See previous: Decades old Software Patterns may not be applicable in the Cloud

The line between IaaS and PaaS blurs every day. Soon we will have to redefine the industry accepted categories for Cloud Computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

Historically, a strong delineation exists between Infrastructure as a Service (the bones and circulation) and Platform as a Service (the digestive tract and organs).

Amazon first introduced its Cloud platform as Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) and now is creeping more and more towards Platform as a Service (PaaS). AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a great example of this.

Microsoft first introduced Azure as a Platform as a Service, and today is creeping more and more towards IaaS – the full redesign of the VM Role are a great example. Likely we will see more announcements later this month from Microsoft of expanded IaaS features in Azure.

With the introduction (and later acquisition) of Cloud Foundry by VMWare, these lines have further been blurred. VMWare has been around for decades. Cloud Foundry serves an elegant way to slide from a forklifted application to a full fledged Cloud designed application. VMware is truly an established and credible solution for providing the virtualized environment. The combination of open source platform with the Service Level Agreement support by VMWare makes Cloud Foundry a serious contender if not leader in the Cloud provider space.

At Slalom, we use Tier 3 for our hosting. Tier 3 provides the old school hosting mentioned earlier; however they also support CloudFoundry and this blurred world of IaaS/PaaS. To add more fuel to the fire, Tier 3 supports IronFoundry, which is .NET on top of CloudFoundry. Now you can take advantage of the strong marketplace of .NET skillsets, in addition to the benefits stated above.

Why do should a developer care? Number one and foremost – it makes your job a lot easier to migrate an on-premise application the cloud. Right now, it is a challenge to take a WinDNA/DCOM type application and move it into AWS or Azure. With VMWare, you can forklift your app into a virtualized environment. Next, you can use CloudFoundry / IronFoundry to modify and add PaaS capabilities. The beauty here is that you don’t have to rewrite your application fully to take advantage of the PaaS capabilities.

If the lines between PaaS/IaaS continue to blur, we’ll have to come up with another taxonomy to categorize different types of cloud service providers.

Full summary here: Five Opinions on Cloud Computing in New York City

Please register for the meetup on Monday night.  Slalom, @codevoyeur and foursquare will showcase mobile technologies.

Slalom will cover the work that they have done for InterContinental to build out a Windows Phone 7 PriorityClub app.  The app uses location based services to find a hotel near you and book a reservation using your mobile phone. Slalom will also showcase the NYC MTA with augmented reality and location based services.  You can vote for the submission every day!

Slalom Consulting has won several accolades for our mobility practice including:

· Top Mobile Practice – by Everything Channel.

· The Flashies! – Mobile App of the Year nomination in collaboration with GroupHealth.  This was the first app of its kind to integrate medical patient data on a mobile device.

· Microsoft Partner of the Year – Top honors for Online Services Solution Partner of the Year.

· Webby Award nomination – Best Use of GPS or Location Technology nomination for a game changing indoor geo-aware application completed with the American Museum of Natural History

Did you learn how to code by building complicated VBA Macros back in the day?  Do you know nearly every Excel shortcut key? Have your spreadsheets grown in popularity to host thousands of users? Do you make a living by writing sophisticated Office code?  If you have taken Office Development to the next level, integrating .NET and advanced business logic into your code, then Slalom is the place for you. We are looking for Office development gurus who have mastered the ins and outs of hooking Office application both to streaming real time data as well as historical relational data. 

Direct results expected from this role would be:

• § Become a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies in NYC, by delivering strategic technical solutions that demonstrate the significant business value on time and on budget
• § Determine the effort involved and provide input into scheduling
• § Design for customers through detailed technical specifications combined with usage scenarios in conjunction with a talented team of software developers
• § Build custom application code using Microsoft Office with custom DLL integration, Sharepoint integration, and relational database connectivity

The ideal candidate will have:

• § Sharepoint 2010 development experience and Excel Services experience. Office 365 experience a benefit.
• § Deep understanding of Excel object model and experience with backend relational database integration. Development experience with the entire Office Suite is preferred.
• § Familiar with creating Office add-ins with the .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office
• § History of performing migrations from VBA to .NET, and porting code from 32-bit to 64-bit technology
• § Minimum of 5 years of experience in Enterprise software consulting or product engineering
• § Strong knowledge of Microsoft .NET design and development with proven track record of full life cycle solution delivery
• § Exceptional decision-making, conflict resolution, time management, project estimation and negotiation skills
• § Demonstrated problem solving and debugging skills
• § Ability to learn and grasps concepts quickly in a fast paced environment
• § Results driven; strong analytical skills with exceptional verbal and written communication
• § BS/BA degree, ideally in Computer Science.