Wade Wegner

I am excited to share that I’m taking the role of Technical Evangelist for the Windows Azure platform, focused on the Azure AppFabric.  I’m joining James Conard’s team that focuses on Windows Azure platform evangelism, working with David Aiken, Ryan Dunn, Zach Owens, and Vittorio Bertocci – truly an all-star team!  Oh, and I hope to spend a lot more time with Jack Greenfield, Clemens Vasters, Justin Smith, and everyone else on the AppFabric team!

So, what is the Windows Azure platform AppFabric (other than a mouthful)?

That’s one of the things I hope to de-mystify in my new role.  Expect to see me talking a lot about it in the future.

The best part about focusing on the Azure AppFabric is that it doesn’t restrict me to just one technology – because the Azure AppFabric is the glue that integrates and secures applications across the Internet, I’ll get to leverage the entire Windows Azure platform, various mobile platforms, web technologies, and almost everything else in our technology stack – not to mention interoperability with other platforms!

So, what does taking this role mean?

• I’m moving the entire family to Redmond, WA. Incidentally, want to buy a house in Glen Ellyn, IL?
• I hope to spend more time in Visual Studio than in Outlook.
• I’m going to spend a lot more time writing blog posts and recording screen casts.  Lots of really neat things to share.
• I’ll continue speaking at events like PDC, TechEd, and MIX, and hope to hit even more online and local events.
• I want to work with all of you to find new and interesting ways to leverage the Azure AppFabric.

I am leaving an amazing group of people here in Central Region DPE.  I want to thank everyone on my team – both local and extended – for making my time as an Architect Evangelist enjoyable and fulfilling.

See you soon in Redmond!

George Huey has done it again!  He has just published some significant updates to the SQL Azure Migration Wizard.

Previously, I’ve described the SQL Azure Migration Wizard as a tool that helps you migrate your SQL Server database into SQL Azure.  This is still true, but now, thanks to updates made by George Huey, you can also migrate from SQL Azure-to-SQL Server and SQL Azure-to-SQL Azure.  These are significant updates to the tool!

Please watch the following video for an updated explanation of the tool:

As I said, the updates made by George enable all the following scenarios for database migration …

• SQL Server-to-SQL Azure
• SQL Azure-to-SQL Server
• SQL Azure-to-SQL Azure

These last two updates are significant!  Take a look at this thread on the SQL Azure Migration Wizard codeplex site – the user had a scenario where they wanted to migrate a 1 GB database in SQL Azure into a 10 GB database in SQL Azure.

Please take a look at the SQL Azure Migration Wizard up on Codeplex, where you can download the source code and/or binaries.

Last week I presented at the Wisconsin Azure User Group for the second time, along with Clark Sell.  Our goal was to provide an overview of everything announced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009.  We made a ton of announcements, and I recommend you check out the Microsoft PDC website for more information, including videos and decks from all the presentations.

Shameless plug: watch my session on migrating applications to the Windows Azure platform with Accenture, CCH, Dominos, and Original Digital – Lessons Learned: Migrating Applications to the Windows Azure Platform.

While I was supposed to only spend twenty minutes talking about updates to the Windows Azure platform, I ended up spending over an hour.  There was too much information to share; here’s a short outline:

• Rebranding of the .NET Services as the Windows Azure platform AppFabric.
• Microsoft Codename “Dallas”, a content brokerage and discovery platform available as a CTP at commercial launch.
• Windows Azure platform integration with Microsoft Pinpoint.
• Enhanced service architectures (i.e. inner role communication, worker roles exposed outside the datacenter, etc.).
• Enhanced diagnostics in Windows Azure.
• Ability to use existing NTFS APIs to store data in durable drives in Windows Azure (called Windows Azure XDrive).
• Administrator privileges in the Windows Azure virtual machines.
• Deployment of pre-configured virtual machine images while still benefiting from the Windows Azure service model.
• User-selectable geo-locations for replicas of Azure storage.
• Secondary indices on Windows Azure tables.
• Content Delivery Network.
• Remote terminal server access to virtual machines.
• Tool for data synchronization called SQL Azure Data Sync, built on the Microsoft Synch Framework and ADO.NET Sync Services.
• Claims-based access control for REST web services through the Access Control Service.
• Commercial launch in and paid usage in February, 2010.
• Datacenter options in USA, Europe, and Asia.

Thanks to everyone for their patience – especially Clark – as I went on, and on, and on …

Don’t forget that you can request and redeem tokens for the Commercial Technology Preview (CTP) at http://windowsazure.com/.  This provides you free usages, with quotas, through February 1, 2010.

Here’s the deck I presented:

Thanks to everyone that attended – I had a great time!

It’s hard to believe that the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 is less than two weeks away.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that I sat behind the stage at PDC 2008 providing support for the RedPrairie keynote with Bob Muglia and spoke in a breakout session with Jack Greenfield on Multi-Enterprise Business Applications.  I’ll be back again this year, and I’m giving another talk – this time on lessons learned when migrating applications to the Windows Azure platform.

Rather than present this session entirely on my own, I decided to invite some of my customers to come and talk about their own experiences.  I am extremely excited that the following three customers will join me at PDC:

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer Company – CCH is a Wolters Kluwer company, based in Riverwoods, Illinois, providing tax and business law information and software solutions. The company has approximately 700 products for the United States market.

Accenture – Launched originally as the business and technology consulting arm of Arthur Andersen, Accenture is now among the world’s largest consulting organizations. It employs more than 180,000 people in 52 countries.

Domino’s Pizza – See how Domino’s Pizza is running Java and Tomcat in Windows Azure to run their eCommerce application.  Windows Azure provides high scalability to handle Super Bowl load, interoperability with different platforms and technologies, and the ability to integrate to on-premises resources.

Our intent with this talk is to make it highly interactive – translation: ask us questions!  We have a lot of information to share with you, and while we like to present, we’d much rather engage in a meaningful conversation.  Thus, we plan to quickly provide the following information for each of the solutions migrated:

1. Background on the application (i.e. what does it do? who uses it? what technology stack?).
2. The previous architecture (before the migration to Windows Azure) and some of the challenges this architecture presented.
3. The new architecture leveraging the Windows Azure platform.
4. The migration process: what was easy, what was hard, what worked, and what didn’t.

After providing these details, we want to open the session up for Q&A.

We know that we won’t answer all of your questions in the time allotted to us, so we plan to stick around after the presentation so that we can talk to you 1-on-1 and answer your questions.

It’s going to be a great PDC – I hope you’re there!  If so, be sure and come to our presentation on Lessons Learned: Migrating Applications to the Windows Azure Platform.