inside out

Building on Azure: Persistent Systems

Charles — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Working with their huge data set of up to 2000 nodes, Persistent Systems is pushing the computation up to the cloud when there is a spike or a high need. This particular use case is beneficial because they don’t have to manage the data—because Azure handles it for them—and they are better able to handle the varied load. Harsh Thakur, Manager, Technology Solutions Group, Persistent Systems

and Sandeep Maurya, Module Lead, Persistent Systems explain....

Buidling on Azure: OriginDigital

Charles — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Mark Richards, VP Business Development and R&D.

Microsoft Partner OriginDigital is a video applications service provider that uses Azure for dynamically scaling video transcoding, allowing them to access markets all around the world. Azure allows them to easily scale up and handle spikes when needed.

Building on Azure: Siemens

Charles — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Siemens, a Microsoft Partner, is using Azure for a remote service use case. By using Azure, Siemens doesn’t need to create a new IT department to manage clusters all over the world: Azure spins up the instances. This allows Siemens to only worry about computation, and Microsoft addresses the hardware, people, and IT costs. Gerald Kaefer, Siemens Architect, explains...

Building on Azure: KBB.com

Charles — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:29:00 GMT

Kelley Blue Book uses Windows Azure for a cloud-bursting scenario, eliminating their need for a backup data center in times of high traffic. This has saved them $100,000 per year. John Parker, Solution Architect, Kelley Blue Book, explains...

InfoStrat.VE: Integrating Virtual Earth 3D into WPF and Surface Applications for Mere Mortals

keydet — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:16:00 GMT

Virtual Earth 3D has many applications, but until recently has only been practical on the web with a JavaScript interface. WPF applications could not use the full potential of Virtual Earth 3D without requiring a WPF wizard and some XAML magic due to Win32 interop limitations.

Information Strategies (InfoStrat) has the solution. They created a WPF / Surface control, InfoStrat.VE, and are sharing with the community on CodePlex. This control provides a WPF interface for the Virtual Earth 3D control, complete with data binding for camera control and WPF-based pushpins. All Win32 restrictions (air space control, no rotation or visual brush) are eliminated. Microsoft Surface is also supported.

Watch the interview to learn the history behind the control, see it in action, learn how to get started, and even contribute back to the community.

The video is a little long, so we have provided a timeline below in case you want to skip to specific sections:

00:00 Introduction / Background

10:18 DEMO: Surface application using InfoStrat.VE

15:00 CodePlex project / code walkthrough

38:15 DEMO: Surface application using advanced capabilities in action

43:08 Wrapup / community call to action

SnagL: Visualizing Government Data using Silverlight

keydet — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:45:00 GMT

SnagL, from Berico Tailored Systems, is a thin client collaborative link analysis tool, which can be integrated with any existing tool or data repository. Advanced analytics, like clustering and ranking, enables users to intuitively navigate massive amounts of data through a thin client in a web browser.

SnagL is used by U.S. Government customers to help visually analyze, determine relationships in, and make decisions based on data. Watch the interview with members of the team to learn about the product, see a demo of it in action, and how it uses Silverlight to deliver compelling data visualizations that go beyond what you might expect from a browser based application. The team also gives you a history of their early adoption of Silverlight, evolution of SnagL, and how Silverlight enabled them to “see things you wouldn’t normally see just looking at the data.” They also talk about how Silverlight gave them a level of performance and visualization in the browser unmatched by their previous approaches. Finally, the team shares their excitement to start incorporating capabilities coming in Silverlight 3.

Esurance: Developing for the Mobile Web

Charles — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Deepak Srinivasan, Director of Systems Engineering, and Paul Sykes, Development Manager (both from Esurance) join Raj Ramabadran to talk about the new Esurance Mobile Services offering. In this video, Deepak and Paul talk about some of the Microsoft technologies and Software + Services strategy that has helped them accelerate Esurance's software delivery cycle for the mobile applications-- providing consumer-friendly functionality in less than 6 weeks.

MetraTech: Polymorphic Iterators, Concurrency, CRM and MetraFlow

Charles — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Donald Trump recently praised Metratech’s business model embraced by their customer, ACN, who appeared on the Celebrity Apprentice.

Metratech’s own David Blair, Director of Product Architecture, discusses how Microsoft is both a partner and a customer of Metratech. David shares how they leverage the “Infobus Pattern” architecture and apply a micro-architecture approach with polymorphic iterators to provide dynamic CRM and other valuable tools. David gives a sneak preview of MetraFlow their product for addressing highly concurrent systems with a cluster enabled model. MetraTech Corp. offers an innovative approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care that enables organizations to embrace change without compromise.

The flagship product, MetraNet, is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 17 currencies and 52 countries.

Wonderware: Synchronizing Production, Industrial Operations and Business Objectives

Charles — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:53:00 GMT

Wonderware, a business unit of Invensys plc, is the market leader in real-time operations management software. Wonderware solutions enable companies to synchronize their production and industrial operations with business objectives, obtaining the speed and flexibility to attain sustained profitability. Wonderware has 540,000 license installations at 125,000 plants in 181 countries. Wonderware has development centers in the US, India, EMEA and Asia.

Wonderware, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner has developed a Unified Communications solution to address the communication challenges of the enterprise, such as collaboration barriers, information delay, unwanted communications, inefficient coordination and customer inquiries. Technologies utilized were Microsoft Office Communicator, MS OCS, MS VS 2008, supporting 64 bit hardware, WIN 2008 and Vista. The benefits derived from the solution include knowledge transfer, escalation of emergency situations, diagnostics and troubleshooting, remote information query and control and integration of the work force anytime, anywhere. The video exemplifies the application of the solution at a power utility company.

Visit the Microsoft ISV site for more information about software companies working with Microsoft.

Intelligent Light: Computational Fluid Dynamics and High Performance Computing

Charles — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:21:00 GMT

Before a plane flies for the first time, in the sky, it has flown many thousands of virtual miles in distributed clusters of computation cells, calculating non-linear differential equations of fluid dynamics.

Intelligent Light, with its Fortran and Python writing programmers, represents a typical ISV in the Microsoft HPC partner community with their flagship application having long been available on UNIX and Linux HPC clusters. Intelligent Light provides an application called FieldView that takes massive data from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications and visualizes that data for engineers who design F16 fighters and Formula One cars. Because of the long compute times required, FieldView is often run in parallel on High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters to return quicker results. In this video, Intelligent Light founder Steve Legensky demonstrates the complex mathematics used by CFD engineers and talks about how HPC has evolved in his industry over the past 20 years.

Steve is awesome.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information about ISVs working with Microsoft.

Northrop Grumman: Innovating for the War Fighter with Microsoft Surface

keydet — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:29:00 GMT

Northrop Grumman partnered with the Microsoft Technology Center and the Microsoft US Public Sector Developer and Platform Evangelism team to build a Proof Of Concept (POC) application that would demonstrate how Microsoft Surface could enhance mission planning, rehearsal, and post mission knowledge collection for military command and control decision making. Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

Watch the interview to see a full demo of the POC. The interview highlights Northrop Grumman’s learning experiences on the POC especially with regard to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Surface SDK, the designer/developer workflow enabled by WPF and the new thinking behind Natural User Interfaces with an emphasis on User experience.

Infosys: Data Integration in the Cloud

Charles — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:42:00 GMT

Infosys Technologies Limited has created a data integration hub which is built on top of Azure platform. Principal Architect of Infosys, Jitendra Pal Thethi, demonstrates how the hosting platform of Windows Azure can provide a solution for closer collaboration with your company’s customers and partners.

Infosys has a global footprint with over 50 offices and development centers in India, China, Australia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the UK, Canada and Japan. With over 103,000 employees. Infosys' service offerings span business and technology consulting, application services, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering, independent testing and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information about ISVs working with Microsoft.

Teaching developers: A peek inside the inner workings of InnerWorkings

Charles — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:08:00 GMT

InnerWorkings is an independent software company whose mission is to help developers learn to write better code faster on the .NET framework. Developers learn by solving real coding challenges and getting instant feedback on their solutions in Visual Studio. An online platform supports the product offering -- help is provided through MSDN articles, Safari Books Online, and a dedicated Personal Tutor service. In addition, they have developed a catalog of ‘practice based’ content showcasing Microsoft technologies (including pre-RTM) such as ASP.NET, Silverlight 2, Object Oriented Development, Generics, WCF, WPF, WF, .NET 3.5 (LINQ, new features in C# 3.0 and VB 9), AJAX, Enterprise Library, Visual Studio Team System, TSQL, and Web Services. Watch the interview to hear more about their plans to develop learning content for Dynamic Data (Astoria) as well as Cloud computing (Azure) and more.

When you’ve finished watching the interview, visit this special offer with free Silverlight 2 training, developed just for the Channel 9 audience. You can download 1 hour of free hands-on coding challenges on the MediaPlayer control and data binding in Silverlight 2 from InnerWorkings. Check it out!

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to independent software companies and Microsoft.

Rockwell Automation: FactoryTalk

Charles — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:29:00 GMT

Rockwell Automation helps manufacturers succeed and grow with industrial automation control and information solutions. From stand-alone, industrial components to enterprise-wide integrated systems, Rockwell Automation solutions apply across a wide range of industries and in some of the most demanding manufacturing environments.

The FactoryTalk suite extends the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture™ by providing an information tier

of software applications and services for production and performance management. Tight integration with the

Rockwell Automation Logix control platform, as well as connectivity to third-party and legacy systems can help deliver a seamless flow of high-fidelity data across your enterprise. Check out the interview to learn more about how Factory Talk provides flexible, scalable, and extensible solutions to a wide variety of today’s manufacturing challenges.

PreEmptive: Feature Monitoring, Usage Expiry and Tamper Defense in Visual Studio 2010

Charles — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:12:00 GMT

PreEmptive Solutions produces the Dotfuscator and DashO instrumentation and obfuscation product families and the Runtime Intelligence application analytics service. With more than 3,000 corporate clients, 40,000 registered installations in 100+ countries and inclusion with Microsoft’s 6,000,000+ Visual Studio seats, PreEmptive Solutions has become the clear choice for every organization that is serious about source code protection, application security and IT governance.

Here, Gabriel Torok of PreEmptive sits down with us to discuss what's new in Visual Studio 2010 with respect to PreEmptive's best in class tooling features that will ship as part of VS 2010. Dotfuscator Community Edition™ (CE) will be included in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Dotfuscator CE, which has been included with every version of Visual Studio starting with Visual Studio 2003, prevents the reverse engineering of .NET applications. The Visual Studio 2010 version, renamed Dotfuscator Software Services Community Edition™, has been extended with instrumentation capabilities including tamper detection and defense, feature level application monitoring and automatic time limits on .NET application use.

Blue Star Infotech

Charles — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:46:00 GMT

The week of PDC, Channel 9 was busy making lots of connections with ISVs. Here’s a great interview with Mehul Shah, the Senior Solutions Architect for Blue Star Infotech (BSI). BSI specializes in providing product services encompassing the entire product lifecycle through its global delivery model. The company has extensive experience in working with ISVs—from product design and development to implementation and rollout—and has devised its own methodologies for reverse-engineering and application migration. Through its Microsoft Center of Excellence, it helps ISVs revitalize their products using latest Microsoft Technologies like the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005. For its product implementation expertise on the Microsoft platform, BSI has many achievements, one of which was being awarded the "Best Dynamics Partner of the Year" by Microsoft for 2006. Check out this PDC interview with Mehul Shah to hear more about their technologies and their experience at PDC ‘08.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information about ISVs working with Microsoft.

E-conomic: ERP as SaaS

Charles — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

e-conomic is Danish ISV developing an ERP SaaS solution using ASP and ASP.NET. In this Inside out cast, Senior Developer Ole Hyldahl Hansen takes us around common challenges of integrating ASP and ASP.NET and still maintain and access state. Besides technology challenges, it’s interesting to see how an ERP system can be exposed as a SaaS solution. API documentation are here and WSDL is exposed here.

Composite: Innovating CMS with .NET 3.5

Charles — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Composite is a Danish ISV who has developed a CMS entirely on .NET 3.5. Composite positions their CMS as being developed for end users with a marketing background, enabling those to efficiently run a website, not requiring a developer in the process. In this interview you will get a good look into how Composite relies heavily on LINQ in order to make a flexible and dynamic data store. In the end, this make up a very dynamic model, giving enormous flexibility for the end user, and a very easy to use programming model for developers at Composite. Mikkel Sørensen (Composite Evangelist) and Lead Dev Martin Ingvar Kofoed Jensen takes you on the guided tour.

Planet Technologies – Award Winning Systems Integrator

Charles — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Planet Technologies, an international IT consulting and services company, has been awarded the Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year for 2008, the fourth straight year they have received this. How do they do it? As a company with a 100% focus on the deployment, architecture and integration of Microsoft technologies, Planet Technologies is a systems integrator. They specialize in taking the different pieces of the Microsoft technology stack, combining and augmenting them to deliver business solutions to a broad range of customers. Watch this interview with Andy Norris, Planet Technologies’ Vice President, where he talks more about their award winning relationship with Microsoft.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

CoroWare Technologies: Mobile Robotics Integrator

Charles — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:01:00 GMT

CoroWare Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of CoroWare, Inc. (CROE.OB), is a systems and mobile robotics integrator. They’ve recently been awarded Microsoft Certified Gold Partner status. CoroWare has made their mark on Microsoft platforms through developing software and solutions for mobile service robotics and business automation. Here, we meet David Hyams, CTO for Coroware and learn more about how this company is shaping the future through technology developments to improve and simplify our lives.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

ESRI: Green Computing

Charles — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:34:00 GMT

ESRI, a Global ISV partner, is pushing the envelope on technology adoption and environmental issues. In this interview, I talk with Senior Product Managers Rob Elkins and John Baleja about technology advancements, development needs and what the Microsoft partnership means to ESRI. Through personal experiences, customer examples and a unique environmental perspective, Rob and John give us a look into the world of geospatial analysis and the importance of Microsoft technologies in their customer’s applications. SQL Server 2008 (new spatial types), Windows Server and Client, Visual Studio 2008 (AJAX), WPF/Silverlight and Virtual Earth are highlighted in this discussion. As is the importance of the balance between managed and native code.

ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner dedicated to helping people to make better decisions that affect the world around us. In “an age of Software plus Services”, ESRI and Microsoft give application developers, analysts and consumers a platform that adapts to varying needs. Many examples are cited, including land use planning, home site selection, police in-vehicle crime statistics and drive time analysis.

More information
www.microsoft.com/isv/esri
www.microsoft.com/environment

SQLSoft+: Teaching the Microsoft Platform

Charles — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:52:00 GMT

SQLSoft+ is all about training for technologies Microsoft is releasing to the world. They are a Microsoft Certified Partner, and thrive by putting themselves in front of the Microsoft train. Often their work requires building training about a product before it is released. How do they do it? SQLSoft+ was the first IT training company to gain the designation Microsoft Partner Solutions Center (MPSC) Sponsor Partner. In addition, they also work with other IT companies to develop trainings for their software offerings. Here, we meet Mark Scott, CTO for SQLSoft+ and learn more about how this small company is helping developers embrace new technologies at rapid speeds.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

Citrix - Understanding Machine Virtualization

Charles — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

Citrix is all about virtualization. They have a suite of tools that enable IT departments to virtualize almost everything. Citrix is a Microsoft Certified Partner and, to some extent, a competitor. How does this Partner Competitor relationship work? Microsoft is very interested in virtualization technologies and with the advent of our hypervisor technology, HyperV, and application virtualization software, SoftGrid, you can bet that we'll compete hard with other virtualization vendors.

Here, we meet Simon Crosby, formerly CTO of XenSource now working as the CTO of Citrix Systems (NSDQ: CTXS)' virtualization and management division(Citrix purchased XenSource). We discuss the relationship between Microsoft and Citrix, the complexities of building scalable, sercure, reliable and performant virtualization technologies and the future of virtualization. It's a very interesting conversation and Simon is quite the conversationalist. Enjoy.

Autodesk, SQL Server 2008, and Spatial Data

Charles — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:45:00 GMT

We recently sat down with Peter Rieks, who is the product manager for Autodesk’s Geospatial products. Autodesk is a global ISV known for design technology, allowing their customers to visualize, simulate, and analyze designs. While you may know them by their flagship product, AutoCAD, they provide leadership in manufacturing, media and entertainment, and architecture/engineering/construction markets. It’s fascinating to find out how they have created a constructive platform to utilize spatial data in an open environment that impacts how people design buildings, roads, and physical infrastructure. Autodesk’s main theme is “See it Before it’s Real,” and you’ll glimpse how they are delivering that vision, and the impact of SQL Server 2008 in this market.

You can also find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/isv/Autodesk/default.aspx.

Danny Kim: On FullArmor and Partnering with Microsoft

Charles — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:12:29 GMT

When FullArmor took up residence in the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center, their relationship with Microsoft rose to a whole new level.

This is a candid interview with FullArmor CTO and founding partner, Danny Kim, as he discusses Group Policy security software, how FullArmor partners with Microsoft beyond the norm, and what insights Danny has for other ISVs who are making their best efforts to work with Microsoft, and perhaps not generating the inroads they’d like to be seeing. Danny’s conversation with us highlights several inventive ways to take your relationship to the next level.

FullArmor is the first company to create and deploy altruistic viruses as a means of securing systems. Very interesting indeed!

Enjoy!

Low res download file.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.