After a gap of few years, I am happy that Microsoft premier event “TechEd” is happening again in India. For many of the regular speakers in the event, TechEd India is an annual ritual that we enjoy and look forward to eagerly. It gives a rare opportunity to meet, interact and network with brilliant participants, to hear what they are working on currently and how they are using Microsoft technologies in real life.
When the organizers told me the venue is Hyderabad I was at a loss – why on earth anyone will hold an event in Hyderabad in the middle of peak summer?. After few minutes of reaching the venue “Hyderabad International Convention Centre,” I understood why. The Convention Centre was great, with world-class infrastructure and I guess the best in India for years to come. And commuting to and from the new Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi International Airport was not bad either. Though it is far from the city, the roads are not that crowded like in Bangalore. I reached from Airport to City in about an hour and while returning from Hi-Tec city to Airport through the new ring road it took less than 45 minutes. The ring road named after Rajiv Gandhi (like many other things in Congress-ruled AP) was good, they allow only four wheelers (cars and vans), trucks and two-wheelers are not allowed to ply in the road to prevent accidents. I couldn’t say the same pleasant things about Paramount Airways – which delayed my return flight by some 4 hours (8:30 PM flight took off at 12:30 AM).
Tech Ed India 2009 Cloud Track
This year, I presented on Windows Azure – an overview session where I covered the need for Azure, Azure fundamentals and few demos on using Windows Azure.
hi krupa, yes you can create a trial account and check out azure. just visit http://www.microsoft.com/azure and sign-up freely. you will get a invitation token in about 24 hours. currently azure is in Technology preview and free. it comes with limitations though during the free period.
I have been reading up about Azure in mail newsletters, am very curious. So far I have understood this as something like Force.com with IDE integration. Is there anyway individual developers can evaluate/learn this with sort of a "developer account", something like sharepointsite.com ?