Getting Started with Xamarin.Forms and Azure Mobile App Service

Jeff Hopper .NET, Azure, Cloud, Development Technologies, Mobile, Tutorial, Xamarin 2 Comments

Earlier this month my friend Ryan introduced us to Getting Started with Xamarin Forms and Prism. In that post, Ryan started a mobile application to display blog posts which he called SimpleBlog.

In this article, I would like to continue that demonstration by adding a back-end server to persist and share these blogs. This will be accomplished using Azure’s Mobile App Service which falls within its free tier services.

Yes, you did read that right: you can spin up an Azure account and have access to try out many of Azure’s features. For instance, the example I am going to walk you through today can be hosted indefinitely without costing you anything, and to that, you could add nine more web, mobile, or API services. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/ for more information.

There is no way I am going to be able to cover all the possibilities available in an Azure Mobile App service, much less what Azure has to offer. My intent in this post is to help “whet your appetite” on the possibilities by giving a quick overview of just two great frameworks that play great together: the Microsoft.Azure.Mobile.Client mobile framework tied to an Azure Mobile Apps Service….

Keyhole Sponsoring Azure Dev Days Kansas City 2018

Keyhole Software .NET, Azure, Cloud, Community, Company News, Educational Event Leave a Comment

We are excited to announce Keyhole’s partnership with Microsoft to sponsor Azure Dev Days, a one-day workshop in Kansas City on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. This is a free community event to provide education on application modernization, microservices, and Microsoft Azure topics.

In addition to providing technical educators for this workshop, Keyhole Software will sponsor food and beverages. The topics Keyhole will champion include Microservices and Containers, as well as App Services.

Each technical session will be followed by a hands-on Azure lab and a whiteboard design exercise. This workshop will help attendees gain a thorough understanding of the components of Azure and how you can take advantage of them as a developer.

This is a traveling community event, with other events available to attend in St. Louis and Oklahoma City. The event will be held at the Microsoft offices in Overland Park…

Taking on the Azure Developer Certification (70-532) Exam

Vince Pendergrass .NET, Azure, Cloud, Opinion, Service Fabric 6 Comments

Many of the companies that we work with use various cloud providers (such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft) for IT Service Delivery. This has created a great need for those who assist these companies to possess the technical skills required for proper and effective implementation of such services.

An excellent way to make yourself stand apart from the crowd in this space (and your company for that matter), is to obtain a developer/architect certification, such as the Microsoft Azure Developer Certification. Plus, if your company is focusing on becoming a Microsoft partner, it may be necessary to have a few developers on your team spend some time working to become certified. Fortunately, my awesome company Keyhole Software presented me with this opportunity.

In this blog, I share what I did to prepare for the Azure developer certification, specifically the 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions Certification exam. I’ll include a couple of prep tools that helped me significantly, as well as a few unexpected “gotchas” I encountered when taking the exam…

Azure Functions Breakfast Boost Scheduled

Keyhole Software .NET, Azure, Cloud, Company News Leave a Comment

We are excited to announce the next free public Keyhole Software educational event: Building Your Evil(?) Empire with Azure Functions.

This Breakfast Boost event is a live learning opportunity that is open to the public. The presentation is geared to benefit software developers who are interested in implementing Azure Functions or building Cloud Solutions using JavaScript and .NET technologies.

For this educational talk, Keyhole will bring in guest speaker Bryan Soltis of Kentico, a Microsoft Azure MVP and Technical Evangelist.

This free presentation will be held at the Keyhole Software office in Leawood, Kansas on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 from 8-10 a.m. Space is limited. To get more information and reserve your free tickets, please visit this link to Eventbrite.com or https://azurefunctionswithkeyhole.eventbrite.com…

Microsoft Silver Partner

Keyhole Earns Microsoft Competency Partner Status

Keyhole Software Azure, Company News, Consulting, Keyhole Leave a Comment

We are excited to announce that Keyhole Software has achieved the status of Microsoft Silver Competency Partner.

Joining this elite tier of Microsoft Partners represents that Keyhole has achieved the highest level of application development competence with Microsoft technologies. It required a history of success within the technology industry and a constant commitment to customers.