rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
August 21, 2010 at 5:31 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0
PDC10 is coming up in late October. I signed up for it knowing it was Azure-centric, but I am glad to see that there is also a .NET track. I hope this will include non-Azure server side technologies (e.g., EF, AppFabric for Windows Server and the like). Of course these other pieces all have their place (or counterparts) in Azure, but I don’t think I’ll be using Azure directly over the next year.
PDC’s are quite valuable to attend (access to Microsoft product teams, exposure to their roadmap, opportunity for light-bulb” moments, etc). That said, I may decide not to go after the session list is released – a simple balancing of priorities.
Anyway, I’ll likely keep my registration – I would actually love it if Microsoft could change my plans about Azure this October.
Are you going? Or not? If so, please share your reasons.
Tags: .NET, Microsoft, PDC, PDC10
November 10, 2009 at 10:37 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
I’m going to PDC 2009 November 17th – 19th.
Aside from releasing Azure, I expect it will be mostly about VS 2010. I’m sure there will be a “reveal” or two to get excited about too. At least I hope so.
The best part of conferences is meeting new people and catching up with friends and colleagues.
If you are going too and want to meet up, let me know.
email me: robert at rwandering dot net.
Tags: Microsoft, PDC, PDC09
November 4, 2008 at 11:27 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Last Wednesday, while still at PDC2008, I did a quick podcast with Colin Steele of the Search IT Channel. From his introduction:
In this podcast, Microsoft developer Robert Anderson checks in from the Microsoft PDC 2008 in Los Angeles. Anderson, the chief technology officer for Microsoft partner Digipede Technologies in Oakland, Calif., says Windows Azure has a leg up on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, the Google App Engine and other cloud computing platforms. But when it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft has to do a lot more to move on from the “perceived failure” of Windows Vista.
Listen or download from here.
Tags: Azure, Microsoft, PDC, PDC2008, podcast, Windows7
October 31, 2008 at 4:01 pm · Filed under .NET
Mary Jo Foley asks, Why ‘Azure’? She uses Anand Iyer’s answer (from his post):
Azure is a vibrant, dynamic and uplifting color. Azure is also linked to the image of the blue sky and, by extension, ‘the cloud.’
I think there is a more direct association between azure and the Windows cloud:
- Clouds are opaque.
- If you put a window in a cloud, you can see through to the clear sky.
- The clear sky is azure.
So, Windows in the Cloud == Windows Azure
Tags: Azure, Clouds, PDC, PDC2008, Windows
October 28, 2008 at 11:02 am · Filed under .NET
David Treadwell announced the Live Framework at the PDC2008 this morning. Live Services is the collection of Live Messenger, Contacts, etc., plus Live Mesh. Live Framework is the set of APIs to program against Windows Live Services.
This is very cool stuff. There are two things here that I think are significant:
- A programmable synchronization platform.
- An application framework for installing/running applications across multiple devices.
This is very exciting stuff, but now back to my old saw.
I really want to see Live Framework go beyond Windows Mobile devices to every major mobile platform. This means the Apple, RIM, Google, Nokia platforms, etc.
My main reason? A major value proposition of Live Framework is phone device support. Duh. But, I don’t want to invest my time and data in Live Mesh applications if it comes with a lock-in to the Windows Mobile platform.
Given the discussion at a partner meeting yesterday about Windows Mobile, I think this will be a pretty common feeling.
Microsoft may not be able to make this happen, of course, but I hope they really try.
BTW: We interviewed David on Gillmor Gang 04.25.08 specifically talking about Live Mesh.
Tags: Live Mesh, Microsoft, PDC, PDC2008
October 28, 2008 at 9:46 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Recently I lauded the new name in my post, Windows 7? Right on! I led that post with
First of all let me say that I’m not that excited about the “Windows” part of Windows 7. I’m sure that will change when I see it later this month at the PDC.
A Microsoft guy not involved with the Windows team emailed me to tell me that his experience with Windows 7 is that it performs dramatically better.
That got me interested. And now I’ve seen it at PDC2008. Am I excited?
Well, not really. With Windows Vista I allowed my love for shiny new objects to drive some of my decisions. Windows 7 does have plenty of new — and cool — features. Some that struck me: some real improvements in Windows management (finally), create and mount VHDs, bitlocker on thumb drives, boot from VHDs, better multi-monitor and high DPI support, multi-monitor remote desktop,
These are all good things that make Windows better, but what I really care about is that it perform better and that the features can be used without killing performance. To this end, they have worked on reducing Windows memory footprint, reduced disk I/O for indexing, better power management, increase boot speed, device readiness and responsiveness
If Windows 7 enhances my productivity through performance and stability, then I can get excited.
Tags: Microsoft, PDC, PDC2008, Windows7
October 27, 2008 at 11:42 am · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0
Microsoft’s long awaited cloud platform has finally been unveiled here at PDC 2008. Late to the Internet, Microsoft hit it hard. Late to the cloud, Microsoft is doing the same with Windows Azure. Happily, this will put an end to all the guessing about what Zurich, Red Dog, biztalk.net, SSDS, Live Mesh, etc., actually are.
Of course, now begins the discussion of how all these pieces fit together.
This is not a simple approach like Amazon’s EC2 or Google App Engine. Not to trivialize either, but they are certainly easier to understand. Try explaining them to the proverbial grandmother — no problem, especially if you leave out virtualization and pythons 
(preemptive comment: I know AWS is much more than EC2 and that bigger and better things are coming from Google).
Regardless, the Microsoft Azure is multi-faceted. In typical Microsoft fashion, there is a lot for a developer to choose from:
- Azure Storage, Management, and Compute. Run WCF/ASP.NET based services, with work queues and data storage.
- Microsoft .NET Services, nee biztalk.net (wrote about here). This gives you an Internet Service Bus, Access Control, and Workflow Services. Messages and workflow in the cloud connecting other cloud and enterprise offerings. Very big deal.
- Microsoft SQL Services, nee SQL Server Data Services or SSDS. Eventually a relational model in the sky, currently not too different from Azure Storage.
- Live Services: Not too much detail on this today, but this is clearly what was “Live Mesh”: a rich synchronization framework, “live operating environment” for writing applications to across the Web and on user’s devices.
- Windows Live (Live Office, Live Sharepoint, Live Dynamics CRM, etc). In-cloud applications extensible by partners and users with in-cloud and in-premises solutions.
It all does fit together, and will be of immediate value to developers. As Marc Jacobs of Lab49 said to me afterward,
We could make use of all of these services today.
Damned straight. It is the openness of this platform, the ability of developers to mix and match the different components, and to do it between the cloud and in-premises solutions that makes this such a winner.
This last point is an important one. Microsoft is in a unique position to help enterprise IT bridge to the cloud. While I don’t think Amazon and Google will cede that market to Microsoft, their current offerings aren’t a natural fit.
Taking this all together — not forgetting Microsoft’s leading developer productivity story — it looks like a home run to me.
Tags: .NET, Azure, Microsoft, PDC, PDC2008, Reddog, Zurich
October 19, 2008 at 11:20 am · Filed under .NET
I’m going to the PDC.
I am mostly excited to hear about how all Microsoft’s cloud + parallel programming + distributed computing story all fits together. And hopeful that it really does all fit together.
I’m interested in hearing more about Windows 7, but I’m not that excited about it.
As in all conferences, 99% of the value is in meeting and hanging out with people. If you are going too and want to meet up, let me know.
email me: robert at digipede dot net.
Tags: Microsoft, PDC, PDC2008
October 13, 2008 at 10:12 pm · Filed under .NET
First of all let me say that I’m not that excited about the “Windows” part of Windows 7. I’m sure that will change when I see it later this month at the PDC.
I have a long history as a Windows user. In fact, I have Windows 1 sitting on my desk. Actually, these are installation floppies for the Microsoft Windows Operating Environment.
I have disliked the Windows product naming convention since Windows 95. That should have been Windows 4.0 with some extra designation to distinguish it from NT. Since then, the naming of Windows versions has been absurd.
I’m thrilled that the next one is called Windows 7. I hope this is the end of the trend of seemingly arbitrary names interspersed by release years. If the subsequent name isn’t 7.x or 8, however, this will actually just have been worse then calling it 2010.
Tags: Microsoft, PDC, Windows, Windows7
May 26, 2007 at 8:15 pm · Filed under .NET, Web 2.0
Robert Scoble had a great post on the PDC and what is going on at Microsoft. I liked it so much I included most of it here with my comments.
The PDC stands for “Professional Developer’s Conference.” It happens only when Microsoft knows it’ll have a major new platform to announce. Usually a new version of Windows or a new Internet strategy.
So, this means a couple of things: no new Windows and no major new Internet strategy this year.
I agree there is no new strategy this year and that is disappointing; however, Silverlight is huge and this year, and if not an Internet strategy it is an Internet developer strategy.
Cleary Mix07 was the place to be — I would have made sure I went if I had known that PDC was going to be cancelled.
Some other things I’m hearing about the next version of Windows? There still is a ban on .NET code in core parts of Windows. They aren’t getting enough performance yet from .NET to include code written in it inside major parts of Windows. This is a bummer, because .NET is a lot easier to write than C++ and letting Microsoft’s developers write .NET code for Windows would unleash a bunch of innovation.
I fully agree with you here — a definite bummer. Yet I don’t agree about the performance of .NET. Certainly there are parts of Windows that need to be unmanaged code; but Digipede has a slew of customers using .NET for computation and getting terrific performance from it. Face it, this “not performant yet” argument is used by people at Microsoft from kernel / device authors (OK) to the Office team (what?). It is hard to separate the good arguments here from just plain bias and inertia.
The person who told me this (who works at Microsoft) told me .NET still takes too long to startup and load into memory and because Windows is now being compared to OSX they can’t afford to ship components that would slow down Windows.
What? If this were baked into the OS, couldn’t they do a better job of sharing this startup cost (i.e., doing it once with reuse)?
This gets right back to my posts about how the Windows .NET API is actually dead (see these: WinFx).
It also means that Ray Ozzie’s team probably doesn’t have anything dramatic to announce yet and they aren’t willing to have live within the bounds of a forcing function like the PDC (PDC forces teams to get their acts together and finish off stuff enough to at least get some good demos together).
This is the “no Internet strategy this year” part. Yup. Definite bummer.
Some other things I’m hearing from the Windows team? That they are still planning out the next version of Windows. So, I don’t expect to see a beta until 2008 (probably second half of the year, if we see one at all) and I don’t expect to see a major new version of Windows to ship until 2009.
Microsoft says it won’t be as long between releases of the OS now. I think, though, we won’t see a major new version released until Windows till 2010.
Anyway, this is sad cause I was hoping to see Microsoft make an all out push for developers this year.
Well, I think they have. Their developer story is getting better and better every quarter. I think they should have had the PDC anyway and continued to flog the .NET 3.0 and new .NET 3.5 stuff particularly Silverlight.
What do you think it all means? Am I reading too much in between the lines?
Maybe you are. I think the timing for the PDC was definitely wrong for Microsoft. The Microsoft Internet strategy we are really waiting for has to do with Office / other applications and Internet services. When this is unveiled, I think it will have less to do with developers than warranted at a PDC. Ironically that should have been announced at Mix, but will have to wait for the next one.
Will Microsoft unveil a new Internet strategy at Mix08? I bet.
Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, .NET3.5, Digipede, Microsoft, MIX07, PDC, Scoble, Silverlight, WinFx
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