Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
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Microsoft Windows Azure


Microsoft Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform is here..the actual name for Red Dog, Strata et al is with us.

LIve Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, Sharepoint Services & Dynamic CRM Services all sit on top of Windows Azure and support the Online versions of Microsoft’s key software including Live, Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online and CRM Online.

The Azure Platform
The Azure Platform

Azure will enable people to build and use completely new services in the Cloud, at a lower price point than before.

Pay as you grow and reduce costs. Pay for the services you use and reduce the capital costs associated with purchasing hardware and infrastructure. Reduce operational costs by running applications on the services platform and decrease the need for maintaining on-premises infrastructure. Increase business efficiency and agility by dynamically adding and subtracting capacity in real time. Envision building an e-commerce Web site that you can scale at the click of a mouse to meet seasonal demands or spikes in traffic based on sales and promotions. The Azure Services Platform helps reduce IT-related costs, freeing up time and capital to focus on your core business.

Bluehoo.com runs atop Windows Azure.

I’m really excited about this, both as a Microsoft “Enthusiast”/Fanboy (depending who you ask!) and a Microsoft Partner. I get the impression that Azure is going to take us to some pretty amazing places; as business partners, customers and web users we’re witnessing something special!

A big shout out to Steve Clayton for breaking this news to us 🙂

If you’re a developer and want to try out Azure for yourself, you can register for the Community Technology Preview (CTP) here.

Mary Jo Foley has got a nice breakdown of how Azure is composed. She also mentions that MS have committed to delivering Microsoft Hosted versions of all it’s Enterprise apps; she mentions that she’s heard rumours of ForeFront Online & System Center Online already!

Microsoft are really making a big push on Software+Services and as a Gold Partner actively looking into S+S, these PDC announcements are very interesting.

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Windows 7 Pre-Beta Features


The Windows 7 Pre-Beta Build will be available to PDC 2008 attendees from Tuesday 28th of October (tomorrow) but Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet has got some info on what features we can expect to see:

Device Stage – a central location for customers to more easily interact with devices, ranging from printers, cameras, cell phones, media players, etc. Device Stage will only recognize “Device-Stage-enabled” peripherals.

Action Center – a self-diagnosis feature to help users troubleshoot problems with their Windows 7 systems

A new Animation Framework for customizing animations

New Task Bar & Shell Integration

Multi-Touch & Gesture Recognition

There isn’t much more info on these features as of yet so roll on tomorrow!!

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Microsoft PDC 2008 keynotes and more


The Microsoft PDC 2008 COnference is due to start in around 5 hours (16:00 UK time), and I can’t wait!

Unfortunately I’m not over there in The City of Angels due to the fact that I’m not a developer so I’m here in the UK, getting ready to watch the live streaming keynotes as well as tracking the various blogs and tweets from the guys and gilrs that are attending.

I’ll try to collect and collate as much of the relevant info as possible so you don’t have to go searching all over the intertubes for it 🙂

It's true!
It’s True!

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Windows 7 Missing Features


It seems that Windows 7 will be missing a few common Vista applications when it is released so an article over at ComputerWorld says.

It seems that when Windows 7 is released to the public, it won’t include Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker. These will instead be made available for free download from the Windows Live website, in an attempt to get more people frequenting the site and thus more users downloading from the site as a way to take market share from Google.

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Quake on Silverlight = Quakelight


Quake on Silverlight exists and is called Quakelight, this is thanks to Silverlight 2 and some pretty sweet skills!

You can find out more over and check out the video over at MSDN Channel 9.

I’m excited about this as I was a BIG quake fan (FRAG HIM!!!) back in the day and it’d be pretty quality to have Quake available to play online…

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Office 2007 SP2


Microsoft have confirmed that Office 2007 SP2 will be released in the first half of 2009, sometime between February & April.

The official blog has more info on Microsoft’s commitment to releasing the update including features such as OpenDocument Format (ODF) Support, save to PDF & XPS via the file-save menu and improvements to Outlook, including the (already pretty awesome) calendar.

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Windows 7-Arriving soon(er)?


Windows 7 could be here sooner than we all thought according to Mary Jo Foley and Long Zheng.

Long spotted the following text on the PDC website:

“Be one of the first to see what’s new in Windows 7 and be among a select few to receive a pre-beta build of Windows 7.  Join us as WinHEC 2008 – Register today. WinHEC is the only chance for you to engage with the team at this level – there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released.” (bold my own)

and then Mary Jo Foley says:

“When I searched the Web for “WinHEC 2009,” it looks like the next WinHEC seems to be slated for New ORleans from MAy 3-7, 2009 (although Microsoft potentially could postpone next year’s WinHEC to late fall, like it did this year).”

Could Windows 7 really be out before May 2009? I don’t think so-that just seems too early..but we’ll see what happens so watch this space! 🙂

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Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Released


Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 has been Released To Manufacturing (RTM’d)!

An evaluation version can be downloaded here.

Zane Adam, Senior Director of Virtualizatio Strategy over at MS Redmond said:

“They are seeing the many cost reduction and management simplification benefits of Hyper-V and the SCVMM 2008 integration with the rest of System Center.   Now that RTM is official, I fully expect the rate of Hyper-V deployments to further accelerate.  Through the SCVMM 2008 console, administrators can see the entirety of their data center infrastructure – physical or virtual. SCVMM 2008 facilitates key functions like P2V (physical to virtual) migration, Intelligent Placement (selecting the best virtual host for a VM), and managing Hyper-V host clusters, to name just a few.  SCVMM 2008 works closely with its siblings – particularly SC Ops Mgr – in identifying consolidation candidates and in Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), a new feature in which SCVMM 2008 can alert and recommend solutions to administrators about failing virtual machines or hardware.  As I mentioned above, this comprehensive view extends throughout the data center as SCVMM 2008 is capable of seeing and managing VMware ESX infrastructure through Virtual Center.”

The full transcript is here.

This is really great. SCVMM is always an integral part of conversation I have with customers artound Hyper-V and once the new version is available (1st of November 2008) I agree that many projects will start moving and being implemented.

Watch a silverlight demo and see the features yourself.

I saw this via Clive Watson’s blog.

What will SCVMM 2008 do over SCVMM 2008?

Virtual Machine Manager can manage multiple VMWare ESX VirtualCenter licences from one place, something that even VMWare can’t do !VMWare are working on it but it will be just a web console and not as fully featured as Microsoft’s VMM.

Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) is another key feature that puts VMM over ESX. Matt McSpirit explains it well:

“Take an example of a virtualised Exchange Server.  If a service crashes inside that VM, and that service is an Exchange related service, and that service crash results in a CPU spike.  The VM is still running, but now, it’s consuming more resource, so DRS chooses to move it.  It does the same on it’s new host, so DRS moves it again.  SC Operations Manager would identify the crash as being an Exchange issue, and fix the crash, rather than move the VM, even if that VM is running on a VMware infrastructure”

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Windows 7 Features and Improvements


Windows 7 is set to feature improvements to the following areas: 

  • Migration & Deployment
  • Security Optimization
  • Desktop Management
  • Enterprise Search
  • Desktop Virtualisation
  • Application Virtualisation
  • HelpDesk Optimization
  • Corporate Compliance
  • Branch Office Optimization
  • Remote Access to Corporate Applications
  • Mobility Solutions
  • Green Computing

Some of these are already big topics of interest such as Desktop Virtualization, Mobility, Green IT etc and I think significant improvements to these areas (or in fact any of the above) could well lead to great adoption of Windows 7.

 

A couple of suggestions I made were to include some of the Enterprise CAL functionality from certain products in the WIndows 7 Enterprise SKU. So potentially having Windows 7 Enterprise would give you the Enterprice CAL functionality for OCS for example..

 

I also think that rolling VECD (Centralized Desktops) into either MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) or Windows 7 Enterprise. Let’s see if that happens in the final version 😉

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Microsoft SideSight Project


Microsoft SideSight is a new mobile device research project, aimed at giving touchscreen functionality without needing to touch the screen! The plan is to have a range of sensors around the device which would allow you to click, rotate images, swipe the HTC Touch-Flo interface etc all from up to 10 cm away.

I really like this as I always seem to need to use my phone (HTC Diamond) just as I’m eating crisps, chocolate, chicken etc and thus a frantic hunt for a napkin ensues! This would mean I could still answer it, view some notes or whatever without getting it covered in grease..nice 🙂

I spotted this over at Engadget.

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