Monthly Archives: November 2013

Managing your Azure cloud costs with Kerrb

One of the big problems developers and organizations have using cloud services like Azure is the potential for the costs to go crazy if you don’t shut your dev, test or temporary Virtual Machines off. Sometime back Andrew Connell and I got talking about and had an idea for an online service that would help you manage those costs.  We talked with some people and found found loads of people that were concerned with using Azure and Amazon Web Services because of these cost overrun type of issues.

KerrbSo we decided to fix it …  Introducing Kerrb.

Kerrb is a SaaS product designed to save you money by automatically turning off Azure VMs that you forget about.  If you forget to turn off a virtual machine Kerrb will make sure it’s turned off on a schedule that you decide on.

Kerrb is still being built, but you can sign up for the launch list and be one of the first to get access when it is ready.  We will send you updates on how development is progressing and finally give those on the launch list the opportunity to sign up and test out the system when it’ ready. Also as an added bonus, if you are on the launch list then we will honor the pricing we have up on the site, even if we decide to tweak it prior to launch.

Kerrb will start small and evolve quickly as demand and feedback drives the product development. The high priority “Pri 0” [1]  feature is to turn off Virtual Machines in Azure if you forget, but we have a lot of other great features on the roadmap including adding Amazon Web Services as well as support for other leading cloud providers.

Keep up to date with developments and help us get the word out by:

  1. Signing up for the launch list
  2. Liking Kerrb on FaceBook
  3. Keeping an eye on the Blog for updates and news
  4. Follow @KerrbApp on Twitter

Have a read of a blog post Andrew wrote on the Kerrb blog here: Using VMs for Dev, Test & Show – Perspectives from an Indie Consultant, Trainer and Presenter

And something I wrote about Managing cloud spend in a development organization

We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback!

-CJ

[1] Pri 0 – Microsoft speak for the highest priority features in product development. You have to have all the Pri 0’s.

Yammer provisioning rolling out in Office 365 admin portal

Previously if you were an Office 365 (E SKU) customer or partner with an Enterprise Agreement (EA) you could ask MS to upgrade your Yammer network to the Enterprise edition for no additional charge.

Starting today MS have added the ability to do this via the Office 365 admin portal directly.

This is a rolling release, and your tenancy might not have got the changes just yet. So hold tight.

Customers with Office 365 E plans, SharePoint Online + Yammer, or existing Enterprise Agreements and qualifying license purchases are eligible to activate Yammer Enterprise via their Office 365 Administrators portal.

You can do this in the Admin portal as shown below:

This should make the process a whole lot smoother and is another (small) step in the right direction for the integration of Yammer and Office 365.

-CJ

SharePoint Saturday Chicago #SPSChicago

Today I presented a 101 session on getting started with the new SharePoint App Model. It’s a lot to get through in 75mins, but hopefully it gave people enough to get started and try out building an app for Office 365 or SharePoint on premises.

Thanks to everyone that came along!  #SPSChicago is a great free event for people with a great lineup of speakers.

Here are the slides: