Embedded Sparks 2011 - First round winners

Embedded Sparks 2011 Challenge first round winners have been announced last week. I’m very happy that my KitchenPal idea is one of them also this year! I’ve already started to work on it in my spare time, I hope this year to be able to compete to the second round. Congratulations to all the other participants!

Windows Azure Proof-of-Concept

After a three-day introductory workshop about the Windows Azure Platform organized by Microsoft at the end of 2010, last week I attended a Windows Azure Proof-of-Concept event at the Microsoft Innovation Center - ISMB here in Turin. It consisted of a two-day instructor-led workshop (speaker, Roberto Brunetti from DevLeap) aimed to create a complete solution from scratch with the purpose to highlight the nature and benefits of the Windows Azure platform.

Some companies participated at the event and proposed a couple of ideas/architectures which have been merged in a single, layered, multi-platform application with the help of Roberto:

• a web site, hosted on Windows Azure (WebRole)
  • back-end based on Windows Azure Storage and/or a web service
• a web service hosted on Windows Azure
  • back-end based on Windows Azure Storage
  • active collaboration with a WorkerRole service
• a web service hosted on an on-premise IIS server
  • back-end based on Windows Azure Storage and/or a web service
  • active collaboration with a WorkerRole service on Windows Azure
• a desktop / embedded client application, which works with cloud data and features
  • directly on Windows Azure (Storage / Queue / SQLAzure) and/or via a web service
• n-tier architecture (data access, business logic, UI, services)
• unit testing

Software architecture has been deeply analyzed (even tough it was a two-day workshop only) and the solution has been designed following the best practices and guidelines. The key concept was that adopting a good n-tier, modular, loosely-coupled and testable architecture, it is relatively easy to extend system functionalities or handle new technologies/platforms following the natural IT evolution.

Really interesting. If you have a chance to follow such kind of events, don’t miss them!