Cloud and the Consumer – Part II

The first part of ‘Cloud and the Consumer’ series discussed how to move bookmarks to the Cloud and keep them synchronized across browsers. In this article, I will tell you how to keep your calendar, contacts and email in sync with your phone by moving them to the Cloud. Did you ever lose your phone and also lost the valuable contacts that you saved along with it? Do you want to use...

Microsoft, Please Don’t Kill Live Mesh!

I am a huge fan of Live Mesh. I started using Live Mesh (during my stint at Microsoft) even before it was announced to the public. Live Mesh was announced at Mix08 in April 2008 amid fanfare by Ray Ozzie. Ozzie passionately positioned Live Mesh as a “single device mesh”. The Sync culture was brought into Microsoft by Ray Ozzie. Ozzie first outlined his vision for mesh like...

Data on the Cloud – Amazon S3

Storage is one of the key resources offered as a Cloud Service. By moving data to the Cloud, there are quite a few benefits. Some of them include: 1. Illusion of unlimited storage – Unlike hosting, Cloud storage will virtually give you access to unlimited storage. You will never run out of space on the Cloud. 2. Better scalability – Most of the Cloud storage offerings have a...

Top 5 Things Microsoft Should Fix in Azure

It’s been just over a week since Microsoft has started to offer the commercial subscription of Windows Azure. As a Cloud enthusiast, I quickly signed up for the Introductory Special subscription and downloaded the required tools to deploy my first app to the Cloud. I had access to Windows Azure since PDC08 and I deployed quite a few apps to test the functionality and features of the platform....

Video Tutorial-Your First Cloud App on Windows Azure

Click Here to Read the Overview of Windows Azure...

Getting Started with Windows Azure

With Windows Azure’s commercial availability starting from Feb. 1st, I want to provide a quick introduction to Windows Azure Platform. This article will be followed by many more articles that will drill down into the concepts of the Windows Azure Platform. At a high level, Windows Azure Platform has 4 key services in it. The first one is Windows Azure which is the Cloud OS from Microsoft....

Cloud and the Developer

Every time I present at a developer forum or a technical conference, I get asked by the audience on how to get started on the Cloud. The mindset and the perception has been that the Cloud is the next .NET or Java. Unfortunately, some of the well known training institutes and freelance trainers in India started to position Cloud Computing as the Java of the new decade. This artificial hype is...

Cloud and the Consumer – Part I

I am going to start a series of posts around how Cloud can be realized and experienced by consumers. There is a misconception that Cloud is meant only for hardcore technical folks like developers, administrators and IT managers. Though it may not be positioned as Cloud or Software as a Service (SaaS) to consumers, most of the traditional applications will be eventually delivered through the...

Next on The Cloud9 Show – Data as a Service

Having successfully delivered the first series, ‘Demystifying The Cloud’ on The Cloud9 Show, I am now working on the next series  called ‘Data as a Service’. This series will focus on the concept of Cloud Storage. Unlike the last series, this will have demos and code to explain the concept. I plan to cover storage offerings from Amazon (S3, Simple DB, SQS, RDS),...

Who Will Win The Cloud Computing Battle in India?

Till now I have discussed various technical aspects of the Cloud. Going forward I will also cover certain business aspects related to the Cloud. In this article, I want to analyze the opportunity for the Cloud vendors in India. We will first take a look at the ecosystem, the opportunity map and then the potential for the Cloud service providers. It may be too early to decide who would actually...