September 27, 2012 News Thursday: Windows Azure Mobile Services SDK Released and More Server and Tools News…

by STB Blogger

Windows Azure Mobile Services releases SDK

As of last week, the Windows Azure Mobile Services SDK is available on GitHub for C# developers. Furthermore, Windows Azure partnered with Xamarin, the creators of MonoTouch and MonoDroid, to be Mobile Services’ first open-source contributors. These announcements aim to expand what’s possible for Microsoft developers to accomplish using their existing skill set (C#) and Windows Azure Mobile Services.

For more on this news, read the Windows Azure blog post.

New Monetary Commitment Offer for Windows Azure Customers

A new monthly commitment plan that can be used against any Windows Azure service is now available. The offer provides customers flexibility to use a monetary commitment amount against multiple services, versus current industry offers that require customers to specify how much of each service or instance they need. Purchasing options start at $500 (20 percent discount) and offer additional discounts of up to 32 percent for 12-month plans and upfront payment.

Check out the Windows Azure blog post for specific savings information.

STB Technologies in baseball

Earlier this week, Microsoft News Center posted a story about the Cincinnati Reds’ use of Microsoft technologies. The Reds use Microsoft for everything from producing the content on the jumbotron to adjusting the pricing of hot dogs at the food vendors. One of the highlighted technologies is a homegrown database application that aggregates statistics from scouting reports and synchronizes them into a SQL Server database for reporting and analysis.

Read the MNC blog post to learn more.

T3 announces solution to move IBM mainframe applications to Windows Azure

T3 Technologies has released Liberty Server 3.1, which enables organizations to move from the high-cost of mainframes to the consumption-based model of Windows Azure.  This product supports the movement of COBOL, CICS and Batch workloads to Windows Azure with little or no change to the code thereby mitigating the risk of such projects.  

For more information on this announcement, please visit the T3 Technologies Solutions page.

Huawei's Open Network Platform Promotes Application of the NVGRE Virtualization Technology

Huawei recently announced support for Hyper-V Networking Virtualization using the Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) protocol, introduced in Windows Server 2012. Hyper-V Networking Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 enables customers to confidently build and manage highly virtualized environments. By supporting NVGRE protocol, Huawei gives their customers flexibility and mobility to address today’s datacenter networking challenges. 

Read the press release for more information.