Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event today for developers.  It should prove to be a great way to learn about the Windows Azure platform and the capabilities it provides.

This should prove to be a great online session for attendees to learn how to build cloud-based applications using Windows Azure.  An added treat is that the session will be delivered by three of Microsoft’s foremost technology experts, Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich.  Having heard each of these gentlemen speak during my tenure at Microsoft, you won’t be disappointed.

Register now for this great event.  Oh yeah, the event is FREE!

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It was recently brought to my attention that I didn’t really make the big announcement (or “big” from my perspective   A little over a year ago, I posted about a project I worked on to redeploy a highly visible governent website built on top of SharePoint Products & Technologies and hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform.  This project served as a showcase for how you can deploy a massively scalable SharePoint architecture leveraging cloud computing (read more about the effort here)

I worked closely with the Microsoft Gold partner responsible for the implementation, Synteractive Coporation, and basically was able to do something unprecendented as it relates to deploying highly trafficked internet websites on the SharePoint platform.  Synteractive has a team of some incredibly talented folks and it was definitely a pleasure working with them to deliver this fantastic website.

While I knew that the Synteractive team equally enjoyed working with me, little did I know that they were eager to get me to join their team!   For anyone who knows me, they know that without a shadow of doubt, I’m probably one of the biggest advocates of Microsoft products and technologies and have had a long standing career in delivering Microsoft solutions, so much so, that I spent the past almost 6 years employed at Microsoft helping customers define new solution architectures that exploit best-in-breed Microsoft technologies.  Well, apparently, Evan Burfield, CEO of Synteractive, and members of the Synteractive team, knew this as well and wanted those skillsets within the walls of Synteractive.

So, all of this being said, my “big” announcement is that I accepted a position with Synteractive as their Public Sector Chief Technology Officer (been there since mid-October 2010)responsible for driving technology strategy and architecture within their Public Sector business, which constitutes a signifcant portion of the company’s business.  Synteractive has some tremendous opportunities to reshape how technology innovation can be infused with business strategy to deliver compelling solutions to some of the toughest business challenges and our vision and approach to tackling these challenges will be game changing.  While it was a difficult decision in leaving Microsoft, this opportunity still allows me to ensure we do our part to secure the success of the Microsoft platform and continue upon Synteractive’s mission of solving the really big problems in the world involving social and technological innovation.

Although my employment status has changed, the focus of this blog hasn’t.  As a matter of fact, we got so many hot opportunities going on at Synteractive, I can’t wait to start talking about them! So stay tuned!

Oh yeah, did I mention we’re STILL HIRING!

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Yesterday during our Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) being held in Washington, DC, Bob Muglia, President of our Server and Tools Division at Microsoft, announced the limited availability of our Windows Azure Platform Appliance.

Windows Azure™ Platform Appliance is a turnkey cloud platform that customers can deploy in their own datacenter, across hundreds to thousands of servers. The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware. This hardware will be delivered by a variety of partners.

The appliance is designed for service providers, large enterprises and governments and provides a proven cloud platform that delivers breakthrough datacenter efficiency through innovative power, cooling and automation technologies.

To learn more about what the appliance has to offer to your organization, head over to the Windows Azure Portal.

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One of the cool aspects of working at Microsoft is the opportunity to work on some fantastic projects.  It’s truly been a pleasure working on some great internet facing SharePoint websites that showcase the platform’s ability to service some of the internet’s most demanding websites and show it’s effectiveness as a web content management platform.

Today, the newly redesigned/re-architected Recovery.gov website that’s running completely on SharePoint Server 2007 was launched!

Recovery.gov is a government website designed to provide transparency in to how stimulus funds provided by the federal government are being allocated and spent on various stimulus related projects across the US.  On February 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, who’s main goals are to:

1. Create and save jobs
2. Spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth
3. Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending

To that end, SharePoint Server 2007 was chosen as the platform to deliver on the requirements for the Recovery.gov site and will deliver compelling features and functionality that provides deep insight into how stimulus funds are being spent.  Head on over to Recovery.gov and check it out!

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Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how to develop multi-tenant highly-scalable line-of-business application on Windows Azure Platform, built by a cloud ISV partner, Cumulux.

Cumulux is a Microsoft partner who’s built their business around  delivering solutions that leverage cloud computing and are keenly interested in making Azure their primary platform for delivering custom solutions for customers.

The reference application been published to the MSDN code gallery at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/riviera.  You can also see a brief video, architectural slides and related material here (http://cumulux.com/riviera.html)

The main tenants of Azure demonstrated by Riviera Include:

• Federated Security (using custom STS, .NET Access Control Service and Windows Live ID)
• Multi Tenancy (On demand provisioning, Tenant Management, extensible metadata)
• Extensibility  (using Silverlight 3, Workflow)
• Scalability (using Azure Queues , Async patterns)
• Flexible SLAs (using SQL Azure / Azure storage partitioning)

Head over to the MSDN Code Galleryand check this solution out.  It’s a great showcase of what can be done on the Windows Azure Platform.

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