Jeff Vilimek

Extending SaaS Platforms With Azure

There is a huge opportunity right now for business software developers to capitalize on the emerging "Software As A Service", or "Cloud" application leaders by building extensions and cooperating services. Microsoft's Azure cloud platform provides an ideal platform for these types of complimentary solutions.

Using Your Wordpress Site As An OpenID Provider

In looking to try out yet another social service this weekend, I was presented with the following choices for login: I never liked the idea of letting one of the major brands own my web identity so I’ve always set up a new ID on every site I’ve every gone to. As a result, I manage [...]

RFI: PC and Mac Based Virtualization

This post is the third in a series on virtualization: Introduction, Platform (Servers and PCs), Desktop, Application, and Cloud A special case of platform virtualization is the ability to run a server or desktop operating system in a virtual environment on a PC or Mac. Running Windows on a Mac via Parallels is a key example and represents one of the common uses of this. This article describes other uses and gives an overview of top vendors' offerings.

RFI: Platform Virtualization and Virtual Servers

This post is the second in a series on virtualization: Introduction, Platform (Servers and PCs), Desktop, Application, and Cloud

Of my four rough categories of virtualization, platform or server virtualization is usually what comes to mind first. I use the term platform since this can be done in special situations with PC operating systems, not just server, but I'll cover those in my next post.

Why Twitter Fails and Facebook Wins as a Social Network

Twitter may very well be the foundation of the real-time web and possibly an enabling component to a future semantic web. However, it has become clear to me that it is not a very good social network. This post explains why.

Great Business Podcasts

Here's a quick review of business related podcasts that I've been listening to recently. Harvard Business Review IdeaCast, Wall Street Journal Podcasts, Business Week Podcasts, and 37signals.

Custom Applications in Microsoft’s Clouds

Microsoft provides at least two solution platforms in the cloud that I'll talk about here to address some recent questions I've gotten. The first is Windows Azure, which is Microsoft's premier cloud application platform. The second is Dynamics CRM Online, which I see showing signs of developing into a special case cloud-based business application environment of its own.

RFI: Virtualization

This post is planned to be the start of a series of posts on the various types of virtualization, helping to address some questions I’ve been asked recently on the topic. I’ll start things here with a high level view of virtualization in general and will do a deeper dive into each area in future [...]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SalesFUSION Webinar

My partner David Micksch is going to be co-hosting a webinar on Technoligence’s behalf with SalesFUSION. We’ve been working a lot with SalesFUSION lately to add deep marketing capabilities to Microsoft CRM. This post provides invitation details and links to the webinar registration.

SharePoint in Plain English

The Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog pointed out this video recently that takes a stab at explaining SharePoint to a business user in everyday terms. I've been challenged in trying to do the same thing with business contacts who haven't encountered SharePoint before mostly due to the vastness of what SharePoint offers and encompasses today. This post outlines some of the key capabilities of SharePoint that make it interesting to businesses.