Microsoft, Google, IBM and Salesforce.com heat up PaaS

IBM, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce share their strategies regarding one of the hottest emerging areas of the cloud: Platform as a Service.

What do you get when you get four of the biggest cloud vendors in a room to talk about one of the hottest emerging trends in the industry? Not a whole lot of agreement for one thing.

At last week's Cloud Leadership Forum, which was sponsored by IDC Research and IDG Enterprise, officials from IBM, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com came together to discuss their platform as a service (PaaS) offerings. PaaS is a way to develop and deliver applications in the cloud, but it's the least mature of the three major cloud delivery models compared to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). And pretty much one of the only things all four companies agree on is that PaaS is still in its early days.

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While PaaS is still a developing market, some experts predict that PaaS could become the most important cloud model. PaaS lets companies build customized applications and designed from the start to run in the cloud. In the near term companies that embrace PaaS have a market differentiator compared to competitors, says Steven Hendrick, an IDC analyst tracking the PaaS market. As the IaaS and SaaS offerings continue to gain widespread adoption, the real differentiators for companies will be applications they have tuned to the specifications of their business needs, he says.

PaaS has some technology advantages as well, he adds. A PaaS environment sits between the software and infrastructure layers, which gives applications designed in a PaaS space insight into the supply and demand of the cloud environment. "That uniquely positions them to understand the workload demands of the applications and the system resources of the infrastructure," Hendrick says.

There's a growing marketplace of vendors attempting to stake a foothold in the PaaS arena. In addition to some of the big-name players like Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, emerging players such as Engine Yard, CloudBees and AppFog are also in the market. VMware has an open-source PaaS offering named Cloud Foundry, while Red Hat has its own PaaS offering named OpenShift, which is expected to be brought out of developer preview later this year. Amazon Web Services, the dominant public cloud IaaS provider, Hendrick says, could even be classified as a PaaS offering because it offers tools for developers to build and deploy applications in the AWS cloud.

But the four big-name tech stalwarts are making sure they're not left out of the cloud conversation moving forward.

Microsoft

Microsoft may have one of the most recognizable PaaS products in the market with its Azure platform, but Tim O'Brien, general manager and platform evangelist at Microsoft, says cloud is still mostly seen today through the lens of IaaS. "The PaaS question we get today is, 'How is that different from IaaS?'" In a simplified form, IaaS is nothing more than virtualized machines or storage, he says, whereas PaaS is a development fabric. The idea is that developers deploy the software and the application automatically provisions virtual machines to its specifications. To allow for easier connections between the PaaS and IaaS layer, Microsoft recently extended an IaaS offering to Azure, which O'Brien says makes it the most comprehensive cloud offering on the market. "No other provider has that kind of breadth," he says. The other major differentiator is the company's 25-year experience working with enterprise IT, which he says newer tech companies just don't have the experience of. "There are no shortcuts to truly understanding what keeps CIOs up at night," he says.

ComponentOne Studio for WinForms controls

Even with all the advancements in technology, two important factors for enterprise desktop development still hold true today. There remains a need for better performance and an appealing user interface (UI). Today, you've got the opportunity to win a free license of ComponentOne Studio for WinForms controls (valued at $1,195.00) that will help you do just that. (Note: contest is complete and winner awarded)

I was excited when presented with the opportunity to test ComponentOne's collection of .NET Windows Form controls included in the Studio for WinForms suite. What’s great about ComponentOne is that they have been providing some of the most well-known grids for Windows Client apps, FlexGrid and TrueDBGrid, since 1991. With that longevity, you know that their controls will stand the test of time and evolve along with market trends.

The Studio offers over 65 .NET Windows Forms controls, in some instances extending what is “in the box” and in others providing controls you can’t get anywhere else. ComponentOne Studio for WinForms controls include code-free designers, built-in features, like the ability to replicate popular interfaces as seen in Microsoft Office, and awesome flexibility. The Studio comes with controls like Chart, Ribbon, FlexGrid, Scheduler, Reports, and True DBGrid.

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As you read on you’ll see this product earned high remarks and we decided to hold a drawing so that one of our readers would have a chance to win a Free License of ComponentOne Studio for WinForms. Be sure you are logged in as an eggheadcafe.com member and click the entry banner to be automatically entered in the drawing

As a developer, you invest in a third party control suite (or get your employer to do so) for several reasons:
• First, because it provides controls with functionality that you need in order to develop better applications in less time.
• Second, because it can be significantly less expensive to purchase the control suite than to devote the many hours of development time that would be necessary to provide the needed functionality.
• And third, because the professional look and feel of a control suite enhances the usability and performance of your applications. Having reviewed ComponentOne's Studio for WinForms controls, it's my opinion that the suite meets all three criteria

One really strong suit for ComponentOne's Studio for WinForms controls is it's all-in-one reporting solution, which has a rich object model for generating reports, several UI controls for previewing, and a report designer for creating and designing reports. Reports for WinForms is pretty much an all-in-one reporting solution. You can generate professional looking, well-behaved reports for your applications. You can even integrate your existing reporting solutions (SQL Server, Access, Crystal) into your applications.

I used the report designer to create a custom report based on some tables in the trusty Northwind database with no trouble at all. You can drag fields onto your report designer surface and easily design custom reports exactly to your liking. I generated a Grouped-by-Country Sales report from Northwind in a matter of seconds, from a stored procedure. These can then be either printed, or exported to other programs such as Excel, PDF, Html, RTF, Text, and XML Paper Specification:

Here's another custom report I did with a C1 Chart control added. You can see my Bromberg IPA and Ultra Bock are doing well:

The C1Chart control offers a wide range of features and makes it relatively easy to create really stunning color charts of just about any type. Here's one I did using the OpenHighLowClose bar chart style for a stock:

C1Report provides a rich object model for creating, customizing, loading, and saving report definitions. Whether you need to generate reports with barcodes, charts, etc., or render reports directly to a printer or preview control it is possible using C1Report. You can also modify existing SQL Server SSRS reports or even create new reports completely in code using the C1RdlReport component

People often ask about importing, and with ComponentOne’s control you can import Access report files (MDB) and Crystal report files (RPT) using the C1ReportDesigner application. The C1ReportDesigner uses a banded report model for a highly organized and familiar layout. You can create complex hierarchical documents with automatic word index, TOC generation, data binding, and more with C1PrintDocument.

Controls that come with the C1Report features include:

C1Report Component : The C1Report component generates Access-style database reports. C1Report exposes an object model for creating, customizing, loading, and saving report definitions. I experimented mostly with this component. I found it easy to use and easy to customize with a variety of added controls.

C1RdlReport Component : The C1RdlReport component provides support for SQL Server Reporting Services. C1RdlReport exposes the full RDL object model so you can modify existing reports or create new reports without external dependencies such as Microsoft Reporting Services. Import your existing SSRS report definitions (RDL) into C1RdlReport to programmatically generate your reports and integrate them with the full ComponentOne Reporting suite.

C1PrintDocument Component : The C1PrintDocument component provides an object model that allows you to create arbitrarily complex documents in code. The object model specifically targets paginated documents, providing a rich set of features to facilitate automatic and intelligent pagination of complex structured documents. Documents can be completely created in code, or bound to a database via a flexible data binding model.

C1MultiDocument Component : C1MultiDocument is designed to allow creating, persisting and exporting large documents that cannot be handled by a single document object due to memory limitations. Use C1MultiDocument to combine multiple C1PrintDocuments, C1Reports and C1RdlReports which will be rendered as a whole continuous document with shared page numbering, a common TOC, word index, page count and inter-document hyperlinks.

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Windows 8 Update: OS gets friendly with Linux

Microsoft works out rift with Linux community over dual boot issue; video efficiency; latest on Windows RT

s initial boot security for Windows 8 made it hard to start other operating systems on Win8 machines, but the company has worked out a way for Linux and other OSes to clear the secure boot sequence on such devices.

The secure boot, called Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), requires a key for the boot firmware to hand off to the operating system, the idea being to make sure the operating system isn't corrupt.

Microsoft's initial UEFI implementation was restrictive by making it difficult for non-Windows operating systems to get their keys included in the firmware, says Tim Burke, vice president of Linux engineering for Red Hat, in a blog. But that's all been cleared up with some cooperation among interested parties, he says.

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Linus Torvalds
Now the keys can be registered via Microsoft key signing and registry services for $99. That way participating vendors can get their keys accepted by the machines so their OSes will boot. "I'm certainly not a huge UEFI fan, but at the same time I see why you might want to have signed bootup etc," Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds (pictured) is quoted as saying in the ZDNet Linux and Open Source blog. "And if it's only $99 to get a key for Fedora, I don't see what the huge deal is."
Power sipping video hardware

Windows 8-certified hardware will offload video decoding to a hardware subsystem, according to the Building Windows 8 blog.

"This allows us to significantly lower CPU usage, resulting in smoother video playback and a longer battery life, as the dedicated media hardware is much more efficient than the CPU at media decoding," Scott Manchester, group program manager for Microsoft's Media Platform and Technologies team, writes in the blog. "This improves all scenarios that require video decoding, including playback, transcoding, encoding, and capture scenarios."

A chart in the blog (below) indicates the hardware will call for a half to a third of the CPUs needed by Windows 7 for the same video tasks.

Chrome for Metro
Google's Chrome browser is getting tuned up to support Windows 8 in both desktop and Metro modes. Presumably, it won't be much challenge to get the browser to run in desktop mode since Microsoft says any app that run on Windows 7 runs on Windows 8.

But it's a little more challenging to fit it out to handle Metro and all its touch features. The company has been working on it since March, and says, "Over the next few months, we'll be smoothing out the UI on Metro and improving touch support, so please feel free to file bugs."

Samples of the browser will be available with the next Chrome Dev channel release, but the company doesn't say when that is. It also takes the opportunity to restate it's complaint that Chrome is banned from Windows RT, the ARM version of Windows 8 "Chrome won't run in WinRT, i.e. Windows 8 on ARM processors, as Microsoft is not allowing browsers other than Internet Explorer on the platform," Google says.

Qualcomm is down with Windows RT
Qaulcomm says it is making ARM chips designed for Windows RT devices -- the Windows 8 combo of operating system, limited Microsoft Office and hardware that won't run x86 applications. The chips are called Snapdragon S4 Pro.

MCITP: Enterprise Administrator

Earning a MCITP Enterprise Administrator certification in Windows 2008 is a definite step up for your career in the IT industry. This well recognised MCITP certification is held in high regard and will provide to your current and future employers that you have the skills and knowledge to implement and maintain a Windows Server 2008 network infrastructure. People who hold a MCITP Enterprise Administrator certification have one of the highest salaries on average compared to other MCITP certifications, if you wish you can view our comparison of the average MCITP salaries.

To gain MCITP: EA status you will need to gain a pass mark in 5 exams. Four of these are core exams and the last one is an elective which you get to choose.

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MCITP Enterprise Administrator core exams: (you need to pass all 4 these)
Exam 70-640 TS: Configuring Windows Server 2008 Active Directory
Exam 70-642 TS: Configuring Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure
Exam 70-643 TS: Configuring Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure
Exam 70-647 Pro: Enterprise Administrator, Windows Server 2008

MCITP Enterprise Administrator Elective exams: (you need to choose and pass 1 of these)
Exam 70-680 TS: Configuring Windows 7
Exam 70-681 TS: Deploying Windows 7 and Office 2010
Exam 70-620 TS: Configuring Microsoft Windows Vista Client
Exam 70-624 TS: Deploying and Maintaining Windows Vista Client and 2007 Microsoft Office System Desktops (retired)

The best place to start when studying to become a MCITP Enterprise Administrator is by getting yourself a copy of MCITP Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Administrator Self-Paced Training Kit. This package below contains all the study material you need to pass all 4 core exams 70-640, 70-642, 70-643, and 70-647..