Musings from the last best place - Thoughts on living and working in Montana
 

Construx Announces Complimentary Training Program For Displaced Workers

CONSTRUX ANNOUNCES COMPLIMENTARY TRAINING PROGRAM FOR DISPLACED SOFTWARE WORKERS

Bellevue, WA -- January 30, 2009
 
Construx Software today announced a complimentary program for training software workers who have been laid off during the recent economic downturn. Construx has allocated 25% of the seats in its Software Development Best Practices training seminars free to people who have been laid off from professional software development jobs.

Construx 1-, 2-, and 3-day seminars cover subjects including Software Project Management, Software Estimation, Software Requirements, Software Design, Software Testing, and numerous other software development topics. Construx offers more than 50 public seminars each year at its training facility in Bellevue, Washington.

“During the dot com collapse the software industry was at the epicenter of the recession. Most of our clients were affected, and that meant we were affected," said Steve McConnell, Construx CEO and author of five best selling software development books. "We remember what it was like before, and we are fortunate this time to be in a position to extend a helping hand to our friends whose companies are struggling."

via construx.com

If you work in the software industry, you're familiar with Steve McConnell's work. For those who have been displaced, this is a great opportunity to learn from some of the thought leaders in the industry.

Filed under  //   Software Development  
Posted February 6, 2009
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Software Startup on the Cheap? Microsoft Announces BizSpark

I read a post on TechCrunch this morning about Microsoft's newly announced BizSpark program . In a nutshell, Microsoft created BizSpark to help out software startups who are building Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. BizSpark participants get the following benefits for three years from enrollment:

  1. Access to all tools required to build the software solution (Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server). There is no limit to the number of licenses for the development team.
  2. MSDN Premium licenses
  3. Production licenses for Microsoft products required to host the solution (Windows Server, SQL Server, Sharepoint Server, etc.).

To qualify, the company must:

  1. Be privately held
  2. Have existed for less than 3 years
  3. Be recommended by a 'BizSpark Network Partner'
  4. Have less than $1MM in annual revenue
  5. Be building a SaaS solution

There's no question that this program represents significant value to the software startup. It seems to be a concise, less bureaucratic replacement for the Empower ISV program that is already in place (at least for those building SaaS solutions). What is not clear is whether or not the involvement of 'BizSpark Network Partners' necessarily implies some sort of VC involvement early on - a real problem for the team that is attempting to bootstrap themselves. Also, it's clear that Microsoft is not doing this out of some sort of altruistic interest. As several have noted in replies to Arrington's TechCrunch post, free software solutions to build SaaS solutions have existed for several years - although these alternatives are not Microsoft technologies. This solution should have its greatest appeal to those startups who are already familiar with or committed to Microsoft technologies. Developers currently using Ruby, PHP or MySQL aren't suddenly going to drop those tools because of this program.

Nevertheless, I agree with Arrington that this is a brilliant move by Microsoft. Making it easy (and cheap) for developers to build software using Microsoft technologies will only help Microsoft in the long run - even if those startups don't make it big. [Disclosure: I own a few shares of Microsoft stock.] Microsoft has always understood the importance of the development community to their success. This is just one more way to encourage developer familiarity with their products.

I also believe that this program dovetails nicely with Microsoft's direction with cloud computing solution - Windows Azure (read my post on that here ). It will be a natural evolution for companies graduating from the BizSpark program to transition to Azure as a cloud hosting solution for their (hopefully) successful SaaS solutions.

Microsoft is getting its groove back and moving aggressively in this space. Competition is always healthy.

Filed under  //   Cloud Computing   Microsoft   Software as a Service   Software Development   Software Startups   Windows Azure  
Posted November 5, 2008
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Red Dog becomes Windows Azure - Microsoft answers Google and Amazon with its own cloud computing platform

More big news out of Microsoft's PDC. You may have already been tracking Microsoft's Red Dog project. Today, Microsoft has officially renamed Red Dog and released Windows Azure as a Community Technology Preview (CTP). I recently posted that Amazon's EC2 platform has announced beta support for Microsoft Windows and SQL Server. I am excited about Windows Azure because - as a Microsoft shop - we can be somewhat confident that our platform will port more easily to a Microsoft cloud than Amazon's offering. The benefits of cloud computing are several, from lower expenses initially to endless top side. In concept, the potential is huge. And given Azure's tight integration with Visual Studio and technologies we're already familiar with, the learning curve could be easily achievable. Very interesting stuff.

You can read more about Windows Azure on this dedicated Microsoft site.

Here's a longish video that dives into more detail on Azure from a developer perspective.


Filed under  //   Cloud Computing   Microsoft   Red Dog   Software Development   Windows Azure  
Posted October 27, 2008
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Microsoft Makes Surface SDK Available to PDC Attendees

Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) is going on this week in LA. While I'm not there, some pretty exciting stuff is already trickling out. Today, Robin Waters posted on TechCrunch that Microsoft is making the Surface SDK available to 1200 developers. Robin also linked to this short video that discusses the SDK's scatter control and shows how easy it is to get a simple photo application running on a Surface device. Cool stuff!

Find out more about Surface here.

Watch the video:

Filed under  //   Microsoft   Software Development   Surface  
Posted October 27, 2008
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Bozeman .Net User Group Rides Again!

Tonight I attended the first Montana .Net User Group meeting to occur in 16 months. It was cool to meet other developers from the valley and hear about their various projects. The current plan is to meet every other month - I hope I can encourage some of my co-workers to attend in the future. Tonight I was joined by Chad Coley and Adrienne Herren from ScheduleTown.com. The more interaction and involvement we can get, the more vibrant the conversation and value to everyone involved.

Special thanks to Joe Walkuski of TexBase and Prairie Lee of TechRanch for helping get the user group back on its feet. And thanks to Eva Skidmore of Microsoft who presented details on the Microsoft Partner Program tonight.

If anyone is interested, TechRanch is hosting a networking event Thursday, October 16 at Pub 317 in downtown Bozeman. You must RSVP to Prairie Lee at TechRanch to attend. See you there!

Filed under  //   Bozeman   Montana .Net User Group   Software Development  
Posted October 14, 2008
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