SPC2012 - Session List & Additional Training Announced, SharePoint Conference. SharePoint Server 2010. SharePoint 2013.

You've been asking for it, and now it's here! The SharePoint Conference 2012 website just got updated with details of over 250 sessions full of SharePoint goodness (and there's a few more to come). 

Take a look at what you'll be missing if you don't REGISTER NOW!

• In addition to regular sessions we've got a great line up of pre and post conference training opportunities designed to give you a wider breadth of knowledge and add to your conference experience. The highlights include:
• SharePoint 2013 Deployment and Administration End-to-End
• Start Building Apps for Office and SharePoint Today
• Ignite your SharePoint Strategy with Visio Services: A day long technical deep dive
• Business Intelligence
• The Best of the New Project Ignite
• Building SharePoint 2013 Apps using Windows Azure

We're less than 2 months away from what promises to be the biggest SharePoint Conference ever, so don't wait, register now before seats sell out and get ready to 'share more and do more' at SharePoint Conference 2012.

Curtsey: www.sharepointconference.com

SharePoint Governance for the Masses: A Kevin Abel Tip

A comprehensive SharePoint governance plan – samples of which abound on the web – is simply overkill for the vast majority of Phase 1 SharePoint implementations. All too often a company takes one of these samples, edits where appropriate, fills in parameters where needed, and then prints out a tome for the bookshelf. The Governance Plan task is checked off, but woe is the world of the SharePoint platform owner who is questioned about the efficacy of this document.

 

SharePoint governance shouldn’t be all or nothing. It should be relevant. As SharePoint matures and takes hold in an organization, so the governance plan should grow to accommodate these changes. A Phase 1 SharePoint implementation should have a Phase 1 Governance Plan. We call it Governance 50, because time and again, we find that our typical Phase 1 implementations typically generate a Phase 1 Governance Plan with approximately 50 items. What follows is a sampling of the categories and types of items that are often relevant in a Governance 50 plan:

As depicted in the plan above, each governance category has a number of individual governance items. For each item we specify the policy for the specific client along with a frequency of activity, the approach for delivering the governance activity and, where applicable, a reference to a process for the specific governance activity.

Capturing the most important and relevant governance items as an actionable plan in a SharePoint list allows a company to realize SharePoint governance and mitigate the risks of deploying an ungoverned SharePoint platform. As the deployment grows and matures, so too can the governance plan be amended and enhanced as necessary.

Curtsey: Abel Solutions

Microsoft Announces System Center 2012 SP1 and Clarifies the Cloud OS

One of the primary focuses of the System Center (SC) 2012 SP1 release, is the integration with the latest Microsoft server technologies—especially Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012. With the upcoming SP1 release, SC 2012 SP1 will fully support running on the new Windows Server 2012 OS. In addition, internally, SC SP1 will also support the use of SQL Server 2012 for its own database requirements. Not surprisingly, considering that the System Center 2012 Suite consists of multiple products, there’s way too many new features in the SP1 release to list in this brief newsletter. Some of the standout features in the SC 2012 SP1 release include System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 SP1’s ability to deploy and manage Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the use of Windows Azure-based software distribution points to reduce infrastructure costs, and Service Manager (SM) 2012 SP1’s more granular chargeback information.

Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 SP1 provides improved multi-tenancy for hosting organizations and Windows Azure IaaS integration, with the ability to move on-premises virtual machines (VMs) to Windows Azure. Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2012 SP1 adds the option to provide on-line server backups to the Windows Azure cloud. However, considering the growing importance of the private cloud, I think the most important new feature in the SC SP1 announcement was VMM 2012 SP1’s enhanced virtual networking capability that Microsoft is calling Hyper-V Network Virtualization. This feature is similar to VMware’s Distributed Network Switch and it enables software defined networking (SDN) for the virtual infrastructure. With VMM 2012 SP1’s new SDN capabilities, the policies that define a Hyper-V VM’s networking characteristics are moved with the VM as it is migrated live between Hyper-V hosts. 

To help clear away the cloud around the Cloud OS, Microsoft wants to make it clear that when they refer to the Cloud OS they are not referring to Windows Server 2012. Although the two are often discussed together, Windows Server 2012 is more accurately referred to as the cornerstone of the Cloud OS. The Cloud OS is really a term describing a combination of Microsoft technologies. Satya Nadella, President, Server & Tools Business for Microsoft, in his blog post characterized Microsoft’s vision of the Cloud OS as “The Cloud OS does what operating systems have always done: manage hardware and provide a platform for applications. But it also expands to include services and technologies that have not previously been considered part of an operating system.” The Cloud OS concept describes a datacenter without physical boundaries that transcends today’s physical datacenters. Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure deliver the core of the Cloud OS, while System Center 2012 provides a consistent management experience.

You can find out more about the new features in the SC 2012 SP1 release at What’s New in System Center 2012 SP1.  

Microsoft’s SC SP1 is currently in beta and you can download it and try it for yourself from the Microsoft Download Center. 

Curtsey: www.windowsitpro.com

Windows Azure for SharePoint: Combining SharePoint with Windows Azure.

Sick of constantly hassling people to clean up files on the server? Want more compute resource at peak times but don’t want the added overhead? Combine your SharePoint with Windows Azure and these problems, and more besides, are solved. Azure can handle your document storage, as well as holding huge amounts of SharePoint application data, all within the cloud.

Azure’s dynamically scalable hosting potential can bring practical service-based scenarios into SharePoint. And it’s not just added space that Azure offers; it’s also ease of use. You can create customer-facing interfaces in Azure, that can be easily integrated into SharePoint’s architecture, and your developers can continue to leverage their skills in Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft .NET, Java or other development environments.

Azure’s simple pay-as-you-go pricing model also streamlines budgeting and removes the need for capital expenditure on upfront purchases, provisioning and management of additional server infrastructure. In short, Windows Azure is about simplicity: creating an easier life for you, while improving the performance of your current SharePoint system.

An overview of Windows Azure

Azure is already improving businesses through the following key features and benefits:

• Simplified operations and maintenance of applications – by providing on-demand scalability of both compute and storage. 
• Reduced need for up-front purchases – with a pay-as-you-go pricing model, budgeted from Opex, not Capex.
• Increased compatibility – providing an open environment that supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP/HTTPS, REST, SOAP, and XML. This enables your developers to easily create cloud-based applications in their preferred scripting language without further training.
• Responsive management – Azure handles load balancing and resource management automatically, giving users all the bandwidth and storage they need, the instant they need it.

StorSimple solved their forever increasing storage issues with Windows Azure.

Start-up software vendor StorSimple is using Windows Azure to solve the storage issues of companies with high-growth applications. StorSimple’s hybrid solution seamlessly integrates cloud storage services for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Windows Server with on-premises servers to deliver a scalable, on-demand cloud storage model.

Read more 

Who’s using Windows Azure with SharePoint?

Point8020 - Learning content provider Point8020 uses Windows Azure to enhance the delivery of expert-led instructional videos that help businesses make the most of SharePoint.
Read more

“Our customers already have an investment in Microsoft technology. I’m sure they will be happy knowing our product is based on Windows Azure. It gives them confidence that the services will be reliable, available, and offer great performance.”

                                        Martin Harwar, Chief Executive Officer, Point8020

Hitachi - Global IT consulting firm Hitachi Consulting is streamlining reporting for U.S. Government contractors with their Program Management Framework combining the Microsoft SQL Azure cloud database service with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Read more 

“With SQL Azure and our solution, we anticipate that a typical client will save at least $200,000 annually in hardware and licensing costs alone. Plus, the reduced administrative burden of SQL Azure and Windows Azure will allow our clients to refocus scarce technical resources on higher value activities.”

Rob Rae, Director Microsoft Platform Practice, Hitachi Consulting

Curtsey: Microsoft Corp.

Announcing Windows Azure Mobile Services

Windows Azure Mobile Services makes it incredibly easy to connect a scalable cloud backend to your client and mobile applications.  It allows you to easily store structured data in the cloud that can span both devices and users, integrate it with user authentication, as well as send out updates to clients via push notifications.

Today’s release enables you to add these capabilities to any Windows 8 app in literally minutes, and provides a super productive way for you to quickly build out your app ideas.  We’ll also be adding support to enable these same scenarios for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices soon.

Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step.

Getting Started

If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign up for a no-obligation Free Trial.  Once you are signed-up, click the “preview features” section under the “account” tab of the www.windowsazure.com website and enable your account to support the “Mobile Services” preview.   Instructions on how to enable this can be found here.

Once you have the mobile services preview enabled, log into the Windows Azure Portal, click the “New” button and choose the new “Mobile Services” icon to create your first mobile backend.  Once created, you’ll see a quick-start page like below with instructions on how to connect your mobile service to an existing Windows 8 client app you have already started working on, or how to create and connect a brand-new Windows 8 client app with it:

 

Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app  that stores data in Windows Azure.

Storing Data in the Cloud

Storing data in the cloud with Windows Azure Mobile Services is incredibly easy.  When you create a Windows Azure Mobile Service, we automatically associate it with a SQL Database inside Windows Azure.  The Windows Azure Mobile Service backend then provides built-in support for enabling remote apps to securely store and retrieve data from it (using secure REST end-points utilizing a JSON-based ODATA format) – without you having to write or deploy any custom server code.  Built-in management support is provided within the Windows Azure portal for creating new tables, browsing data, setting indexes, and controlling access permissions.

This makes it incredibly easy to connect client applications to the cloud, and enables client developers who don’t have a server-code background to be productive from the very beginning.  They can instead focus on building the client app experience, and leverage Windows Azure Mobile Services to provide the cloud backend services they require.  
 

Below is an example of client-side Windows 8 C#/XAML code that could be used to query data from a Windows Azure Mobile Service.  Client-side C# developers can write queries like this using LINQ and strongly typed POCO objects, which are then translated into HTTP REST queries that run against a Windows Azure Mobile Service.   Developers don’t have to write or deploy any custom server-side code in order to enable client-side code below to execute and asynchronously populate their client UI:

 

Because Mobile Services is part of Windows Azure, developers can later choose to augment or extend their initial solution and add custom server functionality and more advanced logic if they want.  This provides maximum flexibility, and enables developers to grow and extend their solutions to meet any needs.

User Authentication and Push Notifications

Windows Azure Mobile Services also make it incredibly easy to integrate user authentication/authorization and push notifications within your applications.  You can use these capabilities to enable authentication and fine grain access control permissions to the data you store in the cloud, as well as to trigger push notifications to users/devices when the data changes.  Windows Azure Mobile Services supports the concept of “server scripts” (small chunks of server-side script that executes in response to actions) that make it really easy to enable these scenarios.

Below are some tutorials that walkthrough common authentication/authorization/push scenarios you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services and Windows 8 apps:

• Enabling User Authentication
• Authorizing Users 
• Get Started with Push Notifications
• Push Notifications to multiple Users

Manage and Monitor your Mobile Service

Just like with every other service in Windows Azure, you can monitor usage and metrics of your mobile service backend using the “Dashboard” tab within the Windows Azure Portal.

The dashboard tab provides a built-in monitoring view of the API calls, Bandwidth, and server CPU cycles of your Windows Azure Mobile Service.   You can also use the “Logs” tab within the portal to review error messages.  This makes it easy to monitor and track how your application is doing.

Scale Up as Your Business Grows

Windows Azure Mobile Services now allows every Windows Azure customer to create and run up to 10 Mobile Services in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment (where your mobile backend will be one of multiple apps running on a shared set of server resources).  This provides an easy way to get started on projects at no cost beyond the database you connect your Windows Azure Mobile Service to (note: each Windows Azure free trial account also includes a 1GB SQL Database that you can use with any number of apps or Windows Azure Mobile Services).

If your client application becomes popular, you can click the “Scale” tab of your Mobile Service and switch from “Shared” to “Reserved” mode.  Doing so allows you to isolate your apps so that you are the only customer within a virtual machine.  This allows you to elastically scale the amount of resources your apps use – allowing you to scale-up (or scale-down) your capacity as your traffic grows:

 

With Windows Azure you pay for compute capacity on a per-hour basis – which allows you to scale up and down your resources to match only what you need.  This enables a super flexible model that is ideal for new mobile app scenarios, as well as startups who are just getting going. 

Summary

I’ve only scratched the surface of what you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services – there are a lot more features to explore.  

With Windows Azure Mobile Services you’ll be able to build mobile app experiences faster than ever, and enable even better user experiences – by connecting your client apps to the cloud.

Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Services development center to learn more, and build your first Windows 8 app connected with Windows Azure today.  And read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Hope this helps.

Curtsey: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu