O.C. Azure User Group August 2009 Meeting on Migration to the Cloud

The next Orange County Azure User Group meeting will be held Thursday 8/27/09 6-8pm at Quickstart Intelligence.

At the August meeting we'll be looking at how to migrate Enterprise applications over to the Azure cloud computing platform. We'll discuss and show what's involved in moving web sites, web services, databases, and security to the cloud. We'll also discuss the business aspects of migration to the cloud including ROI.

As usual, we'll also have pizza, beverages, and give-aways.

RSVP at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=140025

Azure ROI Calculator

I'm pleased to announce the availability of Neudesic's Azure ROI Calculator, available online at http://azureroi.cloudapp.net. This is a beta tool we are soliciting feedback on.

The ROI Calculator lets you estimate what your monthly cloud computing charges will be on the Azure Services Platform. It also helps you determine what your return on investment will be if you migrate an application over to the cloud.



Let's take it for a spin, starting with the Monthly Cloud Charges tab (shown above). You can do a lot of different things with the Azure Services Platform. Estimate your consumption in each of the areas you plan to use--hosting, database, storage, service bus, and communication in or out of the data center. You can find explanations for each of these topics by clicking on a heading. Daily, monthly, and yearly costs are computed and displayed and update automatically as you make changes to the parameters. If you want to see some example configurations, click on the Small, Medium or Large radio buttons.

The Migration and ROI tab (shown below) helps you determine your return on investment for migrating an enterprise application over to the cloud. To use this, first enter the monthly costs of operating your current enterprise application. Next, estimate the cost and amount of months to revise your software for the cloud. The final parameter is your monthly cloud costs. This value is automatically set from the Monthly Cloud Charges tab so you don't have to enter it. The ROI calculator will plot your running costs during and after the migration period and will determine your break even point and monthly savings going forward.




At the next Azure User Group meetings across the country we'll be discussing the rates and other recent Azure announcements and we'll show you how to compute your cloud computing costs and ROI.

OC Azure User Group Meeting Thursday 7/23/09 on Azure MEBAs and Multi-Tenant SaaS

The next Azure User Group meeting in Orange County is this Thursday, July 23, 6-8pm at Quickstart Intelligence, 16815 Von Karman Ave. Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92606

The topic for this month's Azure User Group meeting is Multi-Enterprise Business Applications (MEBAs), a new class of applications the cloud is ideally suited for. We'll also look at SaaS considerations and weigh single-tenant vs. multi-tenant approaches.

In addition we'll share the recent Azure announcements, including rates.

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=139688

Hope to see you there!

Azure User Group Meeting in San Diego 7/09/09 on MEBAs and SaaS

The next Azure User Group meeting in San Diego is this Thursday, July 9.

The topic for this month's Azure User Group meeting is Multi-Enterprise Business Applications (MEBAs), a new class of applications the cloud is ideally suited for. We'll also look at SaaS considerations and weigh single-tenant vs. multi-tenant approaches. Hope to see you there!

As usual, we're meeting at AMN Healthcare at 6pm and we'll have pizza and beverages.

RSVP link: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=139350

AMN Healthcare
12400 High Bluff Dr, #100
San Diego, CA 92130

Azure Developer Challange Grand Prize Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Azure Developer Challenge. The judges awarded the grand prizes to Kevin Rohling for Impulse and Laith Yousif for Twtri. Check them out.

However, this is not quite over. There's still a community-chosen winner. Voting remains open till 6/29. My entry is Joint Venture.

Speaking on Azure Design Patterns at So Cal Code Camp

I'll speaking at So Cal Code Camp this weekend in San Diego. My talk is on Azure Design Patterns, Saturday at 2:30.

This session will present Design Patterns for cloud computing on the Azure platform. Azure provides oodles of functionality that range from application hosting and storage to enterprise-grade security and workflow. Design patterns help you think about these capabilities in the right way and how they can be combined into composite applications. We'll cover design patterns for hosting, data, communication, synchronization, and security as well as composite application patterns that combine them. We'll be doing hands-on code demos of a number of composite applications, including a grid computing application.

Azure Design Patterns Web Site

Vote for Me!

My entry in the Azure Developer Contest is Joint Venture, a business collaboration application. One of the contest winners is selected by community voting, so if you're reading this before 6/29/09 I'd appreciate it if you would check out the app and consider voting for it, which only takes 5 seconds. Simply go to the contest site, select the app you want to vote for (my app is listed at the bottom of the voting list), and click Submit Vote. Regardless of who wins, it's good to see app building going on for Azure.