Two very interesting startups in the Seattle area have adopted Silverlight, Cootendy’s WaresDinner site for foodies and Overcast Media’s new overcast player.  

 

WaresDinner offers exotic dinner party experience kits containing fair trade wares. They establish a fair trade US market for World artists through a dinner party kit featuring the tableware and culinary traditions of the artist’s country. Customers buy an “experience kit” containing all the components needed to create an exotic culinary experience, including hand-made table linens, menus, shopping list, wine pairing advice, indigenous music, invitations, country and artist profiles, and on-line support and suppliers.  Since the consumer acquires collectible table ware, Cootendy’s goal is to make the investment and dinner experience lasting.  Bringing people together to share both the cooking and the experience of new cuisines, capitalizes on the demand for unique culinary experiences, the expanding global market for ethnic items, and the desire to support a socially conscious business.

 

Overcast Media is enabling a new shared entertainment experience through the interplay of user-generated content and professional digital media.  They allow any user to augment media, like television shows and movies, with audio commentary, Web links, and ‘pop-up video’ style text and graphics.  This is fondly called “overcasting”.  Overcasts can be shared on the Web and are distributed independently from the video.  Recently, they have developed a Silverlight player to generate and play user-generated overcast content. 

Worth noting, Overcast Media has developed a patent-pending ‘Relative Timeline Technology’ that enables an “author once, sync everywhere” media playback capability. The technology normalizes for file format and timing variances found across video sources.  Overcasting provides incentive for viewers to become deeply involved in a show’s community and gives them a reason to watch a show (or portion) more than once.  This translates to increased advertising opportunities and better audience data by drawing users to online content.

 

IdentityMine is a design and development partner that assisted Overcast Media in building the Silverlight player for overcasting.

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John L. Scott Real Estate (JLS) is delivering a unique social networking solution, called JLSconnect, that makes it easier for buyers to shop for a home and it will help JLS agents win new business and keep customers.  By building this new solution using Microsoft software and a Software+Services approach, John L. Scott was able to deliver unique customer value quickly and cost-effectively.  The company has easily repackaged existing Web functionality, combined it with new capabilities provided by Microsoft Live Services, and delivered it all through a user experience powered by Silverlight and optimized for the task at hand: collaborating with family, friends, and a John L. Scott agent when shopping for a home.

In previous posts [1][2][3], I’ve talked about real examples of S+S and how this new and emerging pattern of computing is helping businesses to meet demands, to support customers in new ways, and to differentiate themselves from the competition.

A History of Innovation

The JLS Web site receives more than one million visitors and produces more than nine million listing views each month, and was one of the first real estate sites to use the Microsoft Virtual Earth service to provide rich online mapping capabilities. 

“We’re an early adopter of new technology because it enables us to meet new customer needs,” says Pat Giles, Vice President of Marketing and IT at John L. Scott. “Fifteen years ago, potential home buyers first found an agent, who then used a printed copy of the Multiple Listing Service book to help them find a home. Today, the average home buyer goes online to look at homes before ever talking with an agent. Given that customers today expect to be able to go to our Web site and get all the information they need, the challenge we face is ‘How do we exceed those expectations?’”

This leads the discussion to what John L. Scott Real Estate is doing with JLSconnect, a new offering that facilitates social networking during the home shopping process. 

Ideas around JLSconnect began in mid-2008 when John L. Scott began looking at how to improve online collaboration when buyers are searching for a home.  “Purchasing a home is a social, collaborative event that often involves more than two people,” says Giles.  “For example, the main person an agent is working with may want to share properties and get input from his or her spouse, other family members, and so on.  Given that 44 percent of buyers already use social networking tools, and that online behavior in general is continuing to move that way, we knew that we had to support the trend.”  Additionally, JLS wanted to do so in a way that would make their Web site ‘stickier’ and capture buyers earlier in the home-search process, thereby benefiting their agents.

 

JLSconnect uses a Silverlight client to combine existing Web site features and several Live Services into an integrated collaboration experience.

The Solution

John L. Scott is leveraging Microsoft cloud services to encourage buyers to collaborate directly with friends, family, and agents on the company’s main Web site, which provides increased convenience for all parties while helping the company and its agents further differentiate themselves from the competition. JLSconnect, uses a software-plus-services approach in which software running on user desktops integrates with centralized, Web-based services hosted by John L. Scott and Microsoft to provide entirely new capabilities through a combination of existing, familiar tools.

This might a good point to backup slightly and to talk about the Azure Services Platform, of which Live Services is one of a growing number of building block components contained therein.

 

Live Services is highlighted in red as one of the major components of the cloud platform.  The other components are out of scope to this post, so (for now) I will concentrate on the Live Services and those constituent building blocks used in JLSconnect.

The solution uses Microsoft Silverlight to enrich the collaboration experience provided by the company’s existing Web site, pulling together preexisting Web site features—the ability for individuals to log in and save “favorite” properties—with new functionality that makes it possible for people to easily share and exchange comments on those properties with others. 

The Live Services that JLSconnect takes advantage of include:

• Windows Live ID, a hosted cloud service which provides single sign-on capabilities across the company’s Web site and growing ecosystem of Live Services by allowing users to login to the John L. Scott Web site using the same online ID that they use for Messenger and other Live services.

• Windows Live Contacts, a service that contains ‘contacts’ for every user identified by a Live ID.  Live Contacts offers a foundation to social networking activities because it all starts with the ability to identify and track friends and family, namely—your contacts.

• Windows Live Messenger, a client and hosted chat service, which users can launch from within the Silverlight client to chat with others (your Live Contacts) in real time.

• Windows Live Presence, a service which enables users to see which of their Messenger contacts are online and available to chat.

• Microsoft Virtual Earth, a service which enables users to easily visualize the locations of their favorite properties in a rich online map.

“A software-plus-services approach helped us to take existing features of our Web site, add collaboration and single sign-on capabilities to cloud services, and deliver all that functionality through a new and exciting user experience,” says Giles.

Work on the project began in June 2008, when John L. Scott began speaking with a local Microsoft field evangelist about how it could allow users to sign in to the company’s Web site—and thus take advantage of existing features like favorites lists—using a Windows Live ID rather than a separate user name and password. “As we started to educate ourselves on the possibilities, we realized that also integrating with Windows Live Messenger would be fairly easy—and that it would give us a lot bigger return in terms of business value,” says Giles.

Development and Architecture

   

Having minimal hands-on experience with some of the technologies it wanted to use, JLS enlisted the aid of SharpLogic and nsquared Solutions, Microsoft Certified Partners with proven expertise in Silverlight and Live services. “By assembling a team consisting of both our own developers and Microsoft partners, we were able to accelerate solution development and quickly bring our own people up-to-speed,” says Giles. “We now have new technology skills that we can apply to other projects as well.”

After a few meetings to discuss the envisioned solution, the project team began development. A designer used Microsoft Expression Design software to come up with a compelling user experience, while developers used Microsoft Expression Blend and the Visual Studio 2008 Professional development system to build the Silverlight client in which that user experience would reside.  Other developers began working on what would need to happen behind the scenes—such as which new Web services John L. Scott would need to expose, and how to associate Windows Live IDs with existing Web site user names and passwords.

“By using the Expression and Visual Studio 2008 tools, both of which are based on Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the team’s designer and developers were able to easily share projects, code, and UI designs—the end result being an improved ability to deliver the desired user experience,” says Giles.

The following high-level architecture diagram depicts the major building block components of the application and how the software-plus-services vision from Microsoft comes into play:

 

The high-level architecture of JLSconnect and how it enables S+S.

The JLSconnect experience is powered by Silverlight 2.0, which enables it to provide interactivity to the HTML markup. The Silverlight application uses the Live Presence service to show which other users are online, the Live Messenger client running on user desktops for online chat, and the Messenger service hosted by Microsoft to deliver those messages. Web services at the John L. Scott data center that the Silverlight client calls are based on .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Compelling User Experience

With its new collaboration solution, John L. Scott is providing increased customer value during the process of shopping for a home. Users can log in to the realtor’s Web site using their Windows Live ID, save homes they like to their favorites, and then easily share those favorites with others.  Users can also see others’ favorites that they have been invited to view, and can post and view comments on individual properties in both their own and others’ favorites lists.  Users can see which of their contacts are online through integration with Windows Live Presence and can initiate a Windows Live Messenger session to collaborate with them at any time.

“We’re making it extremely easy for someone to find a property they like, share it with others, and get feedback—without having to cut and paste or share the same user name and password,” says Giles. “Not only does this provide increased convenience, but it can help buyers to make faster decisions—potentially enabling them to find the right house and make an offer on it before someone else does. And although the solution is optimized for buyers, it’s useful to sellers as well, in that they can use it to keep an eye on other homes that are on the market.”

By building on top of Live services, John L. Scott is delivering its new capabilities through tools with which users are already familiar.  “Lots of Web sites have built their own instant messaging clients, but many of them are quite primitive and/or have major latency problems,” says Giles.  “By integrating with Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live ID, we’re avoiding all those issues while enabling customers to use tools that they already know and trust.”

Bring Back Customers

For John L. Scott, the company’s main motivation for developing its new solution is an increased ability to attract customers to its Web site—and keep them coming back. “To successfully compete, we need to delight users instead of delivering the same mundane stuff as everyone else—and Microsoft software helps us do that,” says Giles. “Our new collaboration tool helps us to capture buyers earlier in the process, creates ‘stickiness’ on our Web site, and promotes customer loyalty—with a built-in social marketing aspect that drives friends and family to our Web site as well.”

John L. Scott also expects its new solution to help the company attract and retain agents.  “We compete for three types of customers: buyers, sellers, and agents—and the reality is that we have a solution that people want,” says Giles.  “I anticipate that some people with agents who work for other real estate companies will take advantage of our tools and invite their own agents to our site, and some of those agents may realize that working for JLS enables them to offer tools that their own companies can’t match.  Other Web sites will probably copy us, but by that time we’ll have figured out yet another way to offer unique customer value.”

Low Development Costs and Rapid Time-to-Market

With a software-plus-services approach based on Microsoft software and services, JLS was able to deliver its unique customer solution and begin realizing the corresponding business benefits with minimal investment and effort. “A software-plus-services approach enabled us to focus on the user experience, letting services ‘in the cloud’ do all the ‘heavy lifting’ with respect to security, reliable messaging, and so on,” says Giles. “In fact, we probably wouldn’t have taken on delivering such a rich solution if we had to develop it entirely from scratch. Many companies today are avoiding all software development, whereas our philosophy is to spend wisely, continue to innovate, and take advantage of the opportunity to pull further ahead of the competition.”

Increased Visibility as an Industry Leader

John L. Scott’s new JLSconnect solution further reinforces the company’s position and visibility as an industry leader, and a visionary in the use of technology to connect with customers in new and innovative ways. What makes this so interesting is that John L. Scott is composing four ‘cloud’ building block services—Live ID, Live Contacts, Live Presence, Live Messenger, and Virtual Earth—into its on-premises powered Web site, all powered by a Silverlight interface to glue the experience together.  JLS is the first real estate company to embrace social networking in such a way.  They’re targeting their Gen X and Gen Y agents with this solution to begin the process of reinventing how consumers and agents can collaborate around the home buying experience.  It represents the most advanced thinking to date in the real estate industry.

To see a short interview on JLSconnect with Pat Giles, please hit the play button below:



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“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc.  We’ve all heard this type of proclamation before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

One of the things we hear a lot working with the community is a desire for more guidance about how to use the technology instead of just talking about features and functions.  To address this, our team has put together a series of live webcasts on June 9-11 which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics.

DAY 1 – June 9, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud?  How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud?  And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way?  In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud.  Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management.  This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

DAY 2 – June 10, 2009 at Noon PST

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism
David Hill

Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications.  These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications.  Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application.  It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight.  This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.

DAY 3 – June 11, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Parallel Computing
David Chou

With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors; we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum.  It’s moving towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, but the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing including:  approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure, and applying concurrency towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.

WEBCAST AGENDA

11:45 AM (PST)	Open for Dial-in
12:00 PM (PST)	Day’s Content
12:50 PM (PST)	Q&A
01:00 PM (PST)	Raffle and Close

REGISTER

To register, please click on the link below for each day:

	Title	Event ID	Link to Register
Day 1 6/9/09	Patterns for Moving to the Cloud	1032416875	http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416875&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
Day 2 6/10/09	Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism	1032416983	http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416983&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
Day 3 6/11/09	Patterns for Parallel Computing	1032416984	http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416984&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

We will email you with the LIVE MEETING information and log-in detail a few days before the actual event.  We will use the email address you provide in the registration.  Thanks!

SPEAKER BIOS

Larry Clarkin - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft
Wade Wegner - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft
Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft, tasked to collaborate with organizations in the advanced and emergent areas of enterprise architecture, SOA, Web 2.0, and cloud computing, as well as to support decision makers on defining technology adoption strategies.  You can reach Wade at his blog http://www.architectingwith.net/ or through twitter at http://twitter.com/wadewegner.

David Hill – PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team

David Chou – ARCHITECT, Microsoft
Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism organization at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in many areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, RIA, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.

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As far back as 2001 Samad Wahedi began to notice the gradual migration of work to the Web. He saw that people were doing more activities online, from banking to social networking, and people needed tools for performing certain tasks.  Wahedi and his business partner Gopinath Dhanakodi knew that the traditional way for users to get software tools was through their company’s IT department, which usually involved a long wait.

Wahedi and Dhanakodi decided that there was a business opportunity in creating software tools that the average business user could use to create workflows, which are the key building blocks of most business processes.  They reasoned that users should have an easy way to design and automate process workflows “themselves” rather than waiting for the IT department to build a specialized applications. In 2007, Wahedi launched MyProcess, a Portland, Oregon-based based startup chartered with bringing workflow to the masses. Today, Wahedi is Chief Executive Officer of MyProcess, and Dhanakodi is Vice President of Engineering.  MyProcess enables important elements Microsoft’s vision around Software-plus-Services (S+S), and they are an important actor in the broader cloud ecosystem.



MyProcess uses the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) (tutorials) and the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in to create a Web-based workflow design tool called SnapFlow (see video tour).  Business people use SnapFlow to build simple or complex workflows online using simple point-and-click and drag-and-drop actions. Users visit the SnapFlow Web site and simply click the “Start a Flow” button to begin building a workflow for any business process, such as hiring a new person or purchasing supplies. Users can transfer completed SnapFlow workflows to a Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 site.  They can also integrate forms created with the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering program.

Traditional methods of creating workflows using business process management solutions can take three to six months; creating workflows with SnapFlow takes minutes or hours.  Also, enterprise business process management software costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, making it “nearly impossible to realize a return on your investment [ROI],” Wahedi says. “Building workflows in SnapFlow provides an almost immediate ROI.  Plus, nontechnical people can describe processes themselves, in a very visual way, so nothing gets lost in translation in working with technical folks.”  Another savings comes from companies not having to pay expensive software engineers to create and modify workflows.

Broader Market Reach using Software-Plus-Services

Perhaps just as compelling as the capabilities of SnapFlow is the firm’s implementation method—over the Web.  Users simply download a free copy of Microsoft Silverlight on their desktop or portable computer.  All workflow data and the execution engine are stored in SnapFlow’s hosting infrastructure.  Deploying its solution using a software-plus-services approach enables SnapFlow to minimize up-front investment for customers and maximize customer access.  Traditionally, when customers want to try out a software program, they have to download and configure the program. It’s a huge time and resource commitment, especially if they need to configure servers first. With software-plus-services, customers can try our software in minutes rather than waiting a couple of weeks.  Software-plus-services gives us the ability to reach a broad audience very inexpensively.”

The software-plus-services approach also gives independent software vendors like MyProcess new possibilities for enriching their applications and broadening delivery models.  “The combination of powerful client software, in this case, Silverlight, and a cloud-based service provides a powerful new software development and distribution model,” Wahedi says.  “We can develop capabilities without concern for the back-end infrastructure required to run it, because there is infinite processing power in the cloud.  But having powerful locally-installed software makes the user experience even better. We are now free to create solutions that take advantage of rich desktop software.”  With software-plus-services, SnapFlow gets the richness of the desktop with the reach of the Web.

Silverlight over Flash for Faster Development



When it was time to design the interface that users would employ to design workflows, SnapFlow narrowed its development choices to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, which Microsoft has just released in 2007.  "Adobe Flash is widely used in many business applications, has a big user community, and has a fairly sophisticated feature set," Dhanakodi says.  "Silverlight was very new, and we were concerned that we wouldn't find sufficient help in the development community."  So MyProcess committed to Adobe Flash to support the development of the SnapFlow user-interface.

A few weeks into prototype development, Dhanakodi and his team were disappointed with the progress that they had made. The user interface looked clunky, and even simple changes took a long time to implement.  Around the same time, SnapFlow consulted SoftSource Consulting, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Portland, to validate its technology and design decisions.  SoftSource was an avid proponent of Silverlight and offered to demonstrate the capabilities of that software by replicating SnapFlow’s Flash prototype.  A few days later, SoftSource demonstrated how SnapFlow could build its workflow in Silverlight, and the SnapFlow team was impressed.



“We decided that Silverlight was worth investigating in more detail,” Dhanakodi says. “Within a month, our team had made huge progress using Silverlight. Our team was able to learn the new tools and build a fairly sophisticated prototype without any support.”

Shaun McAravey, Co-Founder and Chief Architect for SoftSource says, “Windows Workflow Foundation and Silverlight are sufficiently approachable technologies that a competent technical team can get up to speed and produce a remarkable product in very little time. SnapFlow really sped up its development using these tools.”

MyProcess has a more detailed blog post discussing why they chose Silverlight over Flash.

I would like to thank Tim Heuer for his recent blog post on SnapFlow.

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Microsoft .NET Services whitepapers are now available from the Microsoft download centers.  Those whitepapers can be found at the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5057e2b3-c8e5-4b26-a601-ff9621589ce3&DisplayLang=en

Here is a summary of the available whitepapers:

An Introduction to Microsoft .NET Services for Developers. This overview paper introduces Microsoft® .NET Services, each of its building block services, and how they fit together.

A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Access Control Service. This whitepaper shows developers how to use a claims-based identity model and the Microsoft® .NET Access Control Service – part of the Microsoft® .NET Services family – to implement single sign-on, federated identity, and role based access control in Web applications and services.

A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Service Bus. This whitepaper shows developers how to use the .NET Service Bus – part of the Microsoft® .NET Services family – to provide a secure, standards-based messaging fabric to connect applications across the Internet.

A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Workflow Service. This whitepaper provides details about the Microsoft® .NET Workflow Service, its relation to Windows Workflow Foundation, and what developers need to know to begin building workflows for the cloud. It not only explains the current tools and capabilities but also outlines the vision for future releases.

I hope you find these whitepapers useful.

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Microsoft uses the term "Software+Services" to describe a vision of computing that harmonizes client and server software with cloud services [S+S Strategy].  Rich software components that either exist on client machines or installed on-premise within a datacenter can leverage building block components that exist as cloud services.  In many ways, this is not much different than, let’s say, accessing software components (such as Web services perhaps) in one’s own datacenter in order to build composite applications.

Microsoft’s broad platform offering gives customers a rich set of choices to weave together applications from growing collection of software and service offerings.  In this particular post I’d like to address a combination of rich client (RIA) technology, namely Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft’s Live Services cloud offering, and on-premise assets that are brought together as one cohesive solution.  To make matters more interesting, this ‘solution’ addresses a real world business scenario.  The company in question that is testing and honing this model in John L. Scott Real Estate.

Founded in 1931, John L. Scott Real Estate has 400 employees, 3,600 agents, and 133 offices throughout the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The company closed nearly 32,000 transactions in 2008, generating $9 billion in sales and making John L. Scott Real Estate one of the top real estate companies in the nation and a regional power. Under the guidance of Lennox Scott, the third-generation Scott to lead the family business, John L. Scott has established itself as a leader in the use of technology to reach out to customers in new ways.

In early 2009, John L. Scott Real Estate (JLS) began looking at how it could provide greater value to real estate ‘sellers’.  As most of us are aware, there are many tools for real estate buyers but few that are designed for sellers, therefore JLS saw the opportunity to deliver a solution that would focus on the seller’s thirst for information, enabling them to work more closely with JLS agents to sell their home quickly yet maximize the price.

To deliver on its vision, JLS had to bring together information from several sources and deliver it through a rich, unified user experience. They not only had to deliver a lot of diverse data, but they had to provide an easy way for sellers to assimilate that data. Sellers already have access to some of that data, but it’s scattered across different Web pages, while other data that sellers commonly want is available only through their agents. Their goal was to bring all that information together and present it to sellers in a way that associates strong value to the JLS brand.

Solution

In May 2009, JLS finished a pilot development effort specifically geared to assist sellers.  Developed with assistance from Microsoft Certified Partner Artefact, JLS used a Software + Services approach to connect to their data center and the Microsoft Virtual Earth™ online mapping platform, combining information from both sources and presenting it to users through a rich, interactive user experience based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).


Artefact, headquartered in Seattle, is the firm that researched, designed,
and built the rich WPF-based user experiece.[blog, about]

“The proof-of-concept was to help us figure out what kind of information sellers are looking for and, more importantly, how to deliver that data,” says Pat Giles, Vice President of Marketing and Information Technology at JLS. With WPF, Virtual Earth, and a software-plus-services approach, they’ve been able to combine information from different sources and deliver it though a rich user experience. “The look and feel of the application is stunning, and will make digesting information on market trends and online activity an enjoyable experience for sellers”, says Giles.

Rich User Experience

A screen shot of the seller application is shown below. For the proof-of-concept, JLS focused on delivering general market trends, an overview of online interest in the seller’s home, and information on open houses and new properties for sale in the surrounding area.  The application provides information about how effectively the seller’s own home is marketed, which can provide key data that allows the seller and the agent to calibrate their marketing efforts.  Similar metrics to other homes are also available in order to keep track of ‘competitive’ resources.

While part of the solution’s appeal is the wealth of information it provides, the way it presents that data is just as impressive. “We had to deliver a user experience that was grounded in business reality for JLS—and thus useful and practical for sellers,” says Agnieszka Girling, Director of Product Strategy at Artefact. “We used Windows Presentation Foundation and Virtual Earth to bring all of the data around selling a home to life in new and exciting ways—including lots of 3-D charts, graphs, and maps that make it easy to visualize and understand the information.”

Development and Architecture

The application is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, is written in C#, and was developed using Microsoft Expression Design tool and the Visual Studio 2008 development platform.  Developers used Microsoft Expression Blend software and Visual C# to fine-tune the XAML, adjust the behavior of the user interface, and connect it to the back-end services. The application also takes advantage of 3D Tools for Windows Presentation Foundation and InfoStrat.VE, both of which can be found on the CodePlex Web site.

WCF-based Web services using the BasicHTTP binding were developed by JLS developers, and per a JLS goal they were able to maintain the use of Microsoft SQL Server® 2000, thus avoiding a need to drive changes into the data platform. “From a data center perspective, it really wasn’t much work at all,” says Ruben Taylor, Senior Software Architect at JLS. “All we had to do was expose a few new Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services, which was fairly simple.”

The following diagram depicts the high-level architecture outlay for the application:

What makes this application extraordinary is that JLS is presenting valuable data from their datacenter to home sellers. Web site usage data relating to how the home is being marketed is captured along with MLS data and presented to the seller. This allows both the agent and the seller to better understand how the home is marketed and it allows them to calibrate the marketing, as necessary. 

Improved Collaboration Between Sellers and Agents

The company’s WPF-based seller application will help home sellers collaborate more effectively with JLS agents. “Everyone wants to sell their home quickly and still get the best deal, which requires understanding market conditions, indentifying and understanding competing homes, and marketing a house well,” says Giles. “However, many people don’t know what their homes are worth—or think it’s worth more than the market does. By enabling sellers to monitor competing homes and the number of online showings on our Web site, we’re helping them to better understand the market and what their home is worth. The many other features that we plan to add as we continue developing the application will aid in seller-agent collaboration, as well.”

JLS plans to soon roll-out the application to small test market, and they are in the process of identifying consumers that are sellers who would be interested to try the application and provide feedback.  This is similar to Microsoft’s typical strategy around establishing an early ‘Community Technology Preview’ (CTP) for a service or product that is used to gain feedback around features so that changes can be made before broader adoption/rollout.

Two additional screen captures of the application are shown below:


Analytics Summary Data

Page Views Detail Page

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The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together.  Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities.  Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Some of the benefits that Azure provides include:

• Web & Social Applications - The Azure™ Services Platform provides web developers easy to use development tools and cloud infrastructure to build rich internet applications targeted for the browser and digital devices. Create socially aware solutions and connect with a network of over 460 million Live users.

• Great Developer Tools & A Unified Developer Experience – Any web developer can use the platform. Developers familiar with .NET and Visual Studio can use their existing skills to extend or create new cloud-based applications that dynamically scale. Applications written in PHP or Ruby can also run on and take advantage of the Azure infrastructure and services.

• Interoperability – Azure services use REST and SOAP web communications standards to interoperate with other platforms and services; run applications on any browser, create and expose your own services, or utilize the services regardless of platform or programming language.

• Composite Services - The Azure Services Platform allows developers to take advantage of one, all, or a combination of services.

• Software + Services - Author new applications or augment on-premises software with cloud services to create a new breed of rich internet-based solutions.  Microsoft refers to this as Software + Services.

• Economical - The Azure Services Platform reduces onsite infrastructure needs and allows developers to continue using skills they already know from familiar development tools, all leading to lower cost and faster time to market.

MIX09 Updates

At MIX09 there were a number of updates to The Azure Services Platform that affect two underlying components, Windows Azure and SQL Data Services (SDS).  In short, Windows Azure is the OS for the cloud from Microsoft and SDS offers relational data storage in the cloud and access to that data from cloud and client applications.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s platform for building and deploying cloud based applications, which provides customers with a service hosting and management environment for the Azure Services Platform.

Windows Azure enables customers to:

• Significantly reduce time spent managing hardware to focus on delivering applications which deliver compelling experiences and services.

• Release at a faster time-to-market and reduce operational complexity by automating service management to allow for deployment of a new application onto the Web within seconds.

• Reduce upfront hardware investment costs by providing a flexible environment where applications are hosted in Microsoft data centers capable of massive scaling.

There is an update to the Windows Azure CTP feature released at MIX09 which will allow developers to take advantage of:

• FastCGI: allows developers to deploy and run web applications written with 3rd party programming languages such as PHP. This provides developers using non-Microsoft languages the ability to take advantage of scalability on Windows Azure.

• .NET Full-Trust: provides developers with a level of flexibility in Windows Azure that removes limitations on .NET Libraries which require full trust (including .NET Services) .NET Full Trust, via spawning process and p/invoke, also allows developers to utilize existing investments in native code or legacy components that they will now be able to invoke on Windows Azure.

• Geo-Location: provides developers with the ability to specify a location for their applications and data to build responsive services with lower network latency as well as the capability to meet location-based regulatory and legal requirements. This feature will be available a few weeks after MIX 2009.

 
SQL Services

Microsoft SQL Services delivers on the vision of extending the SQL Server Data Platform capabilities to cloud web-based services. It enables customers to store, process and analyze all types of data - from structured, semi-structured, to unstructured.  SQL Data Services (SDS), the first service available within SQL Services, is the relational database. In the future, SQL Services will deliver a comprehensive set of integrated services such as search, reporting, analytics, data integration and data synchronization in the cloud.

SQL Data Services allows for the following:

• Enables existing applications to utilize existing skills, code, and development tools to access SDS as they already do for on-premises SQL Server.

• Enables Microsoft to accelerate the delivery of powerful relational database capabilities in SDS and to do so in a way that integrates seamlessly with existing tools, knowledge base, investments and data access components.

• Provides a cloud-based reliable, scalable, highly available distributed relational database service.

• Provides a cloud relational database service for Azure Services Platform, with other online services, or with existing on-premises software.

• Over time, additional features from the Microsoft data platform will be available in the Azure cloud.

Windows Azure SDK Download

Developers will be able to take advantage of the Windows Azure CTP feature updates via the Windows Azure SDK update which is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sdk.mspx

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Today, Microsoft is releasing the latest coding milestone of .NET Services, a component of the Azure Services Platform. .NET Services are still in community technology preview (CTP).  

The March 2009 release further enhances support for web standards and interoperability, making it simpler for developers to connect cloud applications and services across platforms. Specifically, .NET Services now includes improved support for web standards such as REST, ATOM, SOAP, and HTTP.  This means that all developers – whether they are .NET developers or not - will now find .NET Services much easier to use because they can utilize industry standards and protocols to interface the services.

Developers can download the .NET Services SDK today via http://www.azure.com and Microsoft encourages your feedback.

.NET Services make developing loosely-coupled on-premises and cloud-based applications easier. .NET Services include a hosted service bus for connecting applications and services across network boundaries, access control for securing applications, and message orchestration. These hosted services allow customers to easily create federated applications that span resources from on-premises (private data centers) to the cloud.

The .NET Services software development kit (SDK) provides integration with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This integration allows .NET developers to build on their existing skills in WCF and WF, allowing developers to more easily build secure and reliable applications that can interact and exchange data with other applications, independent of the underlying platform, and to enable system workflow and human workflow.

The Access Control Service is one building block service that is under the .NET Services umbrella, and this service now supports REST and ATOM for managing rules around claims transformation.

The Service Bus is the second major building block services and this now provides discoverable and durable queues, which support both SOAP and HTTP, provide reliable pull message delivery with the capability of peek lock and simple destructive reads.  Additionally, there are now discoverable and durable routers, which support SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2 and HTTP, and those routers provide message storage, control and delivery in unidirectional publish and subscription scenarios.  The Service Bus also supports Push delivery to HTTP endpoints and Solicit/Push delivery to Service Bus listeners through a NetOnewayRelayBinding mechanism.

Workflow is the third service and there is now a CloudServiceBusReceive activity which enables a workflow to receive Service Bus messages. Combining CloudServiceBusReceive with CloudServiceBusSend, the already existing activity, Workflow Service now offers improved integration with Service Bus.  Message-based activation allows the creation of new instances on-demand and direct communication with these instances.  Finally, there are Workflow REST-Client enhancements with the addition of PUT, DELETE, custom verbs as well as parameters and header support to the HttpSend activity.

.NET Services can be used in a standalone manner to connect services and applications. Used in conjunction with the other Azure services it provides the bridge to connect on-premises with the cloud, and with other programming platforms; it provides important interoperability functionality for the Azure Services Platform.

Developers can download the .NET Services SDK today. The latest .NET Services CTP, is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sdk.mspx

Incidentally, the Access Control Service of .NET Services can federate with third-party identity providers, allowing for the handling of identities from existing systems and from different organizations. The Access Control Service is a hosted Security Token Service (STS) for use if you need federation, but don’t want to build or buy your own solution.  The .NET Services Access Control Services can federate with third-party Secure Token Services, specifically supporting Windows Live ID, X509 certificates, user name and password, managed card, and personal card, as well as offering support for WS-* standards and REST.  With its federation capabilities, the Access Control Service can federate with Active Directory to use existing identities and enforce claims based access control. “Geneva” Server is on-premises Active Directory Server. The “Geneva” Framework is a library for building your own Security Tokens Service(s).  Microsoft Federation Gateway is one of the tokens that .NET Services Access Control Service work with to perform authentication.

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On March 26th Microsoft is hosting a day-long, free event for Architects, Developers, and IT Pros interested in learning more about Internet Explorer 8. There is a very good line-up of speakers who are Subject Matter Experts in different areas associated to IE8. You can read about the speaker line up, the sessions, and you can get a feel for the agenda by Registering for the event. Details are available via this Mithun Dhar blog post.

Note that this event will be broadcast online as well. Therefore, if you are not in Redmond you can watch the event LIVE on the Web via Live Meeting. Additionally, all the sessions will be recorded and made available post event!

Hope you can make it.

        

Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of innovation around of technologies that make it easier for the end user of an application to interact with systems. This innovation has been a boon for the end user because it has provided them a more natural interface with systems that span the web, computer, and phone. However, this has caused the complexity of systems architecture and development to increase. The focus of this session will be on how to prepare and manage this complexity within your organization.

Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this event is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies with their peers. This forum will provide first-hand experience and best practices that will enable its members to learn from each other and transfer knowledge. Please join us for this great opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other company leaders.

EVENT SUMMARY

The Value of the Client - In the past, the choice of how an end user interacts with an application has been dictated by IT and often without regards to the usage. Recently, as the population has become more tech savvy and are experiencing interactions on the web, computer, and the phone their expectations have increased tremendously. Many organizations now have to support multiple standards and technologies to accommodate their user base. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges this presents.

The Changing Face of the Web - The web has changed from a static collection of data to an application platform. In many cases, JavaScript and AJAX have enhanced the experience to enable more advance application scenarios. In other cases, the Rich Internet Application using technologies such as Silverlight and Flash can bring the experience to a new level. In this session we will discuss the web and in particular the investments Microsoft is making in this technology.

Creating Powerful Applications on Computers and Devices - The web has been a boon to application development and deployment, but it doesn't always fit every scenario. There are certain classes of applications which provide a better experience when running on a device and utilizing local hardware. The ubiquity of the mobile device has also extended the expectations of users with anytime/anywhere access.

The Future of the Client - The pace of change in client technologies over the past few years has been tremendous and is expected to continue to evolve.. From support of new device types such as tables and walls, to continued improvements in interactions on the web, client, and the phone the client will become more and more important from a technology perspective and more strategic to the organization.

AGENDA

12:15 PM Arrival
12:30 PM Lunch and announcements
01:00 PM The Value of the Client
01:45 PM The Changing Face of the Web
02:45 PM Creating Powerful Applications on Computers and Devices
03:45 PM The Future of the Client
04:15 PM Raffle and close

SPEAKER BIO

Joe Shirey
Senior Architect, Developer & Platform Evangelism
Microsoft Corporation
http://www.joeshirey.com

Joe Shirey is a Senior Architect Evangelist for Microsoft based in the Denver area. In this role, Joe works closely with customers and the community to help them understand where Microsoft technologies fit into the architecture of their solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Joe was a Vice President at Interlink group where he was responsible for service and delivery for Interlink's Denver market. In the past, Joe was a Microsoft Regional Director, a member of the Microsoft Architect Advisory Board, and sat on the .NET Partner Advisory Council. Joe has more than eighteen years of hands-on technical and functional experience in project management, systems analysis, design, development, and implementation. Joe attained his Microsoft Certified Architect award in 2005.

Woody Pewitt
Technology Evangelist, Developer & Platform Evangelism
Microsoft Corporation
http://blog.pewitt.org

Woody is a Technology Evangelist with Microsoft in Southern California. He gets to work with all kinds of people who are interested in Microsoft development technologies. He is an experienced teacher/trainer and is a part-time instructor at University of California San Diego. Before joining Microsoft in 2005 he worked for as a Principal Engineer for a Microsoft partner, InterKnowlogy. He has been involved in software and system architecture, code, development and infrastructure reviews and analysis of several fortune 500 companies for salability, security, performance and standards & practices. He is also an accomplished author, having written Microsoft Official Curriculum and has authored several published magazine articles.

REGISTER

To register, please click on the link below for the city of your choice or call 1.877.MSEVENT (1.877.673.8368).

March 24, 2009 | Bellevue, WA
Microsoft Corporation
Civica Office Building
205 108th Avenue NE, Suite 400
Bellevue, WA 98004
Main: 425.705.1900
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399661&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032399661
*Referral code not required to register.*

March 25, 2009 | Mountain View, CA
Microsoft Corporation
1065 La Avenida St.
Building 1 Mountain View California 94043
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399662&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032399662
*Referral code not required to register.*

March 26, 2009 |San Francisco, CA
Microsoft Corporation
835 Market Street #700
San Francisco California 94103-1901
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399663&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032399663
*Referral code not required to register.*

March 31, 2009 |San Diego, CA
Microsoft Corporation
San Diego MPR
9255 Towne Centre Dr., Suite 400
San Diego California 92121
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399664&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032399664
*Referral code not required to register.*

April 1, 2009 |Irvine, CA
Microsoft Corporation
Irvine MPR
3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600
Irvine California 92614
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399665&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032399665
*Referral code not required to register.*

April 2, 2009 | Los Angeles, CA
Microsoft Corporation
333 S Grand Ave, 33rd Floor
Los Angeles California 90071
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032404032&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032404032
*Referral code not required to register.*

April 7, 2009 | Denver, CO
Microsoft Corporation
Maroon Bells 1
7595 Technology Way Suite 400
Denver Colorado 80237
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032404033&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032404033
*Referral code not required to register.*