Walter Pinson

Windows Azure at Cloud Expo My colleague, Peter Palmieri, just penned a blog post about Microsoft’s recent announcement that the Azure platform will offer extensive and familiar relational database features via SQL Data Services (SDS). In his post, Leveraging Skills, Peter discusses the fact that .NET developers will be able to leverage their existing SQL Server database skills when developing against the Azure platform. In doing so, he has touched upon what I think is Microsoft’s most strategic advantage in the realm of cloud computing. Microsoft has a ready-made ecosystem and developer community from which to draw its consumer innovators and early adopters. And I believe it plans on leveraging that advantage to vanquish the competition. The sheer breadth and depth of these cloud consumer first-movers may prove to be game-changing. From my perspective, abstractio... (more)

Code Contracts in .NET Help Distributed Software Development Teams

Microsoft’s Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) team is on to something.  Luckily, for developers around the world, they have released it to the public.  I’m talking about Code Contracts in Microsoft .NET.  Code Contracts are very useful under any circumstance; however, they are particularly useful in helping distributed software development teams increase team efficiency, improve product quality, and mitigate against risks associated with team dispersion. The notion of design-by-contract programming has been around for quite a while.  In fact, Bertrand Meyer (founder of Eif... (more)

Is Cloud Computing Like Teenage Sex?

It was once said back in the early ‘90s that “Client/server computing is a little like teenage sex – everyone talks about it, few actually do it, and even fewer do it right.  Nevertheless, many people believe client/server computing is the next major step in the evolution of corporate information systems.” Can the same be said about cloud computing, today? It is evident that cloud computing is the next major step in computing, in general.  But is it the next major step in the evolution of corporate information systems?  Everyone is certainly talking about it; but who is actuall... (more)

Bank of England: Hurry up and do nothing.

On a return flight from London, the passenger next to me kindly let me read her paper.  I don’t normally read foreign papers but, being the dedicated EMBA student, I went straight for the The Daily Telegraph’s business section. The front page of the business section was full of gloom and doom.  Almost every story was negative; "Woolworths - picking a scapegoat?", "Manufacturers to raise prices again", "Senior executives fear for London’s future".  Amidst all this negativity, one headline caught my eye. "Three-way split looms on BoE interest rates". In my current study of Macro E... (more)

Designer suits and macroeconomics…

Take a look at this suit.  Take a good look.  Is it worth $40K?  Some people seem to think so.  More importantly however, is that at least 30 of these Brioni Vanquish II suits have sold in the midst the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. So what does this fantastically priced suit have to do with macroeconomics?  As it turns out, there is an answer to that question.  Let me explain. Today, in my macroeconomics class, we studied the Brazilian economy under presidents Cardoso and Lula.  Most of the details are not relevant to this blog post.  What is relevant; howev... (more)