Conrad Agramont's Blog

Cloud Computing like Mobile Phone Pricing

2010-03-01T22:55:58Z

Lately I've been thinking about the pricing models of Cloud Computing Vendors and wondering when they'll move to a more granular pricing structure like the mobile phone market. Much of the hype around Cloud Computing is around paying for what you use including compute time. That's a pretty powerful message, but what does that really come down to? While Amazon Web Services (AWS) focuses on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)/IT buyers and Microsoft Azure focuses on Platform as a Service...(read more)

What users are looking for in an AppStore

2010-02-24T20:47:02Z

The iPhone phenomenon is driven by many innovations made by Apple and now many software makers are scrambling to see how they can replicate that success for their own application and market. It's more than just focusing on the mobile market and the iPhone specifically, the same model and success could be found in other software and service delivery models. That said, I think many software makers are making a mistake by assuming the AppStore's success is because customers were looking for...(read more)

Pipeline Pilot 8.0 Beta Testing Nomination

2009-12-07T13:40:46Z

Accelrys is looking for beta testers for its upcoming release of Pipeline Pilot. The beta is tentatively scheduled for the week of December 7. We’d like feedback on a number of capabilities. Of particular interest will be to find out if these capabilities behave as expected in a true customer setting and if behavior for existing protocol is unchanged after an upgrade. If you are interested in becoming a beta tester, and you can commit at least 4 hours of your time before the end of the year, please...(read more)

Microsoft PDC Day 2

2009-11-18T17:07:44Z

My notes from Day 2 at the Microsoft Professional Developers conference in Los Angeles on November 18, 2009. 8:30 - Steven Sinofsky takes the stage! Kicking it off talking about Windows 7 Video time – “Why we share your pain”…Funny! Explaining how Microsoft uses Windows 7 Telemetry to learn more about how customers use Windows 7 4,753 Code changes driven by Windows Error Reporting 1,729,890 Send Feedback Reports 46, 447,784 Aero Snap & Shake features used in last 6 months Video time – Showing...(read more)

Microsoft PDC 2009 – Day 1

2009-11-17T16:44:10Z

This is day one of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). My goal is to keep posting to this single blog entry with updates from the conference based on the keynote and sessions that I attend Keynote – Ray Ozzie 8:30 - Ray takes the stage to show off the high level vision for Microsoft products and services. Nothing interesting to show off yet. 8:41 - Loic LeMeur (Founder & CEO) from seesmic showing his product using Silverlight. User Interface looks a lot like TweetDeck...(read more)

Accelrys Pipeline Pilot for ITPro’s

2009-10-19T22:40:00Z

Accelrys Pipeline Pilot Enterprise Server (PPES) is growing in usage within many scientific focused businesses. I won’t go into all of the great things our product can do. However, I am VERY focused on ensuring that we provide the right content, product updates, and tools to enable IT Professionals (ITPro) to plan, deploy, operation, and support PPES within their corporate environment. Often times users and teams leverage PPES within their department to quickly analyze data and build interesting...(read more)

My new role at Accelrys as Senior Product Manager, Enterprise Technologies

2009-10-15T10:56:10Z

This is my third week at Accelrys and now that I have a better understanding of the company and my duties, I thought it might be a good time to share that amongst the blogosphere. First off, let me take care of some personal questions I’m sure I’ll get (really just saving myself from a bunch of emails). While doing the consulting thing was fun, I really missed working with a team to deliver innovative solutions. So Agramont Services as a business is slowly winding down. Another...(read more)

ISV Guidelines MS CRM Part 2: CRM as an Application or Platform

2009-09-11T23:08:00Z

In Part 1 of the “ISV Guidelines for Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0”, I covered the basics of leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (MSCRM4) as a hosted platform for Independent Software Vendors (ISV). In this post, I’ll provide some guidance on the two most popular method of using MSCRM4 for an application. This won’t be a deep technical dive, but general guidance. Part 1: Introduction Part 2: CRM as an Application or Platform Part 3: Shared or Virtualization Deployment & Licensing Part 4...(read more)

BizSpark Incubation Week: Windows 7 – Day 2

2009-08-25T10:22:16Z

Day 1 at the BizSpark Incubation Week was a great kickoff, but now the true fun begins! I’ve decided to try something new and make today’s post and active log of our actions through out the day. (We’ll see how good that works). All times are US Eastern Standard Times 6:20 a.m – Wake UP and Commute – I live an hour south of Washington D.C. in Fredericksburg, VA and it will me about 90 minutes (I’m I’m lucky) to get to the Reston Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) where the event is...(read more)

BizSpark Incubation Week: Windows 7 – Day 1

2009-08-24T21:34:00Z

Today I spent several hours in Reston, Virginia at the Microsoft office for the BizSpark Incubation Week focused on Windows 7. BizSpark is a Microsoft program to help Startups build their software based application or service. One of the chief reasons for doing this is enabling those startups to leverage the Microsoft platform and reduce their development costs by removing the up front fee for Microsoft Visual Studio via the MSDN Subscription. That’s right, if you’re a startup company, Microsoft...(read more)

Virtual Desktops and Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC)

2009-07-31T15:09:11Z

A few years ago the United States Federal Government, specifically the U.S. Office of Management and Budget) created a PC standard for then entire government to follow. The provided over 300 settings for Windows XP and Windows Vista in order to create a standard for all computers. This is what is now knows as Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDDC) . There is a ton of resources on the Internet, mostly on the .gov sites, that provides guidance on what these settings are and how...(read more)

Hosted Virtual Machines with XenApp

2009-07-30T20:56:05Z

Today on one of Citrix’s Blogs, they announced a new upcoming technology called “ Hosted Virtual Machines ” (HVM). As if the Virtualization Soup of technology wasn’t big enough already, but this does solve an interesting problem. Without much more information on the subject, here is my take. Short Version: You want to host an application on a managed VM, but Terminal Services won’t work for a number of reasons. With HVM, you use a client OS such Windows XP to run the application...(read more)

How Windows 7 will boost the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market

2009-07-23T19:35:53Z

As it stands today, there is a large and growing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) market with vendors spread throughout the software and hardware spectrum. Unfortunately, many enterprises have either not done or heard of VDI or their in perpetual piloting. My theory isn’t that the benefits of VDI isn’t valid, and it’s certainly not for a lack of value realization once a solution is deployed. My take is that since many organizations skipped Windows Vista and stayed with Windows...(read more)

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is now RTM!

2009-07-22T21:00:38Z

This is SWEET news! Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is now Released To Manufacturing (RTM). This means that Microsoft is done with the code, sending it to various Original Equipment Manufactures (OEM) such as Dell, HP, and IBM. Everything else for Windows 7 will be done via patches and Service Packs (as usual). I first saw this news via Twitter (@MSWindows) where the Windows team then blogged about it: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/22/windows-7-has-been...(read more)

My Call with Pano Logic

2009-07-21T21:02:04Z

I had a great call the other day with the CTO of Pano Logic, Aly Orady. As some of you know, I’ve been doing a fair amount of researching and lab work with various Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technologies. In looking around for VDI solutions, I came across Pano Logic which is based in Menlo Park, CA. Pano Logic provides a unique spin on the VDI space as they’re solution encompasses both the software and hardware component. Sure, many hardware vendors, such as ChipPC and...(read more)