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Microsoft’s chief architect Ray Ozzie has figured out that cloud margins aren’t gonna be the same as the margins derived from on-premises software. “The margins on services are not like the margins on software so [cloud computing] will increase our profit and it will increase our revenue, but you won’t have that margin,” he’s quoted as saying at the Churchill Club last week. “The margins at the low level, at the Azure level, are going to be lower than the top level, where you’re delivering a solution or something like Exchange. You’re pricing that solution around a business valu... (more)

RIAs for Web 3.0 Using the Microsoft Platform

The level of functionality on the Web is changing and the bar is rising on what is considered a true rich Internet application (RIA). This fact and the emergence of the Web as an interconnected platform is once again changing the landscape and moving us into the next phase of the Web, which is called Web 3.0. It might be a little early to completely define what Web 3.0 will be but there ... (more)

Excuse Me, Did Microsoft Just Give the EC the Finger?

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on our part, but it sounds like Microsoft – in the very nicest way, of course, to avoid any further fines – just told the European Commission to go f**k itself. See, at press time, CNet was saying as how it saw a confidential memo that Microsoft sent to OEMs and that Microsoft plans to ship Windows 7 in Europe without its browser at all leaving it to the O... (more)

Google Maps and ASP.NET

I am sure that most of you have heard about or have had a chance to use Google Maps. It's a great service and I was really impressed by the responsiveness of the application and the ease with which users could drag and zoom maps from a Web browser. It has in many ways heralded the arrival of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which I am sure will revitalize Web development in the da... (more)

Conference News & Updates
In the tight economy, front-end engineers and front-end engineering can play a conspicuous role: good user experience, as the iPhone spectacularly demonstrates, means good business. At the 7th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in just two weeks' time, the speaker lineup is as usual dripping with real-world expertise.
With an ever-increasing number of companies now buying computing, storage, and networking power as they need it from the cloud, it is hardly surprising that SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is going from strength to strength. The Call for Papers for the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, on November 2- 4, 2009, is now open.
SYS-CON announces the Call for Papers for the 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo (GovITExpo), to be held October 5-6, 2009 in Washington, DC. Submissions are welcomed from exceptional speakers who are also Infrastructure, architecture, and software engineering experts who have first-hand experience in the development, procurement or implementation of IT for Government or Federal agencies.
Federal IT organizations across the DoD and IC are facing costly data storage and data processing challenges stemming from the vast amount of information they collect and analyze as a part of their mission. To effectively organize and utilize these growing information stores, enterprise applications must be capable of performing large-scale, data-intensive processing. Federal enterprise infrastructures supporting such applications are often inadequate to address these challenges, and IT organizations incur lost time and greater costs trying to scale resources to meet storage and computing demand.
SYS-CON Events announced today the latest event in its innovative series of real-world technology conferences, Government IT Conference & Expo, a two-day deep dive into the new wave of Internet-based technologies that are changing the way that Federal agencies leverage, procure and utilize IT. GovITExpo, which is being held October 5-6, 2009 in Washington, DC, builds on the success of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo, the fastest-growing conference anywhere in the world devoted to the delivery of massively scalable IT as a service using Internet technologies.
The conference theme of the 8th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo, to be held September 22–23, 2009 in San Francisco, CA, is 'Good User Experiences Are Good Business.' The Call for Papers, which is now open, welcomes submissions from exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases of investing in user experience (UX) design to provide strong return on investment (ROI). Case studies from companies that have chosen to invest in UX and UI, with measurable benefits, are especially encouraged.
SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Europe, held on May 18-19, 2009, in Prague, Czech Republic, is the first major cloud event in Europe and is co-located with SYS-CON's Virtualization Conference Europe 2009. The next event is the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, Santa Clara, CA, November 2-4, 2009, co-located with the the 7th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.
SYS-CON Events yesterday announced that IBM WebSphere Director of Product Management Dr. Kareem Yusuf will deliver a keynote on cloud computing and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) at the upcoming SOA World Conference & Expo 2009 East (www.soaworld2009.com) June 22-23 in New York City.