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MIX 09 - Return on Experience

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Posting from The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas where I’m taking part in Microsoft’s 4th annual MIX event, where the crowd is a sea of red… red shirts that is, in honor of Scott Guthrie’s style.

 

Looking around I see a diverse group of web designers and developers eager to learn how businesses can achieve a ‘return on experience’ by using a new generation of development tools, web platform technologies and software plus services to better engage their customers. Web 2.0 technologies have become a business norm and an essential customer interaction point for most businesses.

So what does this have to do with MIX? Well, MIX provides a forum for developers to learn about Microsoft’s newest technologies and developer tools -- whether they be on the web or in the cloud, so that they can engage their customers and forge deeper connections through rich online experiences that deliver a better experience.

From the Web to the Cloud

Developers using the web as a key access point to build rich content, social media applications and innovative business application isn’t new. In fact, Microsoft has, and continues to provide the tools and technologies to enable web developers to build these rich applications, including Web App Gallery, Silverlight 3 Beta, Expression, etc.

 

With changing economics and technical innovations, we are taking this opportunity to extend the web workload into the cloud helping developers harness the power that they want and need, at scale without having to manage the complexities of hardware. Moving beyond hardware, Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform helps developers focus on their applications and user experiences.

 

When Microsoft began thinking about its software plus services vision over three years ago, we knew that in order to help our customers solve their business problems, they would need a balance between on-premise and cloud solutions, and the choice to determine which workloads they moved in and out of the cloud. We’ve created a dynamic internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a broad set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Today, I’m happy to announce the roadmap updates with the SDS relational database capabilities, Windows Azure updates (including FactCGI, .NET FullTrust & Geolocation), and the .NET Services interop enhancements.

 

For those who weren’t able to attend MIX in person – here are few things to consider.

 

Get Involved

· Visit the MIX 09 website and check out the latest innovations on the web and cloud, or stream the keynotes from your desk.

· Begin leveraging Microsoft’s cloud, visit the Azure website and register for the Community Tech Preview.

· Download the Silverlight 3 beta and take advantage of the newest tools outlined above.

· Check out the WebPI and the App Gallery.

For those of you who made the trip to MIX, I’ll see you at tonight’s party at TAO !

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