We have been working hard behind the scenes to bring you a new and improved UKWAUG website, and here it is! Having taken feedback from user group attendees, clients and contacts, we decided that there were a number of important features missing. So here’s what we have been working on: Events A comprehensive list of upcoming Azure events from around the UK, including the event topic, speaker, date and a link to the registration page. Forum A brand new forum available to all members. Create your own forum topics, or join in the conversation and engage with other UK members. Read More »

The first Manchester meeting is upon us and we’re looking for some positive marketing from ukwaug members. As this is new and our network in Manchester is not great can you please pass this to your colleagues who may have local developers that want to attend. There are two talks, one by Michael Royster of Microsoft on Win8 and Azure and the other by Becca Martin and John Mitchell on Agile and Azure. Some profile information on our speakers: John Mitchell has worked in technical roles with a number of brand names including Tesco.com, Vodafone, Volkswagon Finance and The Royal Read More »

These are very belated slides from the January meeting of the UK Windows Azure Users Group by Microsoft Evangelist Steve Plank. Planky gave a great talk on integrating ACS with ADFS in the cloud illustrating the messages and workflow that occurs. With ACS these integration points with typical web scenarios become tremendously easier. You can get the slides here. Planky’s after the break talk was on Azure Connect and common usage scenarios. You can get the slides here. Once again thanks to all those that turned up in support of the group and looking forward to seeing new and old Read More »

Meeting topic: Integrating your AD in to the Windows Azure Cloud Moving an app to the cloud can involve re-engineering aspects such as AD policy control and authentication. Windows Azure Connect, a VPN solution, permits servers in the cloud to be domain-joined. This is particularly useful where say a SQL Server is to remain on-premises but its data is to be made available to the cloud application. With a simple setup and configuration it is possible to treat the cloud-based server as if it is still in your corporate network because you have effectively extended your AD security boundary in Read More »