Microsoft ZDC being shit down

Unfortunately our beautiful office is being shut down.
Looks like we are too expensive :(
Here are a few pics from our office facilities



Cafeteria



Air Hockey and Darts



Climbing Wall



Foosball



Game Room



Pool

Table Tennis

XBox

Microsoft Lync 2010 Resource Kit Tools

Microsoft has started publishing Lync 2010 Resource Kit articles online. First article: Call Park-o-Meter has been written by me. It is nice to be first:)

It is about a tool that I have written to faciltate usage of the Lync Call Park Service, that I have been developing in Microsoft Zurich Development Center. The difference between a service which is a part of Microsoft Lync Server and a Microsoft Lync Reskit tool is that the latter is not shipped together with the product but can be downloaded and installed separately.

It is unclear if a hard copy will be published this time as it was for OCS 2007 R2 Reskit book.
I published a sidebar there for OCS RGS (Response Group Service). RGS is another voice application that is also being developed in Zurich Development Center.

Moscow, MS Platforma 2011

I just returned from MS Platforma Conference in Moscow.

It is the biggest IT event in Russia - to popularize Microsoft Software, solutions, and talk about what's new among Russian and a few former "CCCP" IT specialists.

This time it coincided with Microsoft Lync launch - I am also a developer for Lync at Microsoft Zurich Development Center. I participated in two cojoint talks about Lync: gave a demo on Lync Architecture session and talked about dial-in conferencing in another session.

The conference was greatly organized and was an excellent experience.

Hope to be invited to go there next year as well:)

Here are some pics from the sessions:



There is a good blog by Sergey Trofimov, who participated in this event about this conference.

Microsoft Lync 2010 RTM

After 2 years of development we just had RTM (Release To Manufacturing) of Microsoft Lync 2010 (former Microsoft Office Communications Server). We develop voice applications here in Zurich.

Here are the celebration pics from this event:

Cloud Warz: Windows Azure vs Google App Engine

Today I gave a presentation comparing two cloud providers, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google App Engine: "A practical introduction to two of the most popular cloud vendors and unbiased comparison".

Check out the presentation here:
http://www.nanogmail.com/WindowAzureGoogleAppEngineComparison.pdf
The source code for the Windows Azure project is under which can be used as your "hello world" with data access is under:

http://www.nanogmail.com/CloudAzure.zip

and for the Google App Engine is under

http://www.nanogmail.com/CloudAppEngine.zip

The scariest thing perceived about Azure is that you have to give your credit card during registration.

Another big inconvenience is that it is really expensive and as an introductory offer you get only one small virtual instance. So, as concluded in the presentation, probably some 90% will prefer Google App Engine unless Microsoft does some drastic steps in changing its model.