Cloud offerings have introduced a powerful shift in the technology industry, but there is still a degree of unknown in what the cloud has to offer.  This session will provide a high-level overview of Windows Azure while comparing its services to those of other providers.  We will introduce the basics of Azure such as setting up an account and exploring the management console, then dive into the API by showing the ease at which an ASP.NET MVC application and its database can be relocated  to the cloud.

This presentation will cover a quick comparison of the cloud offerings, demonstrate how to get an account and populate the database. Finally, you will see how to consume the data via an MVC application.

John Martin is a consultant at Slalom Consulting with over 8 years of professional experience in solutions development with Microsoft technologies including ASP.NET and SharePoint.  Prior to joining Slalom, John worked at Dell Services, gaining experience in both software architecture and development and enterprise application support.  John has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.

Jordan Wester is a consultant for Slalom Consulting with a background in many Microsoft development technologies.  While he has a primary focus on ASP.NET MVC/jQuery development, he also has experience with Silverlight/WPF, Windows Phone development, Objective-C and ExtJS.