Steve Plank

Steve Plank, or "Planky" as he is more usually known, works for Microsoft in the UK's Developer and Platforms group. His focus is on Microsoft's cloud technologies such as office 365 but especially Windows Azure - Microsoft's platform for building cloud applications. He comes from a digital identity background and believes it is the integration of on-premise technologies such as identity, AD (no surprise there), authentication and authorization and even on-premise databases that makes Windows Azure an Enterprise ready platform. But also the need to create the architectural impression, to the software, that Windows Azure is merely a secure and extremely well managed extension to the on-premise data-centre, He has worked for Microsoft for 17 years and is a regular speaker at conferences such as TechEd, Gartner, RSA. He is also an author and blogger (blogs.msdn.com/plankytronixx) and is keenly involved in the only general-interest cloud group in the UK: Cloud Evening (www.cloudeve.ning.com).