Mario Meir-Huber

To understand Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform, it's necessary to understand how the Microsoft Datacenters work. This article provides an overview of how Microsoft Designs their datacenters and why the Generation 4 Datacenters are so revolutionary. The Building of Datacenters Microsoft has been building data centers for a long time. One of the best-known services Microsoft offers is Windows Update, which delivers updates as part of their content delivery network all over the world. But this is not the only product Microsoft's Datacenters are famous for. Other important products are Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail and Windows Live ID. Windows Live Messenger is one of the largest IM software and Hotmail is a frequently used e-mail software. Microsoft authorizes millions of users every day with their Live Services, which is used for Hotmail, Messenger and ... (more)

Windows Azure Series - Roles Offered by Windows Azure

Part 1 of the Windows Azure Series provided an introduction to Windows Azure, and Part 2 provided a look inside the Windows Azure datacenters. Part 3 will discuss the Windows Azure Roles and the Development Environment. The last one is especially important; we will focus on it for the next couple of articles and look at the API as well. This article will focus on the "Compute" part of Windows Azure. The Roles Explained Windows Azure currently (April 2011) has three different roles. In case I didn't mention it before, Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service offering. Therefore, ... (more)

NoSQL – The Trend for Databases in the Cloud?

SQL seems to be somewhat old fashioned when it comes to scalable databases in the cloud. Non-relational databases (also called NoSQL) seem to take over in most data storage fields. But why do those databases seem to be more popular than the "classic" relational databases? Is it due to the fact that professors at universities "tortured" us with relational databases and therefore reduced our interest - the interest of the "new" generation for relational databases? Or are there some hard facts that tell us why relational databases are somewhat out of date? I was at a user group mee... (more)

My Top Five Cloud Predictions for 2011: Mario Meir-Huber

1. We will face the challenge to new Software Architectures Cloud Computing Platforms such as Windows Azure, Amazon EC2 and Google AppEngine give us a lot of options to built great software on top of these plattforms. The main challenge we face is that current Software Architectures might not be ready for these challenges. We need to rethink how we built our software in terms of elasticity and scalability. 2. Microsoft will present Windows 8 with huge Cloud Support Microsoft will soon present Windows 8. Cloud Computing will be integrated in the system and the new OS will focus on th... (more)

Windows Azure Series – Introduction to Windows Azure

I've done a Windows Azure Series together with Mario Szpusta, Software Architect Evangelist at Microsoft Austria on Windows Azure. The Series is in German and I decided to bring it to Cloud Computing Journal. I will modify some of the articles to bring them up-to-date. This series will cover about 15 articles that will be published once a week. What Is Windows Azure? Windows Azure is Microsoft's Platform as a Service offering for Cloud Computing. There are three major fields in Windows Azure. Figure 1 provides an overview of the platform. Figure 1 The three fields are Windows A... (more)