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.
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.
I often hear people ask if SharePoint can be used to build public web sites. I’m currently working on yet another public facing web site built on SharePoint, so the answer is a definitive yes. More interesting questions are when and why you would use SharePoint over some other, more traditional infrastructure.
I started to compile [...]
I’ve been wallowing in Dynamics CRM from Microsoft lately as we continue to build up our CRM service line at Technoligence. I continue to be impressed with what Microsoft has done with CRM and the flexibility they built in to the underlying platform. Beyond putting together a first class CRM solution for the core use-cases [...]
About a week ago, Microsoft announced the SKU (editions/versions) list for Windows 7. There will be six SKUs of Windows 7. It sounds complex and probably will be perceived that way in general but they claim to be focused on marketing two middle SKUs (“Home Premium” and “Professional”) with the remaining four SKUs directed at [...]
Quick update: Ever have trouble finding obscure menu commands in the new Office 2007 Ribbon? My partner David just showed me an excellent little add-on for the Office Ribbon that comes from the Microsoft Office Labs team.
Office Ribbon Search: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx
This adds an extra tab with a search box into the ribbon bar for Word, [...]
(this post is a continuation of my post on Midwest Microsoft Developer User Groups)
Angela Binkowski, one of the stellar team of developer and architect evangelists for Microsoft in the Midwest, pointed out last night that I needed more “Midwest” in my post listing Midwest user groups. She’s helped out by adding a few more of [...]
(Update 1/30/2009: This post was continued in an update on additional IN, MI and WI groups here.)
Let me start by saying thanks to the Microsoft Developer and Partner Evangelism Team for the Chicago MSDN Developer Conference this past week. The event was well attended, the content was solid, and the food was good! The event [...]
