Kurt Shintaku's Blog

This past month, two major announcements were made that you might have missed:

• Microsoft provides worldwide National Science Foundation researchers with free Windows Azure cloud computation & collaboration
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/feb10/02-04NSFPR.mspx

The National Science Foundation is responsible for research in thousands of areas including food production for the 3rd world, robotics, 3D modeling for surgery, computer-based programming, cancer & disease detection, extraterrestrial communications, and other human endeavors.

By providing access to Microsoft cloud computing fabric, the NSF will be able to:

• Take advantage of existing, pre-built research & development
• Improve collaboration amongst researchers by providing a uniform place to share information
• Increase performance and velocity of research through the sheer computation power of the cloud

• Intuit and Microsoft Join Forces to Deliver Web Applications to Millions of Small Businesses
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/jan10/1-20IntuitDevelopersPR.mspx

Intuit, makers of financial software such as Quickbooks & TurboTax, have a base of independent developers that extend the capabilities & reach of their products but leveraging APIs built into their software.

In partnership with Microsoft, Intuit selected Windows Azure as their preferred cloud infrastructure for extending their software.   By providing the free Windows Azure software development kit (SDK) as part of the Intuit Partner Platform today at http://developer.intuit.com/azure, hundreds of thousands of application developers can now extend their financial services software & extensions via the web in a highly scalable, secure, and available infrastructure.