Mitchell Ashley talks with interesting people about interesting topics in the world of Microsoft.
Synch your iPod or MP3 player with the podcasts.
November 20, 2008
Jeff Kaplan, managing partner at THINKstrategies joins me to dive deep into what IT organizations are doing with SaaS. The economic challenges seem to have accelerated use of SaaS by IT groups, maturing SaaS to a point where it is much more palatable to IT. (27:45)
October 24, 2008
In part 2 of my interview with Savvis CTO Bryan Doerr we jump into the implications of the economy and how the impact helps or hurts enterprise IT, SaaS ISVs, and SaaS providers like Savvis. (19:45)
October 22, 2008
Not to be left in the cloud of dust kicked up the Salesforce, Google, Amazon and others, Savvis announced their entrant to woo ISVs onto their SaaS hosting platform and services. Savvis CTO, Bryan Doerr, joins me for part 1 of the podcast to talk about the Savvis offering, and more specifically, what Savvis is doing to differentiate from others already going after ISV SaaS hosting and services. (23:07)
September 29, 2008
Does a simple user name and password cut it in the world of cloud services, SaaS and Software+Services? This week’s podcast furthers the theme of utilizing cloud services for our applications, discussing how cloud identity management services offer richer options for managing user identities in applications that operate using services outside of the enterprise. (28:41)
September 12, 2008
BizTalk Server was in the news this week with Microsoft's announcement it will continue BizTalk development and release BizTalk Server 2009 early next year. Every enterprise deals will very difficult integration issues and BizTalk provides the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), or the message bus, that allows disparate systems and databases to communicate and integrate with each other. In this podcast, Technetronic Solutions CTO and BizTalk expert Donald Lutz joins us to explain how BizTalk works, how to download and learn to use BizTalk Server (recommended book: Professional BizTalk Server 2006), why Microsoft chose to bring out BizTalk Server 2009 rather than wait for the much touted Oslo technologies, why BizTalk isn't used in more Web 2.0 applications, cloud based Microsoft BizTalk Services, and what the future holds for BizTalk Server and Oslo. (24:13)
August 29, 2008
This week Eugenio Pace, Microsoft Platform Architect and Software+Services guru joins me to talk about building S+S applications using cloud data services. Eugenio is one of Microsoft’s best experts at architecting S+S applications. He spends his days researching, architecting, designing, building software, speaking, and writing about Software+Services apps. In the podcast, Eugenio and I explore why S+S apps are different than traditional web apps, and how software designers should approach SQL Server Data Services using cloud data services. Microsoft doesn’t offer a cloud data service offering yet, but SQL DS clearly is the vehicle for connect S+S apps into Microsoft’s forthcoming cloud services. Eugenio knows his stuff and whether you’re architecting S+S applications or someone who makes decisions about IT technology and spending, you’ll get a ton of good information from the discussion with Eugenio. (28:32)
August 20, 2008
HP, Intel and Citrix have joined forces by sponsoring a new event, Power IT Down Day on August 27th. The Federal business units of these organizations created this event to bring awareness to the need and benefit of turning off unused equipment, particularly end users’ desktop and other computing equipment when the leave work for the day. Estimates are that the US could see a similar spike in power costs over the next seven years that we’ve recently experienced with gasoline prices. If 10% of government employees followed the practice of turning off unused equipment during off hours, savings could be as much as $24,000 every day. Join me in talking Tom Simmons, Citrix Federal area Vice President, about why these companies joined forces to sponsor this event, learn how companies can participate, what would be considered a success and how you can help save energy costs.
August 06, 2008
This week I interview John Betz, Director Product Management for Microsoft Business Online Services. In our interview, John and I get into the details behind Microsoft's online hosted Exchange and SharePoint. We discuss who owns the customer, what service level agreements are offered or are in the works, the differences between the deskless and full hosted offerings, how partners can differentiate and offer additional services, and much more. If you are a Microsoft Partner considering how you can play in the world of hosted Microsoft solutions, this is a podcast you must listen to. (23:39)
July 31, 2008
Donald Lutz, Microsoft .NET, SharePoint BizTalk expert, discusses how partners such as Donald’ firm are developing applications and services for customers using SOA and web services. Applications and services that live in the cloud require a different approach to creating and integrating applications, resulting in software and solutions that are primarily configured through BizTalk and other elements of the Microsoft software stack. Donald will be joining me on a regular basis with a new developer series on creating cloud services and SOA based solutions. Donald made the shift from Java and Linux to .NET in 2001 and has his own views on why Microsoft’s .NET framework is a more complete and well put together offering than Java or other open source frameworks. Donald is CTO of Technetronic Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner, where they architect and create solutions for businesses and government customers. (20:48)
July 24, 2008
There's valuable data buried in your email besides what's just sitting in your inbox. I talk with Mat Brezina, co-founder of Xobni, and exciting Outlook plugin that mines social networking data from your Outlook pst/ost files, giving you new information and tools to better interact with others though email. Trying to remember that "one person" who was coped on some email thread a while back? Looking for the latest file your buddy sent you? What time would be be good to email that person so they'll read your email? Don’t go sorting your email by columns to dig for that information, use the Outlook Xobni plugin to bring it to you. Xobni also integrates with the business social networking LinkedIn service. We’ll delve into Matt's vision for Xobni, why he dropped out of college to co-found the company, and talk about the exciting things Xobni is doing. (22:46)
July 17, 2008
In part 2 of my interview with Simon Crosby, Citrix CTO Virtualization, we delve deeper into Microsoft Hyper-V, why Simon is so excited about Microsoft's launch of Hyper-V, how Hyper-V is based on Xen as its reference model, why Simon sees Hyper-V as a good solution for SMBs, whether Red Hat's oVirt has any legs or not, and how Xen plans to be the dominant virtualization player in cloud computing. After parts 1 and 2 of this interview, I think we covered a lot of ground about virtualization. (23:18)
July 15, 2008
You can't talk about virtualization without talking Xen, the open source virtualization technology now the foundation of the Citrix virtualization offerings. Citrix Virtualization CTO, Simon Crosby, joins us to talk about how Citrix is maintaining the integrity of Xen as an open source project, Xen's strategy to beat VMware by commoditizing the hypervisor, dissecting Parallels Virtuozzo Containers technology, how Citrix is using Xen and virtualization as the next generation of its traditional product line, and how Novell, Red Hat, Sun and Oracle can compete using the same underlying Xen virtualization technology. (20:08)
March 31, 2008
Virtualization is the hot topic but managing virtualized environments is even hotter for those actually implementing virtualization solutions. This week I interview David Lynch about his views on the unique challenges managing virtualized environments. David has some unique views on establishing a genealogy family tree encompassing the history of virtual images and their evolution. David Lynch is Vice President at Embotics who recently became a member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. David provided a guest post for the Converging On Microsoft blog. (30:54)
March 12, 2008
This week’s topic, Security! security expert, author and analyst Mike Rothman joins me on the podcast to talk about Microsoft security. Mike is a security industry watcher and works with Chief Security Officers (CSOs) across the country and the world, advising them on the most pragmatic ways to implement security in there organizations and IT infrastructure. Mike will be joining me on a regular basis to talk security. On this episode we talk about security patches and change control, managing large security fixes from Microsoft Patch Tuesday, lessons from turning of User Access Control in Vista (and other advice for Vista end users), and lastly we talk about the introduction of Windows Server 2008 and Network Access Protection (NAP) and their impact on the industry. Mike also talks about how his company, Security Incite, is now using Google Apps in place of Microsoft Office and Exchange. (26:16)
February 08, 2008
This week Jeff Wettlaufer, Sr. Technical Product Manager for System Center, joins the podcast to talk Microsoft System Center.
We explore the various components of System Center, how System Center aids in the management of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft
NAP and virtualized servers using Hyper-V. One of my burning questions was where Microsoft has made System Center easier to
get up and running than its predecessor SMS. Jeff also turns us onto Microsoft hard drives, VHDs, where you can download and
trial Microsoft products already installed and available as a virtual appliance. (28:21)
January 24, 2008
Gartner analysts predict by 2011, 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as SaaS (Software as a Service). SaaS is frequently sold to business buyers, often bypassing traditional IT. Learn how you can take advantage of the rapidly growing world of SaaS software as Mitchell talks with industry guru Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies. We examine how Microsoft's "software plus services" approach is being rolled out to market and Microsoft's partners, and how some new SaaS offerings are now selling directly to IT. (27:50)
January 17, 2008
Have you ever dreamed about being an entrepreneur, turning your software project into your own product company? Join Mitchell Ashley as he interviews software programmer and author Bob Walsh about how software creators can take their software to market as a Micro-ISV. Mitchell and Bob explore the ins and outs of becoming a Micro-ISV, including how to get started and where to look for resources that can help you be successful. (33:12)
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