It took a bit longer this morning for me to get out of bed but alas.. I’m here at the Los Angeles Convention Center for Day Three of the Microsoft PDC. It looks like today is a focus on Microsoft Research with Rick Rashid giving the keynote,

We’re about to start… again forgive the initial typos. I’m typing as I listen to the keynote here.

So we have Rick Rashid who’s the Senior VP of Microsoft Research. The keynote starts with a video overview of the Microsoft Research division from all the world. Here’s an interesting statistic – there are roughly 850 PhD researchers working at Microsoft.

Rick’s own background is in developing operating systems, programming languages etc. He talks about some of his own accomplishments through the years – as well as noting that if you do use the Mac or the iPhone (and he thinks you really shouldn’t – as the crowd chuckles), you are using code that he helped develop years ago at CMU. Another tidbit – Rick is also the only Microsoft Exec to ever have the same job for such a long period of time (17 years).

For those that are curious, here is the mission statement for Microsoft Research (MSR)

• Expand the state of the art in each of the areas in which we do research
• Rapidly transfer innovative technologies into Microsoft products
• Ensure that Microsoft products have a future

MSR organization details

• Run as a university organizational model
• Open research environment
• Strong ties to University Research

Additional notes about MSR:

• Offices in Cambridge MA, Silicon Valley CA, Redmond WA, Cambridge UK, Bangalore India, and Beijing China. Bejing is the second largest MSR facility to Redmond.
• MSR has published over 4000 papers over the last 17 years.
• MSR works closely with the academic community. 20 percent of the graduates coming out of CS research programs probably work at MSR at some point in their career.

MSR also drives technologies into products. They have a focused technology transfer effort. Many of today’s products have come out of MSR including DirectX, Windows Media, Tablet PC, the Surface etc. Researchers are on product incubation advisory boards.

Some recent research announcements:

• Robochamps (www.robochamps.com) – MSR working with NASA to allow people to program their own Mars lander.

• CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 now available on the MSR website.

Other notes about MSR:

• MSR generates around 25% of the MSFT patents and generally MSR patents are more “fundamental”
• MSR helps Microsoft in solving problems and also giving the company an early warning system to new technologies.

Finally, why do research at all? It gives you the ability to survive when things go wrong. It gives you agility. It allows Microsoft to quickly respond to change. Research provides new technologies, new competitors and of course, new business models.

“Basic Research gives Microsoft the ability to change quickly.”

9am now..

Here’s something interesting – the “Terminator” project. MSR is working on ways to prove that applications/programs terminate which is a classic CS problem. They now have a new set of methods that in fact can determine if a program has halted. Terminator itself is best described as a termination/liveness prover for C programs – a first of its kind and they’re working to get this into future products.

Research in software engineering

• - CHESS
• - Code Contracts
• - Pex
• - Z3
• Church’s thesis proven – 70 year old problem

Now a focus on energy efficient computing. Rick invites Feng Zhao, principle researcher at MSFT, to talk about of all things, sensors and how it can be used to make computing more energy efficient.

Feng describes ways we can be more energy efficient:

• Computers can be made more energy efficient
• Computing itself can be used to improve energy efficiency of other tasks and objects/devices.
  • use sensors to sense the environment for better conservation

As an example, Feng displays a handheld sensor deivce that can monitor an area’s temperature and humidity and then send this information back to the cloud. In fact, the hall that we’re all in is littered with sensors located on the ceiling (we can’t see them in the dark here). These sensors help map and monitor temperature changes in the room over time.

He shows an animation of the hall starting at 5am yesterday before the keynote started.

As people start rolling in, the cooling system kicks in (in the blue) and tries to compensate for the rise in temperatures. Then as the keynote starts and proceeds, you see the temperature rise in the hall. This gives building personnel insight into how well the cooling is working in a given area – thus helping someone to be more energy efficient – cooling less when its not needed and cooling more when it is needed in an area.

Approximately 100 MB of data a day is collected to the cloud environment.

Feng now shows how sensors are used in Microsoft’s own datacenters today. Here’s a picture of the temperature readings on a set of racks – front of the rack on top and the back on the bottom.

Data Center Genome Project – combines sensor data on a datacenter and computing operations being performed in the datacenter.  An attempt to see how computational work, hardware load, and sensors can be  used together to gain better insight into the datacenter environment.

Sensors are great for businesses but they’re also great for the environment. Feng shows how sensors can be used in the wild to monitor temperature and humidity changes. There’s the SenseWeb platform – a wikipedia of sensors

• Allows sharing of deployed instrumentation and data for communities of scientists and hobbyists. It allows people to share sensors and share data. SensorMap as the portal – http://atom.research.microsoft.com/sensormap

SensorMap is also being used to monitor glaciers in Alaska. Through the website, you can pan and tilt through the terrain and look at the readings of the sensors.

Now back to Rick:

MSR is actively working in the healthcare industry – looking to fight HIV/AIDS through Machine Learning Techniques.

Now switch to Education.

Some of the research performed by MSR in the areas of education include:

• Tablet PC technologies to help students and teacher to learn
• Robotics work in the CS Classroom
• World Wide Telescope release (this was a follow on to sky server) – 24/7 virtual observatory. Now has 1.5 million active users
  • as of today, Microsoft is releasing the Equinox release of the World Wide Telescope. Now a demo of the new version:

Some of the new features in the Equinox WWT beta:

• 3D view of the solar system
• See orbital locations of planets in past present and future
• Right click on a star and see their location
• Move to the star and the constellations change
• Double the total number of data in initial release
• 55 new panoramic images
• See new image sets from various telescopes
• New sky surveys
• New animations and hyperlinks added into the program
• You can zoom out and actually view the known universe

21 giga-parsecs of data and a view of the universe. Half a million galaxies in the program.

Rick now shows a picture of his two sons and how one of his sons (age 9) is now learning how to program in C# within Visual Studio 2008. He’s currently developing a game for his brother! However, he also points out that this possible because of the fact that both parents happen to be CS majors. Unfortunately most kids don’t have parents that have CS degrees – hence learning to program or learning anything about computing needs to be simpler.

Hence.. they are introducing Boku. Boku is best described as lightweight programming for kids. He brings out Matt MacLaurin to talk about Boku – a system for allowing kids to learn and program on their own.

All programming is performed using an Xbox 360 controller – there is no keyboard involved here. You simply move a cursor around and select objects to build rules.

Matt shows the equivalent of creating a Boku hello world program. The design goal of Boku is to keep programming constructs simple and visual.

Boku is all about creating programming rules that are designed for objects to follow. The kid uses pictures to help construct these rules. Once the rules are created, you can watch the character move about the world performing the rules. All rules are evaluated and performed at the same time. Notice that there’s no mention of variables or constructs etc. Things are kept simple. Here the character is roaming around collecting apples.

The application is coming out next year. Boku can be used to design games. You can program the game to respond to movements of the controller.

You can program practically everything in the world – even the cloud.

Boku provides kids a way to learn how to program AND make it fun. Examples of what people can do with Boku

Pretty cool stuff..

Back to Rick:

Finally Rick brings the focus to surface computing, He starts things off by showing what the Microsoft Surface looked like in the prototype days of the project.

This leads us into Rick talking about a new project underway at Microsoft called SecondLight.

Stevce Hodges comes out to talk about SecondLight. SecondLight is about figuring out new ways of interacting with displays and computers – extending the reach of surface computing. SecondLight is in a stage similar to where the Surface was in the protype days.

The begin by showing a demo of SecondLight.

They show that SecondLight supports all the things that the Surface supports – moving objects around, using gesture and multi-touch to interact and resize objects.

But SecondLight isn’t just about interacting with the surface – it’s about interacting with the area above the surface.

The demo-er than waves a simple piece of tracing paper above the display to reveal additional information about the object. He waves the paper over a star map to reveal star names and constellation information.

He waves a paper above a street map to reveal additional information about the streets

And he shows a picture of a cow.. and as he hovers over the cow, textual information about the cow is revealed (sorry no pictures of the inside of the cow are shown here)

In fact, he can use any cheap piece of plastic to place above the display. A scroll is pulled across the display to reveal additional hidden information.

So how does this work exactly?

There are actually two displays being projected within this system. An electric charge applied against a display can reveal a hidden underlying image that’s also being projected underneath the screen. When the display is diffuse, one projection is shown. When the display is transparent, a secondary projection is revealed.

Here’s a demo of SecondLight with a magic display that’s being waved above the surface.  You can also interact with the secondary display with support for gestures and multi-touch capabilities – just like the primary display.

For the first time they have integrated this technology into surface computing. Bringing the display out of the computer. Enabling secondary displays on external displays above the surface. You can read more about SecondLight in the whitepaper here.

that’s a wrap!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft PDC, Day Three, Microsoft Research Keynote

It’s 8am and it’s day two of the Microsoft PDC. Today we’re expecting the announcement of Windows 7 as well as the announcement of what exactly is in the next version of Windows. It looks like Wi-Fi is working just fine this morning – well at least until the rest of the thousands of developer drones walk into this hall. In any case, I’ll try and get you the latest updates as fast as possible. Pictures will probably have to wait till I get a chance to upload pics to my trusty little netbook. BTW – I now officially need a lighter SLR camera. Now that I have a netbook that’s under three pounds, I need a camera that’s lighter… then life would be perfect as a blogger. OK.. time to conserve battery..

Oh.. and I do believe we get “the goods” today… (for those at the PDC, this will occur at 1pm).

8:08am – Darn it.. just as I thought – too many users in one location and now Wi-Fi is practically useless. Oh well – guess you’ll have to wait for the info till after the keynote is over with

8:26am – they’re asking us to sit down now.. soon.. oh so soon.

BTW – excuse the typos – I’ll clean this up when I get out of the keynote (and add pictures).

8:30am – they’re starting up the keynote on time today – opening things up with a video of various vendor applications running on what I presume is Microsoft Windows Vista.

And now.. here’s Ray Ozzie (cue in applause)

Ozzie begins by recapping yesterdays announcement of Windows Azure (Windows in the Cloud) and the Azure Services Platform. Yesterday it all about the computing foundation for services – the backend tier. Today, Microsoft will be showing the outside in view – the user interface, the front end innovations, the new client platforms, the applications, Microsoft’s take on the current era of personal computing.

Ray – “Its hard to imagine a life without a PC.. I mean what would you do all day?” (laughs from the audience) (slightly paraphrased too).

Time for a little reflection on the PC and Windows and on how it has adapted  according to our changing needs.

Today the PC is adapting once again. According to Ozzie, we’ve barely scratched the surface on how the PC can improve what we do on the net and how the net can improve the value of the PC. Ozzie brings the phone into the mix now and has a call to action for developers to help improve the PC, phone, and web and make it more valuable collectively.

Application development for the PC is still very relevant. People build apps to bring an experience closer to the user – closer to the hardware. The key to a Windows PC is how it richly enables the way we edit and consume content. A PC is a personal information management device.

So what about the web? What makes it so special? According to Ray, the web lets us communicate with people. It allows us to find access share and transact information; it allows us to connect to devices, services and activities; and it assembles the worlds people and information.

And the phone? It’s similar to a PC in terms of development. However, the key to the phone is – it’s always with you wherever you are. Its unique value is how it enables an app spontaneity.

Thus the PC, phone, and the web all of their unique roles and values and when taken together, they’re far more valuable than taken apart.

Microsoft wants to build the best apps for all three tiers and wants to help developers build the best apps by providing tools, platforms, and services to make this all possible.

And now, Ozzie goes over who will be coming on stage.

• Steven who will introduce Windows 7 and talk about Windows Live Wave 3
• Scott and Dave will talk about development for PC phone and web
• Takeshi will come out to talk about Office and software + services

And now, let’s talk about Windows 7 – Steven comes out and starts things off by showing all of us a demo.

A demo of Windows 7 now..

Here are the key notes thus far:

• Windows 7 has a new taskbar. The quick launch buttons that we all love has been enhanced greatly and merged with the open windows buttons.
• Hover over a button and it will show you all the instances of apps running through thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail to open up the app. Close the app by clicking on the X button on the thumbnail.
• If no app is running then no thumbnails will appear
• Right click a button and a new “Jump List” feature will pop up showing documents, actions etc specific to the app.
• Finally, you can move open windows around and organize it the way you want it (The crowd applauses)

Open windows can now snap to either side of the desktop simply by dragging the window to the side – makes opening up side by side windows very easy.

They’re now talking about the changes to Windows Explorer.

First off, there’s a new feature called Libraries which are collections of digital content – whether it’s on your PC, across other PCs or network devices. You can have multiple libraries which you can then import and have accessible from a single location. You can browse and search for content through Windows Explorer.

Improvements to Windows Networking – All Windows 7 PCs can automatically find each other in a home network and automatically configure devices. Plug a PC or notebook into the home network and the right printers will get attached immediately.

There’s a new HomeGroup feature. All printers, wireless devices, documents, music etc are made automatically available once you connect to the HomeGroup network. This makes it easy for a PC to connect to one another.

HomeGroup also ties in nicely with the Libraries feature – you can easily find, access, and control content – whether it’s on your PC or some other device on the network. You can search for songs on your PC or search within the HomeGroup and see if a song exists on other PCs. Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Windows Explorer all share the same Libraries technology.

Speaking of Windows Media Player, there’s a new version coming out – they demo a feature where WMP controls a Sonos media player by directing a file that is located on a different PC to be played through a Sonos music player. This is all done on a separate remote PC. Basically control content playback on different devices from different PCs

There’s a new Windows 7 feature called “Device Stage” which shows capabilities of devices. Here’s a picture of a Motorola handset and all the things you can do with the device once it’s connected to your PC:

Nice feature of Windows 7 – especially for work/home laptop users. You can now automatically switch printers depending on whether you are at work or at home (more applause). Go to work and Windows 7 will automatically select the work printer. Go home and the OS will select the home printer – all done automatically..

Personalization Time – Change themes and preview them by going to the lower right corner of the desktop.

System Tray time – The system tray is FINALLY customizable (again more applause). You can control and customize notifications from the system tray (those darn balloon messages stink)

There’s a new “Action Center” which brings together security and maintenance into a single view.

Windows 7 has been retooled with major touch enhancements

Finger presses can bring up items within the Jump List – There’s also 25 % more space between items for easier navigation.

All your familiar mouse commands have been retooled and repowered with touch support – which means even if your application isn’t touch enabled you can still use it using your finger gestures.

There’s a new on-screen keyboard with predictive touch. Internet Explorer supports zooming and flicks and gestures for easier navigation.

Windows Explorer and Microsoft Paint have been retooled for touch. Now a joke about how once every 15 years, Microsoft updates tools in Windows Yes Paint has a new ribbon – hahahhaha

Now they’re talking about Windows Live.

Windows Live services extends your experience from the PC to the web – it’s of course optional and downloadable. Bring your content and sync it to Live services which you can then access via the web. Windows Live Essentials now available in Beta.

And now.. Microsoft wants to talk about the transition from Windows Vista. First, what did Microsoft learn from Vista (laughs from the audience) Yes.. they acknowledge that the company received some feedback from various sources including vendors, some blogs (snickering in the audience), from users, and oh yes.. even some commercials here and there (much more laughter here).

Now as a result of the feedback, Microsoft went back and wanted to improve the performance and reliability of Vista resulting in SP1. They’re certainly happy with SP1 but more work could be done,

Some key lessons learned from Windows Vista:

• Readiness of the ecosystem – The ecosystem is the elements that bring a PC to life – from hardware to software vendors. Vista changed a lot of things that required a lot of work from the ecosystem,. Microsoft really wasn’t ready at launch when Vista came out,. They needed to do a better job with Windows 7 hence it has the same kernel as Vista and 2008 which means no changes need to be done for the ecosystem
• Standards –Developers want Microsoft to support standards. Microsoft is aiming for better standards support in Windows 7 – it shows up in IE8 with better CSS support and of course trying to pass those acid tests. Wordpad has even been updated to support XML – again – more tools updates!
• Compatibility – Changes in Vista made compatibility challenging to say the least. The best example is the UAC (which people laugh at again). They acknowledge that they probably went a little too far with UAC. Despite the changes introduced, Windows is more secure than ever before for users
• Scenarios  – Microsoft needs to do a great job in delivering a better end to end experience. They’ve always seem to miss that “last mile” to making Windows just right. Windows 7 hopefully changes all of that.

New features for developers to play with

• Ribbon User Interface
• Jump Lists –the little menus on the task and start menu
• Libraries – brings together search and content across multiple PCs
• Multi-touch, Ink, Speech – ways to augment the user experience.
• DirectX family – extended to 2d, animation and text

And now a demo from AutoDesk to show how the Touch APIs have been integrated into their application.

Microsoft now switches to talking about “Fundamentals” which encompasses compatibility, security, reliability, performance

Thing they are trying to decrease include memory usage (reduce the memory and disk footprint of a core Windows 7 installation), disk I/O (less registry reads and indexer), and power usage (increase DVD playback, panel, reduce resolution of timers which greatly increase power efficiency)

Things they’re trying to make faster include speed (faster boot, device ready etc), responsiveness in the start menu, task bar, and scale of Windows (up to 256 processors).

Another demo of Windows 7 development – hey shows off the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook,

Other improvements coming to Windows 7 include:

• Bitlocker encryption comes to memory sticks

• You can create native virtual hard drives (VHDs) within Windows now – dynamic and fixed sizes. You can natively boot from a VHD! – great for developers, Mount and boot from the same VHD.

• Supports setting custom DPI settings
• Enhanced multimonitor support

• Improved magnifier – great for UI developers

• New Windows ‘P’ shortcut – hold down and P to select monitors and projectors. Remote desktop supports multi-monitor too!

Multimonitor across two presentation screens

• Customize shutdown button – change location of task bars – change sizes and buutton sizes etc

• Complete control of messages from various apps etc. Added a slider to control how much the UAC will interact with you.

Now the road to RTM

• Everyone here at PDC gets a copy of pre-beta Windows 7 (this is the M3 build) – a build that meets the design criteria from Microsoft and which is currently running internally within Microsoft, Not all feature complete – the UI is not all there yet.
• Read the E7 blog
• The Beta will be feature complete – no performance benchmarking though but it is the complete product. Beta will be delivered early next year. Beta will also be opened to a broader audience
• There will be a new Feedback Tool in the beta with a link in every window. Doubleclick it, and add comments etc to provide direct feedback back to Microsoft,.
• Customer Experience Improvement Data (CEID) – turn it on to allow Microsoft to see what is and is not working – as well as performance information.
• Release Candidate to RTM phase – No info on when the product will come out. Sticking to three years of when Vista comes out generally

Developer Action Items

• Install and use the prebeta of Windows 7
• Microsoft wants you to write 64 bits
• Focus on fundamentals in code
• Integrate with Windows 7 desktop
• Evaluate the new APIs in Windows 7
• Code to web standards in IE8
• Download Windows Live Beta

NOTE – the following will be edited later on in the day- I have to run to classes now.

Introducing Scott Guthrie now – tools and platforms

Windows 7 Client Development

You can take advantage of Windows 7 regardless of what programming language you use. Bring together

Win32 and C++

• New Windows 7 APIs – ribbon, jump lists, libraries, multtouch etc
• MFC for Windows 7
• Visual Studio 2010 – IDE support for large code bases and multicore development

Windows apps with .NET

• .NET 3.5 SP1 improvements
• Built into Windows 7

Now a demo of writing code using WPF

A new WPF release being announced today – new DataGrid, DatePicker, Calendar, Ribbon controls.

Now talking about .NET 4

* New WPF improvements like multitouch, deep zoom etc.

* Fundamentals and interoperability – build better apps – client and server – Load CLR2 and CLR4 in the same process/address space. Making it easier to integrate managed and native code

* Improved tooling with Visual Studio 2010 – multi—monitor support and VS2010 will be built on WPF

– write tests first and then design classes from them

- PDC folks will get CTP version of VS2010 – new visualizer code in IDE

- VS 2010 extensibility

Now talking about WPF and .NET client momentum

* demo from Tesco.com – they;re entirely powered in .NET,. These guys are the largest grocery shopping vendor in the country

ah yes – an integrated bar code reader so you can read it from a webcam within the tesco application and then add it to a shopping basket.

Now back to .NET programming.. I’ll just show you slides. Also – Silverlight is going to be coming to the desktop – not just the web.

David Treadwell comes out to talk about Windows Live Services. Again – here are digital stills of the slides being shown.

And now, we have information about Office 14 and what’s in store for Office for the web. The key talking points about Office 14 for the web:

• There will be Office web app versions for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote
• Seamless collaboration of documents between online and offline versions – with changes automatically synchronized within the same document opened by different users
• Office Live will be usable in IE, Firefox and Safari. Silverlight will enhance the experience of Office Live

Wow.. this was one long keynote – in fact it ran overtime and into the other keynote address which I probably will not be attending now. Time to clean this up and post it up on the web (also need to recharge the netbook!)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft PDC, Day two, Windows 7, microsoft

Software developers from the PDC can now download the Windows Azure Software Development Kit at www.azure.com. Be aware that the site is being hit hard right now. The download link is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB893FB0-AD04-4FE8-BB04-0C5E4278D3E9&displaylang=en

You’ll need to register with Azure to deploy your code. Unfortunately the only developers with access to the service at this time are the developers attending the PDC – unless you can get yourself an access token. Stay tuned for any additional info on that.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft PDC, Microsoft Windows Azure, SDK

It’s the morning of day one here at the Microsoft PDC. This year’s PDC is at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown LA – lucky me since I live in LA. Or.. maybe not lucky me since I have to deal with the traffic that is LA while all the out of towners going to PDC can hop on hotel buses and head to the convention center. Oh well..

We’re all packed in here for the keynote speech which is being delivered by Ray Ozzie – Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. Unfortunately Wi-Fi isn’t working at the keynote so the publication of this live .. erum.. semi live blog is going to have to wait till I get a network connection.

So I’m sitting here blogging on the new Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook – A nice way to try out this new netbook eh?

8:26am – Announcement goes out for everyone to take their seats. It’s pretty packed here at the PDC.. developers, press, you name it. Where are the folks wearing “I’m a PC” ??

Looks like Microsoft is trying to be web 2.0 savvy at the conference – they have a projection screen up with tweets and images from flicker flowing right on by. Funny how none of this stuff is not from Microsoft. I suppose it’s nice to see the company recognize software and services from outside sources.

BTW, I just sent a tweet saying “How come Wi-Fi isn’t working at the PDC” I wonder if this message will show up on the screen.

Lights are dimming.. looks like it’s about to start…

Darn it.. must there be a tall guy sitting in front of me?

Ozzie takes the stage to an applause.

8:37am

Ray is out to talk about what Microsoft has been up to for the last year+. He’s talking about the transformation of the company to embrace services.

Ozzie thanks the developers for betting on Microsoft and for coming out to the PDC

Talking about platform shifts for the industry – Ozzie talks about how he sat in our seats years ago – as an ISV, as a competitor etc (and now he’s the Chief Software Architect – lucky him!)

Three things that kept Ozzie with Microsoft

1. Microsoft always builds it’s own key apps for its platform – provides natural safeguard for customers

2. The company’s key platform has high likely hood of reaching critical mass

3. Microsoft always understood that in order for them to be successful that the ISVs, the partners had to be successful.

Changes are occurring all over the landscape – from increasing broadband speeds to smaller mobile devices, to cheap systems like netbooks (like mine!). The PDC this week will be about Software and Services. Today Ray will be talking about the backend innovations at Microsoft. Tomorrow, they’ll talk about the front end client work.

8:42 am – Now talking about cloud computing,. Companies everywhere are transitioning from inward facing services for internal customers to externally facing companies and services. The result – organizations have to worry about a whole new set of challenges and issues. Ozzie poses a question – Is cloud computing really any different than in the past? The answer is absolutely yes.

8:50am A few years ago, Microsoft embarked on an internal look at its own services. Microsoft realized they built up a great deal of expertise from all the different websites, services they’ve been offering all these years.With all of these services and expertise, Microsoft realized they had nothing for the user – until now. The internet connected service is now a new tier for computing.

The first tier is the PC desktop that the user interacts with. The second is the enterprise tier. The new tier is the web tier which requires computation, storage, networking etc. Services that need to scale on demand anywhere around the globe.

A few years ago, Microsoft embarked on a mission to leverage its learnings to create a new online service. Ozzie acknowledges Amazon and the great work they’ve done. Microsoft is doing something a bit different – they’re planning to be the bedrock for businesses and consumers alike.

Ray is now announcing what we’ve all expected – a new cloud computing product called Windows Azure.

Windows Azure is a new Windows offering targeting the web tier. Think of it as Windows for the cloud. It’s designed to provide the lowest level foundation for building and deploying services.

It’s all about Scalable services, automated service mgmt system, etc.

Developers expect to be able to use existing services and programming environments. Expect open environment, tools etc

Windows Azure needs to be fundamentally different from enterprise computing. Most of today’s apps are designed for scale up path – scale as the need arises. Systems in cloud computing are designed for the next 50 yrs of computing. New types of practices, storage, app models designed fundamentally for a world of horizontal scale and parallel computing.

Windows Azure comes to life today. This is not software for servers.It’s a service housed in Microsoft datacenters. Community Technology Preview being released today in the U.S. initially. Azure designed from the outset for rapid improvement and for scale.

Microsoft is betting on Azure themselves – Microsoft will be bringing out key services onto Azure which will be talked about in a bit.

Windows Azure provides a platform for other services together called Azure Services Platform. SQL services coming to the cloud. Live services is a bridge outward from Azure to client systems like PCs, mobile devices etc. The services on top of Azure include:

• Live Services
• NET services
• SQL services
• SharePoint services
• Dynamics CRM services

Ozzie wants  to get into details and demos.

9:01am – Ozzie intros Amitabh Srivastava – another VP at Microsoft to go into Azure.

Best to think of Azure as the kernel to the Microsoft Cloud. It’s a platform or really an operating system designed to help developers create killer applications for the net. Features that make Azure unique:

• Scalable hosting – each processor optimized for hypervisor virtualization. Lots of security. Provides a layer of abstraction to all the IT issues that you’d normally have to deal with.
• Automated Service Management – Separates the app from the underlying OS. OS and Apps are managed separately. Fabric controller maintains the health of your service. It manages services – not just servers, this automates the lifecycle of a service.

Model your service including roles and groups, channels and endpoints, interfaces, and configuration settings

All service models are stored as XML file.

You provide the code and a service model to Azure when you’re interacting with it.

• High Availability – data replication, adaptive replication, etc. No user intervention needed
• Rich Developer Experience – MSFT offering familiar desktop environment. No need to deploy to the cloud for initial testing.

Leverages current tools – managed and integrated code

Steve Marks comes out to demo a familiar application – “Hello World” or in this case – “Hello PDC”. He demos this under Visual Studio which goes to show this is all a simple ASP.NET application.

The demo is pretty cool and definitely very easy. He creates the app, builds it and then publishes to Azure online.

Partner comes out in the form of Bluehoo which is demoing their online application now – they Azure as their backend platform.

Shows how easy it is to scale nodes. Quote of the morning – “Its so easy even a CEO can do it” (the audience claps). Edits an XML file to simply move the number of nodes from 2 to 20. Download from m.bluehoo.com. Free and available for download today.

Back to amit.

Azure is an open platform

• Command line interfaces
• REST protocols
• XML file formats
• Managed and native code support
• We welcome 3rd party tools

Microsoft will be exposing Azure in a staged way with a technology preview initially to PDC developers.

• Scalable available hosting platform
• Rich developer experience
• Model driven service lifecycle management

Now introducing Bob Muglia – senior VP at Microsoft.

We’re now in the fifth generation of computing. 70s were monolithic computing, 80s client server, 90s web, today, SOA, and 2009+ services

Services platform builds on today’s platforms. Most of today’s apps do not scale out well. Azure is designed to scale out from the onset.

Service requirements including interoperability, identity and security, data mgmt and compliance, and services mgmt. These requirements remain true in building out a services platform.

One of the goals of Azure is to make it possible for you to build applications to take advantage of the computing power available in the data centers – reducing your up front capital costs and management costs. Lower cost solution for the deployment of large scale applications,

Talking about .NET services now. .NET services are built into Azure, Services within Windows need to scale out naturally also. .NET services are a pool of services available to you.

Focused on identity management – federated identity platform, Microsoft Geneva is a part of this. The goal is to make access control as seamless as possible.

Microsoft SQL Services – scaled out implementation of SQL Server. SQL server underneath this service.

Another partner customer coming out – Shawn Davison, VP of Red Prairie coming out to show off app. Demoing a one button product recall application which is extremely complex.

Azure gives them a chance to focus on their core competency.

9:43am Now talking about system center and Microsoft’s own project called Atlanta which provides a snapshot of Azure to administrators of services.

Atlanta uses the message bus to connect and securely transmit data from companies firewalls to azure services. Three databases running SQL Services. Expects hundreds of GB a day.

Now showing a programming demo with SQL services.

Another key buzz phrase – Windows Azure is a new generation of a platform which leverages your current skill set.

Introducing next gen modeling platform – Oslo – handing out kits this week. Incorporates  a new language called M.

This reminds Bob of the Windows NT rollout back in 1993.

9:51am – Introducing Dave Thompson to talk about higher level services. Customers need best in class services, need to stay up to date, lower predictable costs, have scarce IT resources, higher security and availability

Talking about Microsoft Online Services – enterprise class software delivered by subscription services including Exchange online, etc. All enterprise offerings will be made available through Microsoft Online services.  Software + Service is all about the power of choice.

Microsoft Services Connector links local Active Directory server to Microsoft’s Federated Gateway.

Lots of pictures being displayed now..

OK.. the battery is starting to die so I’m going to need to shut things down soon. Yes, I wish this netbook had a six cell battery instead.

Ozzie’s coming back to the stage to summarize today’s announcements and what’s to come.

The best thing to get involved is to write code to Azure.

Starting at noon today,PDC attendees can download the SDK today at Azure.com – for all PDC. Attendees will be provisioned and activated over the next two weeks and then will be opened to more. Azure.com. Preview will be free during initial cycle – no charging initially. Microsoft will be unlocking more and more capabilities over time.

Windows Azure will have a straight forward business model. Costs will be based on Apps Service Function and Service Level agreements – Prices will be competitive to the market place. Azure service offerings will be available through the web and through partners.

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