Ginneblog

Chances are, you’re either sick of hearing about Twitter or you’re tweeting.  Well I’ve been tweeting for about two months now and it’s already paid off. Twitter is easy, informative, and it’s a great way to stay in touch with my software network.  You can view my Twitter profile here. 

Twitter is on fire.  In March it had 9.3 million visitors, up 131% from 5 million visitors in February.  And do you want to know something really fascinating?  The most active folks on Twitter are in the 45-54 age group.  You can read about it on the comScore blog.

Twitter Users by Age Group

Right now I’m following 387 people and 199 are following me.  That means I see the tweets of the 387, and 199 of my digital admirers see mine.   I follow people that have similar interests and are in the same loops. You need to have something in common with your Tweeple, and for me, it’s primarily business related.  How did I find them?  Easy, just go to search.twitter.com 

A few weeks ago, someone who knows me saw one of my tweets and it prompted him to drive about 60 miles to the Silicon Valley SQL Server User Group meeting I was hosting at Microsoft in Mountain View.   He wouldn’t have learned about the meeting otherwise.  I must admit, I was impressed by the power of Twitter.

There are a few folks who I enjoy following on Twitter, like Brad McGehee. Brad was just in San Francisco in March, but he travels worldwide in his role as a SQL Server evangelist for Red Gate Software.   Thanks to Twitter, I know that Brad attended the European PASS Conference last week and is on his way home to Hawaii.  Brad tweets on the latest news in the SQL Server world, including new books coming out and news from his latest blog posts.

Other folks I follow on Twitter are Tech Bubble (that’s Nik Kalyani of DotNetNuke),TechWatching, ProWebDevBlog, TechCrunch, MSFTBizBuilder, SharePoint Buzz, Database Journal, and (why not) Lance Armstrong.

Tune in later this week when my next blog post will be an interview with San Francisco Bay Area Twitter guru Ted Prodromou on the hows and whys of using Twitter for business.   

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Indian Motorcycle site - created with DNN

A few days ago I met with Nik Kalyani and Shuan Walker, co-founders of the DotNetNuke Corporation, to learn more about where the company and product line are heading. DNN (DotNetNuke) is the most popular open source application framework for the Microsoft .NET platform. The DotNetNuke Corporation was formed in 2006, dedicated the ongoing stewardship and management of the DotNetNuke project. 

The company received Series A funding last Fall.  With the influx of cash, they are hard at work creating a development and support organization.  They have pledged quarterly releases of the Community and Professional Edition.  And now there’s a DotNetNuke Professional Edition version.

DNN (DotNetNuke) is the most popular open source application framework for the Microsoft .NET platform.  They boast about 7 million downloads to date, and 400,000 websites running on DNN so far.  DNN has a big following, and plenty of third party support.   The architecture supports modules and skins, and there are thousands of each available at sites such as www.marketplace.dotnetnuke.com, www.snowcovered.com, and www.codeplex.com.  You can also create your own custom modules and skins.

Among the many terrific sites created with DNN are TV Guide,  Indian Motorcycle, and Chicago 2016.  (Did you know Chicago is bidding for the summer Olympics in 2016?)  I have to say these are among the most visually stunning sites I’ve seen.  Talk about eye candy!

DNN was created in 2002 as an open source project called the IBuySpy portal.  It was used by Microsoft to showcase the capabilities of the newly released ASP.NET 1.0 platform.  Shaun Walker released an enhanced version of the portal later that year.  It drew a large developer following, and in 2003, the open source project was renamed DotNetNuke.

In February of this year, the company released DNN Professional Edition.  This edition has more formalized testing and release standards, and is intended for corporations building mission critical enterprise software.  They provide support, additional documentation, certification, and indemnification.  The pricing for the Professional Edition is $1,995 per year, per production IIS server the system is running on.  You can run multiple portals and hundreds of sites on each IIS server, at no additional charge.

The Community Edition is still free.  We will see differentiation in product features over time, with the Professional Edition gaining more standard modules.  The framework will be the same in both editions, as compatibility is critical to the third party development community.

We had a chance to talk about some of the new features coming in DNN Professional 5.1, due for release by June 1, 2009.  Nik writes about it in the DNN Blog, which I highly recommend. While the details are not yet public, I can tell you that I am impressed by what was shared with me.  These are exciting days for the DNN open source community.

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 Recently I spoke with Paul Bertucci, Chief Data Architect/Enterprise Architecture at Autodesk. Paul is a recognized expert in Data Base Design, Modeling, Analysis, and Architecture, and author of the best selling SQL Server Unleashed series, SQL Server High Availability, and other books.  He spoke with me about SQL Server’s growing acceptance with enterprise IT professionals.

Microsoft is preparing to release SQL Server 2008. What is in this version that will help the enterprise? How about small and medium businesses?

SQL Server 2008, in all respects, is essentially released (RTM). There will be no changes to its footprint. This version touts stability, scalability, availability and interoperability. Massive organizations around the globe are crossing over to a SQL Server-based foundation. Rapidly moving even their most critical applications (like ERP -from SAP – on a SQL Server based underpinning). Now that’s prime time!

SMB’s have really led the charge here. They have always been quick to adopt SQL Server due to price point and ease of management. Larger enterprises have learned from them (and often was that small or medium company, but grew into a large enterprise without changing away from SQL Server). I am also seeing almost exclusively the use of the 64-bit version. The much lower costs associated with 64-bit hardware, coupled with the high performance of SQL Server on a 64-bit platform, is just short of incredible.

Have you seen SQL Server’s adoption in the enterprise evolve over time?

Good question. So, the phenomenon I watch, day in and day out, is one of fringe (or non-IT supported) groups using SQL Server first in a typical large enterprise. This is often occurring in what we call “Shadow IT”.
 
Groups outside of the normal IT realm have huge data needs (don’t we all), but cannot be serviced fast enough by traditional large IT development cycles. They turn to something they can quickly build on their own and that is easy to maintain and grow (all with a cheap price tag). As these satellite systems grow and change, IT often is asked to take them over or absorb the somehow. This has been a repeating pattern over and over, and the good enterprise IT organizations have recognized this and have changed their corporate database standard to include SQL Server.
 
Although rarely corporate IT’s first choice, SQL Server is no longer treated as a toy database or as the second choice.
 
What do you do in your role as Chief Data Architect for Autodesk?

I joined Autodesk in 2008 in this role. I was previously at Symantec for nearly four years in the same role. My job is to set data strategy that aligns closely to the business drivers of the company. This is, in turn, translated into current, mid-term, and long-term data architectures and technologies.
 
Part of my job is evangelizing key data related initiatives such as master data management/data quality, data availability, data security, and data delivery (such as with BI/DW platforms). I have special interest in keeping my hands dirty in things like database design reviews, defining performance and tuning approaches, setting data standards and guidelines, sitting on data governance boards and chairing the corporate Architecture and Technology review board. All fun stuff I can assure you.
 
And let’s not forget SOA, as this is rapidly affecting the way we need to get to data, manage data, and share data (both internally and externally). I have a rule that we cannot expose a business service (under a SOA paradigm), unless the data that is used by that service is of the highest quality and meets strict service level agreements (on availability and integrity). Otherwise, don’t bother.
 
When will your new book, SQL Server 2008 Unleashed, be available?

The SQL Server 2008 Unleashed co-authors are deep into production mode on this next release. We anticipate it being available in the summer of 2009.
 
We’re taking a little different slant on this next version that will include even more live customer examples that should be easily leveraged by all of our readers. We have always included tons of examples and even scripts and code on the CD that comes with the book. This will only increase for this next book. We’re very excited!

Thanks, Paul!

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Montreal, Quebec

I wish I were attending the SharePoint Summit conference in Montreal this week. We use it at DesignMind. It really enhances our collaboration and content management processes. It’s no wonder that Forbes Magazine calls SharePoint the “Ultimate Business Timesaver”.

According to InfoWorld, MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 2007 is the fastest growing product in Microsoft’s history and has “as many uses as a Swiss Army knife”. Its six focus areas are collaboration, portal, search, ECM (enterprise content management), business process management, and business intelligence.

Ford Motor uses SharePoint for its dealer portal, and the Marines have deployed collaborative applications to aid their efforts in Iraq. In Scotland, the entire K-12 education community is connected via SharePoint.

The great thing about SharePoint is that it offers a single environment for all your information and collaboration tasks and it’s easy to learn, use, and personalize. It has a single platform and well-integrated set of technologies to manage and lower user support requirements. Can you tell I’m a big fan?

I’m also a fan of Formula One racing, so the following bit of news made me particularly happy. If you like fast cars check out the new Ferrari.com site which was built with MOSS 2007.

Ferrari F430

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