Cloud computing is actually being largely driven by the “Consumerization of IT”. That phrase, as grammatically incorrect as it is, represents a fundamental change to the way businesses think about technology, and subsequently how the IT team provides it. Years ago, technology was introduced by the office. No one owned a mainframe at ...

I've recently posted a blog on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization, another on how the cloud changes a Database Administrator's job, and the last post dealt with the Systems Administrator. In this post I'll cover the changes facing the Software Developer when using the cloud. The software ...

I recently posted a blog entry on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization, and another on how the cloud changes a database administrator's job. This time I'll cover a few of the changes the cloud brings for the Systems Administrator. The systems administrator shares some similarity with the database ...

I recently posted a blog entry on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization. In a way, the Systems Architect has the easiest transition to a new way of using computing technologies. In fact, that’s actually part of the job description. I mentioned that a Systems Architect has three primary ...

I know - I said I didn't like the ''cloud'' term, but my better-phrased ''Distributed Systems'' moniker just never took off like I had hoped. So I'll stick with the ''c'' word for now, at least until the search engines catch up with my more accurate term. I thought I might spend a little time on how the cloud affects the way we work - from ...

One of the use-cases for a cloud solution is to serve as a Disaster Recovery option for your on-premises servers. I’ll explain one particular use-case in this entry, specifically using Windows Azure “IaaS” or Virtual Machines as a Recovery Solution for SQL Server (more detail here: ...

Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as ''Step 1, then Step 2'' because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple ''template'' solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single ...

OK - you've been hearing about ''cloud'' (I really dislike that term, but whatever) for over two years. You've equated it with just throwing some VM's in some vendor's datacenter - which is certainly part of it, but not the whole story. There's a whole world of - wait for it - *coding* out there that you should be working on. If you're a ...

Windows Azure is a platform that allows you to write software, run software, or use software that we've already written. We provide lots of resources to help you do that - many can be found right here in this blog series. There are two primary resources you can use, and it's important to understand what they are and what they do. The Windows ...

It’s an interesting time in computing technology. At one point there was a dearth of information available for solving a given problem, or educating ourselves on broader topics so that we can solve problems in the future. With dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of web sites and content available (for free, in many cases) from vendors, ...