Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
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Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Device


Windows Phone 8 is not far away and today we’ve seen sneak previews of 2 devices that will surely be revealed at Nokia’s event on September 5th, alongside Microsoft.

Nokia Lumia 920

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What will it include?

  • Wireless Charging
  • 32GB Storage
  • 1GB RAM
  • 1.5GHz Dual Core CPU
  • 4.5” HD Display
  • Front Facing Camera

The Verge also report that the camera will be branded as “PureView” but will be 8MP rather than 41 as on the Nokia 808. Until my Lumia 800, I’ve never had a Nokia nor have I had any interest in Nokia if I’m honest, so I haven’t come across the PureView brand before. What I gather is that it’s a kick-ass camera and people are upset that this has just 8 megapixels yet is being branded as PureView. Nokia say there have been advancements in image stabilization & software that mean they can brand it as such which seems reasonable to me, we all know that megapixels aren’t everything 🙂

This looks like it could well be my next phone…double the storage which will be great for my ever more eclectic music taste, a front facing camera for making use of the baked in Skype features and WIRELESS CHARGING – that is some Star Trek stuff right there!

Here’s a picture of the wireless charging mat via @evleaks:

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Office 365–Office Pro Plus Subscription


Amidst all the news around Office 365 for Open & FPP and the awesome preview of the 2013 editions, I noticed something else earlier. When it comes to Office Pro Plus as an individual subscription, there are now 2 options:

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As you can see, the Office Pro Plus 1 Year is £10.75 per user per month while the month to month option is £12.75, and limited to 50 users.

I haven’t seen any info on this yet but I assume that this means you can choose to drop the subscription after each month rather than being tied to a full 12 months. This would be good for companies not on Open Value Subscription who find themselves with an influx of temporary staff requiring Office.

I’ve just been chatting to our Marketing Manager and he once did some temp work for Vodafone over in Australia where they brought in 100 temps for 2 weeks to update all their customer records…if they needed Office to do it then this new offering would be perfect!

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Office 2013 & Office 365


So today’s secret announcement is what we all thought it would be – Ballmer announcing the public preview of Office 2013. It’s available to download here:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

or for more choices head to:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/try-more-products

where you can find:

  • Office 365 Small Business Premium
  • Office 365 Enterprise
  • Project Online

I’m just getting everything installed right now so will be back later with a more in-depth look at the new features but for now here are some screenshots of the install process:

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Notice the great new logo below:

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Notice the “Streaming Applications” feature in the installation shot below, this will allow you to stream Office components to devices that don’t have it installed!

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Here’s how it looks pinned to a Windows 7 desktop.

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and here you can see the start of how tightly integrated the Cloud is into the new release of Office:

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There is also…wait for it…Project Online!

This is going to be interesting…especially to see if the full Project Server will be made available online or just the desktop app equivalent.

I’m just installing the Project bits now…head over to the links and get playing!

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Windows Server 2012 Licensing Changes


Windows Server 2012 is getting ever closer and today we had some exciting news – changes to the licensing – Yay! This has genuinely got me quite excited Smile

Currently Windows Server has 3 main flavours:

  • Standard / Licensed Per Server
  • Enterprise / Licensed Per Server / Rights to 4 Virtual Servers
  • DataCenter / Licensed Per CPU / Rights to Unlimited Virtual Servers

There are also Web Server, HPC & Small Business Server (SBS) editions.

There are also feature differences between the versions.

Going forward with Windows Server 2012 we will have:

  • Std / Licensed Per CPU / Rights to 2 Virtual Servers
  • DataCenter / Licensed Per CPU / Rights to Unlimited Virtual Servers
  • Each license covers 2 CPUs

Std & DataCenter will have feature parity and the only difference will be the virtual server rights. This is a question I’ve already seen on Twitter:

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So it’s good to get an answer straight away.

Features previously not in Windows Server Std that will be with 2012 include:

  • Windows Server Failover Clustering
  • BranchCache Hosted Cache Server
  • Active Directory Federated Services
  • Additional Active Directory Certificate Services capabilities
  • Distributed File Services (support for more than 1 DFS root)
  • DFS-R Cross-File Replication

This follows the same path as the changes recently made to System Center and, while it may make small installations more expensive, overall it reduces costs and simplifies the licensing for end users.

There are 2 other editions of Windows Server 2012 – Essential & Foundation:

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As you can see, Essentials & Foundation are aimed at the very small networks and both are limited to 1 CPU. Things which are missing from the lower editions include:

  • Direct Access
  • Hyper-V
  • ADFS

To see the full list of feature differences between the various editions, download the Windows Server 2012 datasheet here:

View Datasheet

Web Server

Windows Web Server can only run web facing workloads but does not require any CALs (Client Access Licenses) which makes it perfect for hosting external sites. However Web Server is being discontinued in the next release but before tales of astronomical rises in costs as companies are forced to buy CALs for every single user of their service:

“Despite the removal of Web Server edition, web workloads running on a Windows Server 2012 edition will continue to receive the “CAL waiver” that is in effect for these workloads today. Windows Server CALs will not be required to access the licensed server if it is only being used to run web workloads”

Software Assurance Transition

If you have active Software Assurance (SA) on Windows Server licenses at the time of release for 2012, you will receive rights to the new versions as per the below:

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What about SBS?

Small Business Server has been around for years, combines Windows Server & Exchange Server and is aimed at networks with less than 75 users. Now however it’s time has come to an end…

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SBS has quite a thriving community built around it with many passionate advocates, most of whom are sad/angered to see it go. I on the other hand am really rather happy about it! I’ve always found it to be an extra, unnecessary complication when new sales staff/customers get involved with licensing. I realise I’m not going to be popular with that opinion and I’m equally sure that if I worked more in that area I’d have a different opinion but as it is, from the Mid-market & Enterprise space, this is a welcome move.

You can find the full FAQ here:

Find Answers

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JaJah Voice for Office 365


Here’s an interesting bit of software I came across earlier:

Jajah Voice for Office 365

which extends the voice capabilities of Lync Online including:

  • Make and receive phone calls from your Lync online contacts
  • Click-to-call from IM conversations, Outlook, SharePoint and other Office apps
  • Find me/Follow me: set incoming calls to be forwarded or simultaneously ring personal mobile phone
  • ‘Call via work’: make outgoing calls from your smart phone using work number
  • Mid-call transfer to your mobile phone or any other number or user.

I’m really quite excited about this. This takes Lync Online into the world of mobility very well, being able to make/receive calls via Lync Online will surely speed up the adoption of both Lync & Office 365.

The service is currently in closed beta and is expected to go live this month (July 2012)

Jajah’s MS Pinpoint page can be found here:

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/jajah-voice-for-office-365-12884930736

and their main site here:

http://www.jajah.com/

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Microsoft buy Yammer


It first came to light when a couple of Yammer employees got a little TOO carried away with the caramel in their lattes in a Seattle coffee-house and now it’s been made official…Microsoft are buying Yammer for $1.2 billion.

Yammer will join the Office division, headed up by Kurt DelBene, which is a great move as it will surely be integrated into Sharepoint, Outlook and Lync as soon as possible. There was talk that it would be moved into the Dynamics team which, while logical, would have limited the reach of Yammer among Microsoft’s install base.

Microsoft have crafted that most current of crazes, the InfoGraphic, to help explain the rationale behind the purchase:

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You can see a bigger version here.

I’ve never had a chance to use Yammer but I’ve always been very intrigued by it, I can see it being a great addition to a lot of companies. I’ll be keeping my eye on out internal use rights at work to see when Yammer pops up Winking smile

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Microsoft Announce Windows Phone 8


Just days after the Microsoft Surface tablet event, MS held another – this time to officially announce Windows Phone 8.

There were a lot of announcements, a lot of news – some good, some bad, a lot of innovations and a lot of reasons to get a Windows Phone 8 device. I’ll try and cover them off as best I can here:

New Start Screen

The Start Screen with it’s Metro interface and Live Tiles is one of the key eye grabbers of Windows Phone and it’s being improved in Windows Phone 8 (and 7.8 but we’ll come to that later).

First up is a new, third size for tiles giving us “small, medium & large” with the new “small” size enabling users to fit more on their home screen.

Secondly, Microsoft are removing the blank strip down the right hand side of the screen (you know, with the side arrow at the top), giving users a fair bit more screen real estate to play with.

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They’re also going to be expanding the number of colours available.

NFC

Near Field Communication (NFC) is going to be integrated right into WP8, enabling payments by waving your phone at things, the ability to store card details, store cards etc and more…essentially a combination of Google Wallet & Apple Passbook with extras on top. It will also enable each pairing with a range of accessories such as, and I only discovered these today, Nokia’s NFC enabled speakers…you just touch your phone to them and BOOM – connected. These are available for Nokia’s current range of NFC enabled Symbian devices so I can only assume WP8 will be invited to the party. Another feature will be the ability to “bump” phones and transfer contact details etc…cool and useful for trade shows, impromptu meetings etc…I’m sure I’d end up using it all the time.

SD Support

Proper SD support is coming to Windows Phone 8 devices. SD cards that can be used as true removable storage…transfer music, pictures, documents and also install apps!

Windows 8 Core

This is a huge one – MS are moving away from the former Windows CE core and instead implementing the same NT Kernel as the new Windows 8 desktop OS! This means that file system, media, drivers and a lot of the security will be the same across desktop & mobile; allowing many of the features mentioned above as well as games/apps that can move between the two. That last point will make for a great user experience as well as making things much easier and more attractive for developers – which is always a good thing!

Another thing enabled by the move to the NT Kernel is multi-core processor support which will drive the next generation of WP mobile apps and games.

Internet Explorer 10

IE 10 will be on Windows Phone 8 bring the SmartScreen URL screening & phishing protection. That’s about all the news on that for now though…

VOIP Integration

VOIP is going to be “industry leading” when it comes to integration on WP8, with not just Skype but also Tango et al becoming “first class” app; giving them deep integration into things such as the People Hub and the dialler. The next crop of WP8 devices will surely (nearly) all come with front facing cameras – those 2 things combined could help to make video calling as ubiquitous as people have been predicting for years.

Enterprise Features

One of the (quite) valid criticisms levelled at WP 7/7.5 is its lack of Enterprise features; in some areas it was actually less feature rich than Windows Mobile 6.5. New business centric features WP8 will bring include:

  • On-Device Encryption
  • Device Management
  • Line Of Business (LOB) app support
  • Private market places for internal business app distribution
  • Side-Loading

Now for the bad news…

This ISN’T coming to existing Windows Phone devices. None of them. Not the Lumia 800. Not the Lumia 900. None of them.

Yes, if you’ve just upgraded to a shiny new Lumia (or other WP device) that is a bit of a rage-inducing moment but hey, there’s always Mazuma and Envirofone Open-mouthed smile

Microsoft have taken quite a brave step of angering some people to make wholesale changes that straight away move Windows Phone to the front of the mobile pack. Yes those recent adopters will be a bit annoyed but when their contracts come up for renewal again it seems likely that WP devices will be the best on market so they’ll be able to stick with it going forwards.

One thing that IS coming to current handsets is the new, improved Start Screen under the Windows Phone 7.8 update. Although it doesn’t bring the new features it does make an already great mobile OS even more aesthetically pleasing.

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Microsoft Surface Tablet


Well, Monday’s hyped up yet super secret announcement has been made…and it’s brilliant! Microsoft are introducing their own Microsoft branded tablets – “The Surface”, and they look stunning:

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Just look at it. Glossy bezel, rounded corners, integrated kickstand AND A COVER THAT IS A KEYBOARD! I really can’t get over that, it’s such an ingenious innovation and a great unique selling point…not only that but it’s just 3mm thick.

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Down to details – there are 2 versions of the Surface tablets:

OS Windows RT Windows 8 Pro
Weight 676g 903g
Thickness 9.3mm 13.5mm
Screen 1.06” Cleartype HD 10.6” Cleartype Full HD
Battery 31.5 W-h 42 W-h
Connections microSD, USB 2.0, Micro HD Video, 2xMIMO Antennae microSDXC, USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort Video, 2xMIMO Antennae
Productivity Office 15, Touch Cover, Type Cover Touch Cover, Type Cover, Pen w/ Palm Block
Practical VaporMg Case & Stand VaporMg Case & Stand
Hard Drive 32GB, 64GB 64GB, 128GB

For now that’s all we’ve got in the way of confirmed features – but it’s a good start in my opinion…definitely enough to let me know that I want one. The 2 missing features that I’m most interested in are CPU & RAM – the latter especially as the iPad’s 768MB lets it down quite a lot.

I’m taking it that the keyboard cover comes with the tablet as standard rather than being an optional accessory – I hope that’s right!

Nothing too much has been said about the pricing other than the Pro version will be “priced similarly to a comparable ultrabook” which I’d say puts it between £700 & £1000…and also suggests it will be rolling with Core i5 processors and 4GB+ of RAM. If that’s right it will be a portable beast Smile

The interest & buzz has been really great to see too. I saw people on Twitter who usually only tweet about MUFC talking about the Surface and saying how cool it looked and I’d fielded 2 customer enquiries by 09:20 at work this morning – love it!

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Microsoft finalizes Price Increases


Microsoft’s impending price increases have been the subject of much discussion recently, with customers and partners working together to negate the impact this will have on budgets going forward. However we’ve only had rough figures as to what the price increases will actually be so it’ s been a little odd! However, we now have final numbers for the percentage increases:

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As you can see, the increases aren’t as hefty as first expected, due to the volatile Euro.

You’ll also notice that Government Open License is being re-instated from next month.

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