I'm attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference this week in Denver. It's interesting attending this show as a 'partner' after attending this show as a Microsoft employee working with Microsoft Business Solutions (Dynamics now). One of the focuses of the show has always been around the business opportunities that exist for the Microsoft Partner ecosystem focusing on Microsoft's biggest threats Linux, Google, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, SAP... So what makes this show really interesting for me is I'm attending as a Microsoft Partner that has a very viable Java / Linux offering.

I just recently attended the Google Conference on Scalability in Redmond Washington where I got a chance to sit in on several sessions that discussed creating distributed applications at 'web scale'.

Well, I'm still digging out from last weeks TechEd 2007 this week - I've followed up on all of the customers, vendors and press contacts and leads. I've gone through all of the twenty pounds of 'junk' - I mean, literature that we received in the 'better then average' backpack they gave out this year. And I've starting loading and reviewing the software that was handed out or announced this week…

WOW, what a great honor to win the Tech Ed 2007 Architecture award!

I really feel that this award illustrates the need for a .NET application tier scale out solution that doesn't rely on scaling out the user interface / web tier. Why increase the external attack surface of your infrastructure by adding additional web servers for scale, when what you really need is more application tier horse power?

And that's what the fabric is all about, creating a scalable .NET application cluster that provides automated application deployment, software based application tier load balancing and automated request fail over.

Ah, the rush of doing a trade show!

While my newbie counterpart Jasen had his trade show baptism in Las Vegas for the Serverside.com Conference, this trip will round out the dozen or so attendances I've made just to Microsoft's Tech*ed over the years.