Nov 2009 and later) of 1/7/2010 updates his earlier tutorials for changes to table storage that occurred in the last 15 months or so:

This walkthrough covers what I found to be the simplest way to get a sample up and running on Windows Azure that uses the Table Storage Service. It serves as an introduction to both Windows Azure cloud services as well as using table storage. Although there is a wealth of information out there on Windows Azure - I try to tie together a lot of that information for folks of all levels to consume.

I originally wrote this walkthrough well over a year ago for our very first public release of Windows Azure at PDC ‘08.

Much has changed in the last year, and this post is an update to that original post that will work with our PDC ‘09 and v1.0 release of the Windows Azure Tools.

So what's changed from a dev perspective? Overall not a lot, mainly because table storage leverages ADO.NET Data Services and that is the core of how you work with Table Storage. The way you connect to Windows Azure Storage has changed, namespaces, class names have changed and there have been a few other tweaks.

To be clear, this post is not trying to be comprehensive or trying to dive deep in the technology, it just serves as an introduction to how the Table Storage Service works. Also, please take a look at the Quick Lap Around the Tools before doing this walkthrough.

Note: The code for this walkthrough is attached to this blog post.

After you have completed this walkthrough, you will have a Web Role that is a simple ASP.NET Web Application that shows a list of Contacts and allows you to add to and delete from that list. Each contact will have simplified information: just a name and an address (both strings).

SQL Azure Database (SADB, formerly SDS and SSDS)

Jas Sandhu explains Creating PHP CRUD Apps with SQL Server on your Server or in the Azure Cloud in this detailed post of 1/7/2010 to the Interoperability@Microsoft blog:

Do you know PHP and have data in a Microsoft SQL Server database? Well we have an application wizard that will make your lives a little easier. The project, open source and hosted on CodePlex, will help you build a simple CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application that works against Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Azure and Windows Azure Storage. The application is installable on Windows and supports data navigation, paging, sorting and UI customization using simple CSS.

Here’s what you will need, a working PHP web server, a connection to the internet, a SQL Server 2005 or higher. You can also use the free version. “SQL Server Express” that is available for download and installable as part of the Web Platform Installer. As an added bonus you can also work against your Windows Azure Storage or SQL Azure database. Windows Azure tokens are available by registering for Windows Azure Services and redeemable at http://windows.azure.com

To begin download the wizard, open the.zip and install on your PC. There is a handy deployment guide that helps you get started. You will simply need to set up a database account with a username and password. Install the SQL Server 2005 Native Client DLL and the SQL 2005 PHP Driver 1.1 which will give you a .dll for the appropriate version on PHP you are running (5.2 or 5.3, thread-safe and non). Copy the appropriate .dll to your PHP extension directory (e.g. C:\php\ext) and add a reference to your PHP.ini file (e.g. C:\php\php.ini) to call the .dll, (e.g. extension=php_sqlsrv_xx_yyy.dll)

Jas continues with a detailed tutorial.

Stephen Forte begins his SQL Azure Lessons Learned: Building a Commercial Product with SQL Azure Support post of 1/7/2010:

As you may know Telerik has built into most of its products support for Windows and SQL Azure. While at the PDC last November, Ben Riga interviewed me on what it was like to build a commercial product on top of Azure. I give a sneak peak at how we developed the software and how we leveraged SQL Azure. I talk about some of our pain points as well as where it was easy. The video is here, complete with my cell phone’s battery dying in the middle of our interview!

Ben Riga offers another angle on his interview with Steve in SQL Azure Lessons Learned: Telerik of 1/6/2010.

Tobin Titus began his Poll: Where would you categorize SQL Azure? on 1/7/2004:

I own the sites for all of the data stack on MSDN. I’m trying to categorize the SQL Azure technology where it makes the most sense to put it. I can obviously categorize this under SQL Server (as it currently sits), or I can move it to the Azure development center. Obviously I can link to it from either place, but I’m trying to decide where it belongs in the overall scheme of things. Your thoughts are appreciated. Vote, comment, do whatever you want, but please speak up and retweet this (link above) so others can too!

David Ramel’s Mining the Cloud article of 1/6/2010 for Visual Studio Magazine’s Data Driver column provides a guided tour of Microsoft Codename “Dallas.” David begins:

Imagine the world's information at your fingertips. Imagine being able to slice and dice it as you choose. Imagine you're a sales exec who, with just a few clicks, can pull up reports on consumer spending and demographics, mapped to your sales areas -- or your competitors' sales areas -- just about anywhere.

And the best part is that you don't have to invest in your own data warehouse, with all the accompanying costs and hassles. You can just pull the data out of the cloud.

This will soon be a reality as Microsoft's Windows Azure platform goes commercial, and vast repositories of public and private data are made available via subscription through Microsoft's Dallas project. These data feeds will consist of everything from AP news headlines to business analysis services to topographic maps to global U.N. statistics on just about anything you can think of.

I've been fascinated with Dallas since it was announced at the recent PDC 09 with much fanfare. I keep thinking of all that information out there and what people will be able to do with it. Maybe the yottabytes of government statistics we've been paying for will actually be put to good use.

If you haven't checked out Dallas, you should. It's still free through the end of the month. …

David continues with more details of his “Dallas” exploration.

AppFabric: Access Control, Service Bus and Workflow

Eric Nelson discovers the Windows Identity Federation Training Kit for Windows Azure in this 1/7/2010 post:

When I joined Microsoft in 1996 I worked with a certain Hervey Wilson before he headed off to join the product group in Redmond. Last week I was skim-watching a bunch of Azure content from PDC and who should show up but Hervey talking about using WIF with Azure to enable Single Sign-On for applications. Whic is odd – as back in the late 90s I was talking about Single Sign-On and the BackOffice Logo. I digress.

TBH I skimmed through Hervey's session rather too quickly, got a little confused, jumped over to Vittorio Bertocci’s WIF introductory talk at PDC and then … gave up. I concluded that I needed to look at the whole WIF thing another time – and ideally in a more structured way than just watching a PDC session :-)

I first ran across Hervey when I was working on XML Web services.

Jackson Shaw’s The rising claims tide post of 1/6/2010 to his Identity Management & Active Directory Reality Tour Travelblog begins:

Felix Gaehtgens over at Kuppinger Cole blogged about a new webinar series he is hosting on claims. Claims technology is rising in importance as more and more developers and companies start to externalize - or liberate - authentication and authorization from their applications. If you aren't familiar with claims then I would suggest checking out Felix's webinar series.

I briefly laughed while I was reading Felix's description of the first webinar in his series - kicking off on January 14th - which is about Sun's OpenSSO platform. One of the topic areas mentioned is "OpenSSO's proprietary SDK". It was funny to see "open" and "proprietary" in the same sentence.

Despite the laugh, Felix does make a great point. We do need standardization in this area. As Felix states: "Of course I have a side agenda here as well. What I am hoping is that in the end this will promote interoperability – we’re sure that there are some similarities in APIs and services, and hope that vendors will standardise – as users learn more about about these, they’ll put vendors under pressure to standardise their APIs and services." …

Jason Clark takes a swipe at Windows Azure’s delay of billing for the Azure AppFabric until April in his Microsoft's 'almost ready' Azure set for April delivery? (We ain't done 'til we're done) post of 1/6/2010 to The Register:

Microsoft plans to start fully charging customers for use of its planned Azure cloud until the spring, it seems.

The Windows Azure platform team has said it will be April when Microsoft starts charging for the components that comprise Azure’s AppFabric - the Service Bus that connects applications and services, and the Access Control system for federated log in by users.

"SLAs will take effect when charges begin to accrue in April, 2010," the Azure platform team wrote here. …

The Azure AppFabric team also is changing names of the eAppFabric elements again.

See Architect Innovation Cafe announces a 1/15/2010 Securing REST-Based Services with Access Control Service Webcast by Michele Laroux Bustamante in the Cloud Computing Events section.

Live Windows Azure Accounts, Apps, Tools and Test Harnesses

Eric Nelson’s My top 5 Azure sessions from PDC 09 post of 1/7/2009 contains these links:

Tips and Tricks for Using Visual Studio 2010 to Build Applications that Run on Windows Azure: Lots of great tips for developing for Azure. There is also a companion blog post.
Windows Azure Blob and Drive Deep Dive: Blobs have evolved significantly since day one. This session shows all.
Windows Azure Tables and Queues Deep Dive: The companion session to #2. Also excellent level of detail.
Developing PHP and MySQL Applications with Windows Azure: I need to watch again – but this makes for a fascinating watch, especially if you still believe Windows Azure = Web + Worker Roles.
Development Best Practices and Patterns for Using Microsoft SQL Azure Databases: SQL Azure = subset of SQL Server – but with a few bits to trip you up.
Developing Advanced Applications with Windows Azure: Ok, I said 5 but it would be very wrong to miss out this great session from Steve!

Eric is now working full time as an Azure evangelist.

Ben Riga continues his case study series with Windows Azure Lessons Learned: Quest Software of 1/5/2010:

In this episode of Azure Lessons Learned I chat with Dmitry Sotnikov, new product research manager with Quest Software. Quest, as you probably know, is a huge global ISV focused primarily on Systems Management software.

Quest is an early adopter of the Windows Azure platform. They’ve been working on a new offering for their various management business. They’ve built out an extensive services framework as well as a few service offerings on that framework.

Channel 9: Windows Azure Lessons Learned: Quest Software.

Quest has hundreds of solutions for the enterprise. These are your typical on-premises that would normally require hardware and people to install and maintain those solutions. The Quest OnDemand project Dmitry is working would extend those offerings to the small and medium business by making many of the solutions available as subscription services. The first 3 offerings are Active Directory Recovery Manager, InTrust Load management, and SharePoint Site Administrator. These are now available in beta. …

David Aiken recommends that you Upgrade your Windows Azure CTP Account Right Now in this 1/5/2009 post:

You can now update your CTP accounts for Azure to paid commercial subscriptions.

You should do this right now!

Why:

You will still be free until the end of Jan

You will be able to see your usage charge

You will avoid any unnecessary hick-ups when CTP accounts are made READ ONLY on Feb 1st.

Find out more by visiting the Windows Azure Blog, see the offers page on offer page, or follow the links from the developer portal.

Jerry Huang observes “We didn’t mention exactly how to acquire a Windows Azure account since it was invitation only” in his Backup to Windows Azure Storage in 3 Easy Steps post of 1/6/2009:

Azure was in Public Preview for quite some time now. In our previous posts about Windows Azure, we went directly into how to map a network drive to Azure Blob Storage and start setting up backup tasks to Azure Storage.

We didn’t mention exactly how to acquire a Windows Azure account since it was invitation only.

Yesterday, Windows Azure was transitioned from Public Preview mode to Full Production mode. It took me a while to understand how to setup the Azure account and start using the Azure Storage. I will share the steps here in this article.

Hopefully, in 3 big steps, you will be using your Azure Blob Storage from Windows Explorer and smooth sailing thereafter.

Jerry continues with detailed descriptions of the three steps.

tbtechnet’s Windows Azure Offers Made Easy: Develop and Test on Windows Azure at No Charge post of 1/5/2010 adds some needed detail to the Windows Azure and SQL Azure account upgrade process, including these important items:

Credit or debit card requirements. A valid credit or debit card number and billing address are required to sign up for the Offers. This is so Microsoft may validate your billing information and avoid service disruption if you subsequently choose to proceed to start using Windows Azure.
Please note, you will be notified at your Windows Live ID email when you reach 75% of your no charge capacity. [Emphasis added.]

Sean Kelley reports the availability of a New Code Sample: Database Sync - SQL Server and SQL Server Express in this 1/5/2010 post:

With the recent release of Sync Framework 2.0, we have added the ability to target SQL Express on the client. For many developers, there are a handful of features such as stored procedures, XML support, and advanced profiling capabilities that are must-haves. For certain scenarios, these needs outweigh some of the benefits provided by SQL Compact, such as friction-free deployment and an extremely lightweight footprint. This sample demonstrates how you go about leveraging SqlSyncProvider for both the client-side database and the server. Also note that the sample leverages WCF as the transport layer, although a 2-tier architecture is fully supported as well. Special thanks to Dong Cao for writing this sample. Dong is one of our test leads and has been working in the sync space since the WinFS days. Enjoy!

The sample can be found here.

Lori MacVittie asks Is Your Application Infrastructure Architecture Based on the Postal Service Delivery Model? in this 1/6/2010 post that’s subtitled “If it is, you might want to reconsider how you’re handling security, acceleration, and delivery of your applications before users “go postal” because of poor application performance.” Lori begins:

Sometimes wisdom comes from the most unexpected places. Take Jason Rahm’s status update on Facebook over the holidays. He’s got what is likely a common complaint regarding the delivery model of the US postal service: the inefficiency of where postage due is determined. Everyone has certainly had the experience of sending out a letter (you know, those paper things) and having it returned a week or more later with a big stamp across it stating: Returned – Postage Due.

As Jason points out, the US postal service doesn’t determine whether postage may be due or not until the package arrives at its destination. If the addressee isn’t willing/able to pay that postage due, the package is of course returned via the delivery service, which incurs round-trip costs of transportation and handling at every point along the way.

If this sounds anything like your application infrastructure architecture, then you might want to reconsider how you’re handling the delivery of applications and where you’re applying policies that may affect the delivery process. …

Her It’s 2am: Do You Know What Algorithm Your Load Balancer is Using? post of 1/5/2010 begins with the claim:

The wrong load balancing algorithm can be detrimental to the performance and scalability of your web applications. When you’re mixing and matching virtual or physical servers you need to take care with how you configure your Load balancer – and that includes cloud-based load balancing services.

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Windows Azure Infrastructure

Dan Morrill reports Smaller Firms trending towards Cloud Computing in this 1/7/2010 post to the Cloud Ave blog:

If you are in Information Technology (IT) at all, then Cloud Computing is going to be one skill you need to start working on yesterday. As more companies start seeing the economics behind cloud computing, and as computing moves towards a more utility format, this is one skill that if you do nothing else in 2010, is the one you need to learn.

There are basically three cloud computing companies at this point, Amazon, Microsoft and Rack Space. Most of my experience is in Amazon AWS, EC2 and other systems. Microsoft I am still waiting on my “token” so I can spin up a system or two over there. Rack Space I looked at, but the pricing model at the time (2009) was more expensive than Amazon. It would be worth your while to know at least two of these systems, and odds are likely that Amazon and Azure skills will translate rapidly over to Rack Space which does have a dent in the market and is doing well. Amazon and Azure though are two distinctly different environments from each other so both are worth knowing while Rack Space looks more like a standard VM than anything else. …

For less than 30 dollars a month (less than your Smartphone/Iphone service plan) you can spin up an Amazon server and go play with it. Learn the setup, options, security, and management systems that exist within the AWS or even Azure system. Amazon hands down beats Azure in ease of getting set up. It has been over a week now and I am still waiting for my Azure Token before I can even set up an account with them. Amazon is simply fork over a credit card and go, plug and play simple. If Azure is going to compete they need to be plug and play simple – fork over a credit card and go. No one is going to wait three weeks for an account to be “approved”. That is probably the biggest downside to Azure, the amount of time it takes to get into the system and get started. Rack Space and Amazon are very quick in setting up an account and getting you started. The problem is that Azure is going to be a “hot skill” in two years, there are already 27 jobs on dice that have Azure in their title or job description, I will put good money that by the end of 2010 that number will be in the hundreds. [Emphasis added.]

Cloud computing is a skill you need, it is not currently part of very many college plans, nor is it something that has a technical certificate behind it. The best thing you can do is learn this on your own and have some fun with it, this is a skill that will benefit your career.

Note that there’s no delay in signing up for paid Windows Azure and SQL Azure accounts. See my recently renamed How to Create and Activate a New Windows Azure and SQL Azure Account or Upgrade an Existing Account post updated 1/7/2010 for more details on obtaining an instant Azure account.

Eric Nelson on 1/7/2009 requests readers to complete his Cloud Computing and Windows Azure Platform Survey - just 9 optional questions!:

I am keen to get a feel for the current awareness and desire around Cloud Computing and specifically the Windows Azure Platform.

Hence I have created a short and hopefully very quick to complete survey:

Just 9 questions

All questions are optional

No need to type – just click away!

Please complete even if you have ruled out Cloud Computing – it won’t take you long in that case :-)

Please take 2 minutes to complete the survey. Thanks in advance and yes, I will share the results.

Kevin McLaughlin’s Windows Azure: Microsoft's Big Bet article of 1/6/2010 for Channel Web begins:

Windows 7 has put the swagger back into Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s stride. But with Windows Azure, the cloud computing platform that will debut as a paid service on Feb. 1, Microsoft faces a new type of challenge: showing the industry that its deep software expertise can translate into success in the Wild West frontier of cloud computing.

Microsoft, which has spent more than $1 billion to build gigantic data centers to run Azure, faces formidable competition from companies like Google and Amazon that have already become synonymous with delivering services over the Internet. In addition, startups are cropping up left and right to grab their piece of the cloud computing pie. All of which suggests that Microsoft will have to get paying customers onto the Azure platform as quickly as possible to stake its own claim in the cloud.

To make this happen, Microsoft has built Azure to support open source programming languages like PHP, Ruby On Rails, and Python. The idea is to lure developers that haven't traditionally been Microsoft's biggest fans, and it's a bold move from a company that trying to show the industry that it's serious about interoperability.

While this might seem like a tiger making a pledge to become vegetarian, solution providers believe it will help Microsoft get companies onto Azure more quickly. …

It's hard not to look at Azure and not be impressed with the ambitious effort it represents. While it's not a life or death bet for Microsoft, it certainly represents the software giant's awareness -- some might say obsession -- of the industry imprint that Google has made in a very short time. …

Steve Clayton asks Azure data centres open Worldwide? on 1/6/2010 quoting Dom Green:

Dom Green in our Services group here in the UK noticed yesterday that Azure seems to have opened for business in Asia and Europe as of yesterday. Good news.

According to a post in the SQL Azure forum, SQL Azure isn’t yet available in the North Europe (Dublin or Amsterdam?) data center yet, but will be shortly.

David Linthicum reports How cloud computing changed internal IT in 2009 in this 1/5/2009 post to InfoWorld’s Cloud Computing blog: “Cloud computing may have more of an impact as an influence on how we do IT, even for those who may never use a public cloud computing provider”:

Over the holidays, I finally had some downtime to think about the impact that cloud computing has exerted on existing corporate and government IT. 2009 was clearly the year of the cloud, but most of the work was around small projects with just a few larger and more strategic cloud computing implementations tossed in. Did anything really change?

Strangely enough, cloud computing has turned out to be more about reviewing and modernizing internal IT than about how internal IT systems can be extended to the clouds. More simply put, we now try to replicate the value of cloud computing by modernizing and reimplementing our existing IT architectures using cloud computing concepts, such as self-provisioning, virtualization, elasticity, multitenancy, and yes, SOA. …

Phil Wainwright’s 16-page Redefining Software Platforms - How PaaS changes the game for ISVs white paper of 10/12/2009 for Intuit didn’t make my blog when published. You can download the full PDF file here.

Cloud Security and Governance

John Moore’s Privacy & Security of Personal Health Information post of 1/7/2010 to the Chilmark Research blog announces:

On Saturday, Jan. 10th, I’ll be moderating a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show’s (CES) Digital Health Summit. The distinguished panel that includes executives from Dossia, Kaiser-Permenante, Microsoft and Walgreens will address the topic: Who Will you Trust with Your Health Data? …

and concludes:

… Maybe the belief in absolute privacy and security of PHI is a fallacy.

As we move to digitize PHI through the adoption and use of EHRs by physicians and hospitals it is inevitable that we will see more breaches. Hopefully, the benefits that we, as a nation and citizens, accrue from the adoption and use of such digital records to better manage our health and coordinate health among our healthcare team will far outweigh the risks we will be taking in the potential compromise of our PHI.

K. Scott Morrison ruminates On the Death of Design-Time Service Governance in this 1/7/2010 post:

Practically on the anniversary of Anne Thomas Manes now-famous SOA-is-Dead pronouncement, David Linthicum suggests we convene the vigil for design-time service governance. Dave maintains that cloud technology is going to kill this canonical aspect of governance because runtime service governance simply provides much more immediate value. Needless to say, rather than a somber occasion, Dave’s started more of a donnybrook. I guess it’s about time to get off of the bench and join in the fun.

The incendiary nature of is-dead statements often conceal the subtle but important ideas behind them. Dave’s declaration is no different. What he’s really suggesting is that cloud will rapidly shift the traditional priorities with respect to services governance. In the big SOA era (before Jan 1, 2009), design-time governance was king. It fit nicely into the plan-manage-control discipline underpinning a large enterprise-scale SOA effort. And to support this, tool vendors rushed in and offered up applications to facilitate the process. Run time services governance, in contrast, was often perceived as something you could ignore until later–after all, on-premise IT has reasonably good security and monitoring in place. The technology might be old and the process a little byzantine, but it could tide you over. And if any internal staff were caught accessing services they shouldn’t be you could just fire them.

The cloud inverts this priority. If you deploy even one service into the public cloud, you must have runtime service governance in place. That one service needs to be hardened and protected as you would a DMZ-based application. You must have continuous visibility into its operation from the moment you turn it on. Run time governance simply cannot be put off. …

Cloud Computing Events

Architect Innovation Cafe announced a Securing REST-Based Services with Access Control Service Webcast by Michele Laroux Bustamante on 1/15/2009 at 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM PST:

Abstract: The Access Control Service (ACS), part of Windows Azure platform AppFabric, makes it easy to secure REST-based services using a simple set of standard protocols. In addition to enabling secure calls to REST-based services from any client, the ACS uniquely makes it possible to secure calls from client-side script, and enables federation scenarios with REST-based services. This webcast will provide a tour of ACS features and demonstrate scenarios where the ACS can be employed to secure REST-based WCF services and other web resources. You’ll learn how to configure ACS, learn how to request a token from the ACS, and learn how applications and services can authorize access based on the ACS token.

Event ID: 1032438747

Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032438747&Culture=en-US

Bill Zack, Microsoft Developer Evangelist, announces NYC Code Camp Saturday March 6th: Call for Papers!:

The NYC developer community is proud to announce our 4^th (sort of annual) Code Camp to be held on Saturday, March 6, 2010, from 8:00 AM until 6:30 PM. It will take place at the Manhattan Microsoft office on 6th Avenue across the street from Radio City Music Hall. We’d love for you to submit a session.

We have our call for speakers open from now until February 5^th.

To apply for a speaking slot, first please register as a speaker here: http://tinyurl.com/nycspeaker. …

Forrester’s Infrastructure & Operations Forum 2010, subtitled “Back in Black: Planning & Executing Your Post-Recession Initiatives,” will take place at the InterContinental Dallas Hotel, Dallas, TX, on 3/17 through 3/18/2010.

The Track S: Spotlight Track: Cloud Computing track claims to be “targeted for those attendees solely interested in content focused on Cloud Computing,” but the session titles don’t bear out that claim:

March 17, 2010

1:45 p.m.-2:30 p.m.: Redesign Infrastructure And Operations For The New World
Rachel Dines, Researcher, Forrester

3:30 p.m.-4:15 p.m.: The Evolution Of Client Devices And Delivery Strategies
Benjamin Gray, Senior Analyst, Forrester

4:30 p.m.-5:15 p.m.: The Future Of Storage
Stephanie Balaouras, Principal Analyst, Research Director, Forrester
Andrew Reichman, Senior Analyst, Forrester

March 18, 2010

1:45 p.m.-2:30 p.m.: The Next Era Of Virtualization Is Coming — Are You Ready?
Andrew Reichman, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Galen Schreck, Principal Analyst, Forrester
James Staten, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Christopher Voce, Analyst, Forrester

2:45 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: Choosing Your Next-Gen Enterprise Computing Platform
Brad Day, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Other Cloud Computing Platforms and Services

Chris Hoff (@Beaker)’s To Achieve True Cloud (X/Z)en, One Must Leverage Introspection post of 1/7/2010 observes:

Back in October 2008, I wrote a post detailing efforts around the Xen community to create a standard security introspection API (Xen.Org Launches Community Project To Bring VM Introspection to Xen

The Xen Introspection Project is a community effort within Xen.org to leverage the existing research presented above with other work not yet public to create a standard API specification and methodology for virtual machine introspection.

That blog was focused on introspection for virtualization proper but since many of the larger cloud providers utilize Xen virtualization as an underpinning of their service architecture and as an industry we’re suffering from a lack of visibility and deployable security capabilities, the relevance of VM and VMM introspection to cloud computing is quite relevant.

I thought I’d double around and see where we are. …

I plan a follow-on blog in more detail once I finish some interviews.

Michael Sheehan announced on 1/5/2010 Distributed Data Management Solution, Objectivity/DB, Now Available on GoGrid’s Cloud Computing Platform:

Objectivity/DB is available for free evaluation for 60 days. Pay-as-you-go pricing is also be available at pennies per hour. Details are available to registered users through Objectivity, Inc.’s sales support team.