Azure Cloud on Ulitzer

In our previous articles, Introduction to SQL Server 2012 and Windows Azure Overview, we made references to Microsoft’s SQL Azure service. In this article we will take a closer look at its main features in more detail. SQL Azure is a relational database solution with the capability to support both Windows Azure and on-premise applications with minimum latency. It is considered a managed service and it’s offered by Microsoft to allow you to build applications without concerning yourself about the storage they’ll use. Being a cloud service, SQL Azure gives you all the benefits of the cloud including: The hardware and software that support the SQL database are all managed by Microsoft Patching and maintenance are also managed by Microsoft High availability and fault tolerance are guaranteed by an SLA (Service-level agreement) Per usage billing and the availability to s... (more)

UX – Monitor the Application or the Network?

Last week I flew into Las Vegas fully suited and booted in my big blue costume (no joke). I’d been invited to speak in a vendor debate on User eXperience (UX): Monitor the Application or the Network? NetScout represented the Network, AppDynamics (and me) represented the Application, and “Compuware dynaTrace Gomez” sat on the fence representing both. Moderating was Jim Frey from EMA, who did a great job introducing the subject, asking the questions and keeping the debate flowing. At the start each vendor gave their usual intro and company pitch, followed by their own definition o... (more)

Accela Delivers Market's First Cloud-Based Mobile Hub to Ease Administration of m-Government Apps

SAN RAMON, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/16/12 -- Accela, Inc., the leader in solutions for government-citizen interaction, today introduced the Accela Mobile Hub™, a cloud-based service that streamlines the development and management of productivity and citizen-engagement mobile and social apps for government built around the company's Accela Automation® enterprise platform. The Accela Mobile Hub includes the local government market's first cloud-based mobile server administration portal, and a developer portal featuring a range of application programming interfaces (APIs), software ... (more)

This Week in Cloud

Watch CloudViews Unplugged Watch the latest edition of CloudViews Unplugged – a monthly video blog analyzing the top cloud news stories. Cloud News Can Google Apps unseat Microsoft Office and Exchange? This CIO article shares insight from the CIO of New England Biolabs, which recently conducted proof-of-concept testing with Google Apps for Business. While New England Biolabs decided to stick with its Outlook/Exchange Server set-up and plans to transition to a hybrid solution that adds the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365, the article also highlights why organizations should consid... (more)

Amazon Enters Microsoft’s Turf of .NET PaaS

The PaaS competition heats up with Amazon adding ASP.NET support to its AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment and MS SQL Server to the Amazon RDS offerings. This is a significant announcement from Amazon as it draws the battle lines with Microsoft which is aggressively positioning Windows Azure as the .NET Cloud offering to the developer community. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) was launched in 2009 with the initial support for MySQL. Amazon has been regularly investing in RDS by bringing the high availability features like Multi-AZ deployment and performance enhancements... (more)