April 14, 2011 News Thursday: Developer Tools at MIX11, Media & Entertainment in the Cloud at NAB, and more Server and Tools News

 

MIX2011 Showcases New and Updated Tools for Developers

This year at MIX2011 in Las Vegas, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform, announced several offerings designed to make Web development easier and more seamless for developers targeting the Web, cloud or phone:

 

· Windows Azure platform: Updates for the Windows Azure platform include the release of the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching and Access Control services, a CTP of Windows Azure Traffic Manager, and a preview of the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) for IIS Smooth Streaming capabilities. See the Windows Azure blog and AppFabric blogs for more details.

· Microsoft Web Platform: A number of new updates to the Microsoft Web Platform are also now available, including the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update and the release of Orchard 1.1.

· Microsoft Silverlight: Guthrie announced the immediate availability of Silverlight 5 beta with tooling support in Visual Studio and Expression Blend. Silverlight 5 makes further advances in media, application development, and user experience. For more information and to download the beta, visit www.silverlight.net.

 

For more information please visit the MIX Virtual Press Room

 

 

NAB Show 2011: Microsoft and Partners Help Bring Media and Entertainment Companies to the Cloud

On Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced it will support the development of a partner ecosystem to help media and entertainment companies take advantage of the cloud. The ecosystem will enable partners to develop industry specific solutions based on the Windows Azure platform that provide media and entertainment companies with a simplified digital supply chain along with the benefits of cloud computing. Several Microsoft partners announced their participation, including BuyDRM, Digital Rapids and MPS Broadband. In addition, Signiant announced that Zune and Xbox will use the company's content distribution management system to help enable the seamless and secure movement of video and gaming content on Windows Azure.

For more information about Microsoft's announcements at NAB, view the press release and feature story, or visit the Communications Sector's Virtual Press Room.

 

ADO .NET Entity Framework 4.1 Available for Web Download

This week the ADO .NET Entity Framework 4.1, as shown in the Scott Guthrie keynote at MIX, was released for immediate download. Customers can visit the Microsoft Downloads Center to download the new release that includes several new features for database developers, including:

  • Code First development pattern that can automatically generate complete databases from entity models.
  • The DbContext API that is a simplified abstraction optimized for common tasks and coding patterns for database developers.

 

Please see Entity Framework Developer Center for further details.

 

Updates to the .NET 4 Framework Platform and WF4 State Machine

On April 25, Microsoft will release a number of updates to the .NET Framework 4, which was first announced in Jason Zander’s keynote at TechEd MEA. These updates include the release of the Multi-Targeting Pack for .NET Framework 4 developers. In addition, Microsoft is also announcing the Windows Workflow Foundation State Machine, which is supported on .NET Framework 4 and builds upon Windows Foundation runtime and adds in new workflow style for event-drive processes.

 

For more information visit the .NET Endpoint blog

 

General Availability of Small Business Server 2011 Essentials

On April 5, 2011, Microsoft announced the general availability of Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. Built on Windows Server 2008 R2, SBS Essentials is an agile new product designed and priced as a solution for businesses that have fewer than 25 users and do not have a client/server network in place. SBS Essentials gives small business customers an easy way to get their infrastructure in place using our simple-to-deploy server. At the same time, SBS Essentials ensures that business-critical data is regularly and automatically backed up, the health of the network is actively monitored, and users and computer management are easy and straightforward. In addition the comprehensive extensibility built into the product makes it easy to take advantage of a wide variety of cloud services and third-party additions.

 

For more information, please visit The Official SBS Blog.