Cloud computing is here, whether we want it or not. When I say "a walk in the clouds” I am not talking about a pleasant romantic comedy, but a real alternative to hosting applications on-premise. For years we have had the power to host our web sites on remote systems. Sure, challenges existed. Mostly web sites. I could, with a few clicks, create a account at a myriad of web host sites, put my site in the hands of a remote hosting company, and boom, I was a site on the internet. But choices, power, and management was limited. Now, we have a set of services to let us approach and power and control we love, but with scalability of the data center. My personal web site is hosted on a laptop running hyperV in my basement. I have to manage the machine, patch it, make sure it is powered up. This is fine for the “hello, this is my dog skippy site” that I maintain. If the football pool I run has an issue, one of the 10 users I have calls or emails me and I go check it out. All is well. But this falls well below the needs of even the simplest of enterprises. A business needs a stronger datacenter, a better pipe to the world. Do I really want to base my business on a dynamic dns and a dsl line from the local phone company? Cloud computing gives us most of what I value (control, a db of my own, updating my site from Visual Studio). Come learn how this technology can transform your business. If you are a Microsoft shop, or are interested in Microsoft in the cloud, on April 8 and 9, a 2 day free Azure training class is being conducted in Kansas City. http://www.azurebootcamp.com/city/kansascity Hope to see you there. If you come, make sure you look me up.
