Why cloud computing is still a hard sell, but doesn’t have to be (Re-Blogged)

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ery candid exchange between two enterprise-tech pundits on the current state of affairs in the cloud space. Can the cloud save you money? As is so often the case, success is typically found in the execution as much as being duly responsive to customers. Commentators from Ericsson and Apcera offer perspectives on their own experience which might well be mirrored elsewhere…

Gigaom

The definitions of cloud computing have shifted a lot in the past several years, but a few things never change. Whether it’s located in an Amazon data center or a company’s own, whether it’s virtual servers or an entire platform for deploying applications, the cloud is supposed to serve many users, it’s supposed to improve flexibility and it’s supposed to save money. It all sounds great, but these guiding lights don’t always jibe with existing attitudes toward security and compliances and the systems put in place to enforce them.

On this week’s Structure Show podcast, we interviewed Derek Collision (above, left) — founder of a company called Apcera that’s all about making it easy to enforce policies while gaining the benefits of cloud computing — and Jason Hoffman (above, right) — the head of cloud computing at Ericsson (and former founder and CTO of Joyent), which just invested millions of…

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AR HelpOuts Launched!

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he AppRefactory Inc. launches its first service offering today with the debut of a partnership with Google Inc. through Google Helpouts.  This further enhances the company’s service offerings in the application maintenance and support space; but also extends its services to more generalized support of the tools and technologies it uses throughout its service delivery process.  Support is being offered through Google Helpouts for technologies and platforms like:

• Microsoft Visual Studio (all ediitions, 2005-2013)
• Programming Language Support / Tutorials:
  • Visual C#
  • Visual Basic / VB.NET
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • HTML
  • XML
  • SQL
  • VBScript
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft Team Foundation Server
• Microsoft Windows / Microsoft Windows Server
• Microsoft Office / MS Office VBA
• Linux (Ubuntu)
• Apache WebServer
• Microsoft Internet Information Server
• Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
• Microsoft Windows Workflow (WF)
• Microsoft .NET Framework
• Web Services

…and much, much more!

Google Helpouts also offers payment features that allows either the business or individual user to use services on a demand basis easily.  And with this launch, the service is being offered, for a limited time, with a free support instance — giving potential customers an opportunity to “try-and-buy” for a fixed 20-minute session, without charges or fees applied.  (See Google Helpouts terms & conditions for more info.)

WS-HTTP-Based Windows Service: Last Choice of WCF Devs?

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hile looking for a configuration utility to assist with some WCF development I was doing earlier today, I realized that I’d written an article about that same utility in my blog a while back.  And upon clicking the link to where the tool should have been located, got a “not found” error.  Further research revealed the location where the author apparently moved it to and I’ve updated the article in question (below) accordingly.

If you find broken links — especially to downloadable media that might be of interest to others — please don’t hesitate to let me know using blog feedback at the bottom of the “About me” page.

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ou might not think that WS–HTTP isn’t the last choice of WCF developers when developing a Windows Service.  Despite the protocol overhead of HTTP, often developers will default to this protocol in setting up a WCF application because of network rules, compatibility with other applications based on HTTP or just out of raw familiarity.  Whatever the reason, HTTP still ends up being the first choice – as it was for me recently (albeit at another’s urging) and, being a veteran of net.tcp, I ran into trouble pretty quick:

HTTP could not register URL http://+:8083/FoaeaService/ApplicationListSystem.svc/. Your process does not have access rights to this namespace (see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70353 for details).
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnOpen()
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportManager.Open(TransportChannelListener channelListener)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportManagerContainer.Open(SelectTransportManagersCallback selectTransportManagerCallback)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open()
at Justice.FOAEA.MidTier.Services.FoaeaHostService.OnStart(String[] args) in C:\Projects\WCF\ServiceHost\FoaeaHostService.vb:line 77

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Strangely, I didn’t visit the Help and Support Center, as directed at the bottom of the stack trace above.  Instead I tinkered with my .config file for about an hour before it dawned on me that the settings were actually correct and I should follow the instructions.

To summarize my visit to the Help and Support Center, there is an extremely obscure tool called HttpCfg.exe which is used on that platform I’m currently developing for – Windows Server 2003 (it’s netsh on Vista/Windows Server 2008, and less obscure).  It demands that you divine an arcane string to pass as parameters for your application, security context, etc.  Certainly, one could achieve the desired settings to make their HTTP-hosted service work…eventually.  But I was fortunate enough to spare myself another indefinite period of maddening trial-and-error by stumbling upon an extremely helpful blog article by one Paul Wheeler, a former Microsoft SDE who apparently did some WCF development for the company’s Connected Systems division.  In the article, Wheeler provides a tool for configuring local system HTTP settings with source code under Creative Commons (public license).  The tool offers other advantages over HttpCfg for this purpose and was a lucky find indeed!

I am still debating whether or not to push a lot harder to move my app to net.tcp.  The decision rests with the project’s technical architect; and I wasn’t he on this project at the time (but, in fact, ended up assuming the Technical Architect role about mid-way through the first phase of the project).  But if you, like me, are in a situation requiring HTTP – Wheeler’s HttpNamespaceManager is for you!

Updated: July 26, 2011