Cloudy with a chance of Licensing
Latest news on Microsoft licensing, Cloud, and AI
Windows Search 4.0 allows Windows to search through text inside Office documents, as well as the file names and is available for download here.
This will be good for me as often the names I give files bear little relation to the content inside so it should be quite a bit easier for me to find things now 🙂
I saw this on Steve Clayton’s blog here.
Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD) is a unique way to licence Windows OS on virtual machines (VM’s) as part of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
The desktop OS (Operating System) images are held on a server and users access them via PC or Thin Clients*. You can have an unlimited number of OS instances on the server, these can be Vista or downgraded to XP, it is licensed by Device and you can have 4 virtual instances per access device at a time.
VECD is priced on a per device per month basis (so 100 users = 1200 units x price) for a minimum of 1 year.
A link to the Microsoft page which includes various datasheets can be found here.
Running Virtual Instances on the desktop is becoming more and more common and, of course, poses it’s own problems when it comes to licensing. You must have a separate OS licence for each VM as well as the OS licence for the physical machine.
If VECD isn’t an option for whatever reason, you can run OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)/FPP (Full Packaged Product) inside the VM to give you the OS licences. However if your corporate standard is still XP (as it is with many companies) it gets a bit trickier! You won’t find an OEM or FPP copy of XP now so you will have to start with Vista and downgrade to XP:
1) Buy a volume licence for Vista= NO. The Desktop OS volume licence is UPGRADE ONLY and as a VM is a clean machine, yo’re not eligible to install an upgrade.
2) Buy an OEM Vista licence= NO. Although OEM licences of Vista Business/Ultimate give downgrade rights, you’re not eligible for OEM licensing as they’re not being installed on a “new” physical machine.
3) Buy an FPP copy of Vista and enrol it in to Software Assurance (SA)= YES. Enrolling an FPP licence into SA** grants you Downgrade Rights, so you can take Vista down to XP and it’s a full copy so you can install it in a new clean VM.
* PC’s MUST be covered with Software Assurance (SA) to be eligible for VECD.
**You have a time limit to enrol the FPP copies into SA. 90 days for Open Licensing, 30 days for Open Value/Select/Enterprise Agreements.
Microsoft OCS 2007 R2, the new version, was recently (14/10/08) announced at VoiceCon. My other posts talk about the features that were expected to be included and can be found here.
BrettJo has got some links with extra info over at his blog, and some of the info from those is below.
The “Communicator Attendant” is a PC Client that adds a whole host of traditional operator features to OCS 2007; it’s advanced features allow you to transfer IM’s (Instant Messages) and/or typed notes along with a phone call <–that’s pretty cool 🙂
Also, ACD Response Group includes a set of workflow and routing rules, IVR and queuing, agent presence, Music on Hold (MOH), and inbound call context.
NoJitter.com also says:
“Other new telephony features include Delegation (assistant/executive support capabilities), Call Monitoring (call records, call voice quality, usage reporting, and ROI analysis), and SIP trunking direct from the OCS 2007 Mediation Server to the ITSP (PSTN and Cellular networks) without need for a premises SBC.”
Video Conferencing sees a number of improvements including VGA as standard with an HD option and one click screen sharing from Office Communicator, with Polycom & Tandberg endpoints being supported.
Dial-in Conferencing (scheduled or ad-hoc bridging) with VOIP or PSTN access is do-able and the Conferencing Attendant enables you to see the call roster, drop callers from the conference and more.
Another new feature that could lead to some really cool things is the ability for developers to add presence information to other MS AND 3rd party applications such as CRM. So if you’re in Finance and you’ve got a question about the latest order on the Jenkins account, you could see the presence of the customer account manager and contact them via chat…still within that application!
The guys over at TechWorld.nlhave got a video which includes an interview with Senior MS Director Eric Swift and a great demo of the new OCS 2007 R2 features:
If anyone can translate the Dutch article over at Techworld that’d be cool 🙂
Two new Apple ads are again attacking Microsoft..one for not using the word “Vista” in the latest run of adverts and also for spending money on ads about Vista, instead of using the cash on Vista itself.
The V Word:
The Bean Counter:
I’m not a fan of Apple much at all..I’ve got a couple of iPod’s around but that’s it; I can see why people do like them but Steve et al aren’t my cup of tea. Despite that, these ads are kind of funny and if they were the other way round, that would be the case even more so (!), however as the guys over at Neowin say “is this just a friendly competition, or are they taking it too far?”
Let me know what you think…
Microsoft have new technology to censor swearing in speech which was awarded patent number 7,437, 290 by the US Patent and Trademark Office on 14/10/08.
The technology changes “undesired words” to unintelligble sounds and can be used in real-time to protect listeners of live broadcasts; this would have been handy for OfCom at Live 8!
I saw this on The Register.
Windows Vista SP2 & Windows Server 2008 SP2. The release dates are un-confirmed but they’re expected to be with us before Windows 7, so end of 2009 at the latest it seems. *UPDATE-it seems liekly it will be the first half of 2009*
The word on the street is that Vista SP2 will include Windows Search 4, VIA 64-bit CPU support, and Bluetooth wireless as well as various application compatibility updates. Engadget point out there will also be the ability to natively record data on Blu-ray media and Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify WiFi configuration. I’ve just seen a few more features that will be part of Vista SP2 that include the ex-FAT file system being enalbed, supporting UTC timestamps to ensure correct file synchronization across time zones and support for ICCD/CCID smart cards.
Windows Search 4.0 will also be part of VIsta SP2 and will feature Group Policy Integration to provide admins control over search parameters.
Windows Server 2008 SP2 is expected to give us various management and performance enhancements with DFS/FRS console and Storage Resource Manager. There will be Print server and spooler performance improvements for printers in Windows Vista and Server 2008 and backwards compatibilty with Terminal Service Licence Keys as well as the inclusion of Hyper-V. Also, improved error reporting in DFSR to help identify incorrectly configured deployments which lead to failed replication.
These are both anticipated with the next 4 weeks.
This info is from NeoWin via Mary Jo Foley.
Tears for Fears: Head Over Heels-The Literal Version, a follow up to the A-Ha video, is brilliant too!
These really show how weird the 80’s could be!
Microsoft CHESS is their innovative automated error finding tool for multi-threaded applications. It’s been a Microsoft Research project for 2 years but they’re now set to let people see it at this year’s PDC.
THe MS Research page for CHESS says:
“CHESS is an automated tool for finding errors in multithreaded software by systematic exploration of thread schedules. It finds errors, such as data-races, deadlocks, hangs, and data-corruption induced access violations, that are extremely hard to find with current testing tools. Once CHESS locates an error, it provides a fully repeatable execution of the program leading to the error, thus greatly aiding the debugging process. In addition, CHESS provides a valuable and novel notion of test coverage suitable for multithreaded programs. CHESS can use existing concurrent test cases and is therefore easy to deploy. Both developers and testers should find CHESS useful. The CHESS architecture is described in this technical report.”
I’m not a Developer, but I have done some programming (just a few simple part code generators etc for work as well as a “never saw the light of day” software intranet portal) and I know how annoying errors and bugs can be, especially when you can’t repeat them. I imagine this is even worse when it happens in a huge, multi-threaded application where other people’s time and money are being wasted so CHESS will surely help out a huge amount!
Mary Jo Foley has got extra info here.
Could Microsoft be readying an “Instant On” OS? A survey sent to select MS customers and picked up by Engadget seems to indicate that Microsoft are at least thinking about it.
Microsoft are asking if users would like an OS that, within 8 seconds, allowed us access to a “select sub-set of services”, including Web browsing, IM & Media playback but not “Full Windows”. I’d love this, it would make things quicker and easier and I assume, reduce our power bills a little too 🙂
Microsoft & VMWare are the two big names in Virtualization at the moment, and it’s a topic everyone is talking about. Manufacturers, resellers, consultants, analysts, end users, Jeff down the pub..they’ve all got something to say about Virtualisation. There are all kinds of facts and figures going around, some of which seem contradictory but as with most things it all depends on viewpoint..
You might be wondering why I think it’s time to add my voice to the crowd so let me tell you. At work I see a number of people, our sales guys and our customers, who know the should be thinking about virtualization and talking about virtualization, but they don’t know what they’re supposed to think and say..they know that people can virtualize..but they don’t know why, or how. They know it reduces costs but if someone asked them, the would have to hope that “Err, erm, well..” translates into something better in one of this world’s many languages!! 😉
So in a nutshell, I hope this post/blog will become a safer, calmer haven for people to take a look at virtualization without the often deafening clamour of their colleagues, bosses and suppliers. I’ll say straight away that I’m a Microsoft Partner and supporter so I will lean towards Hyper-V but I will aim to keep everything well balanced and as neutral as possible 🙂
What is Virtualization?
Virtualization has been around since the Mainframes of the 70’s but has only become a general topic relatively recently (around 2005 it really took off).
A very common, entry level example of Virtualization is hard drive partitioning. You have one physical drive, but you can divide it up into 2 or more virtual drives and that’s what the computer sees.
The big buzz around Virtualization is…
Server Consolidation.
These days, many companies suffer from “Server Sprawl”, where they have large numbers of servers, often performing just a single task (Exchange Server, File Server etc) and wasting a lot of internal resources such as RAM, storage space and processing power as well as external resources like floor space, cooling and power.
This is where Server Virtualization comes in. Tools such as Microsoft Hyper-V, VMWare ESX, Citrix XEN and more all allow you to consolidate these various servers onto one physical server running multiple virtual instances or Virtual Machines (VM’s).
Each VM has it’s own Operating System (OS) and applications installed on it and is completely separate to the other VM’s, just like physical servers. (The “One Point of Failure” discussion is later..). It’s widely accepted that most physical servers are running at about 10% utilization, so each server is wasting 90% of it’s storage, RAM, processing power etc..all things that you’ve paid (and are still paying) for. This means you could put say 7 of those servers onto one box, and that machine would then run at around 80% utilization…immediately increasing your Return on Investment (ROI). If you can go from 7 to 1, you can go from 70 to 10 which all of a sudden is a huge difference…
Getting rid of all those servers will reduce the amount of cooling and power you use in your server room/data centre too. This leads us to..
Green IT:
Gartner say that the average company spends 4%-7% of their total IT budget on energy costs such as power and cooling. If your budget is £500,000 that’s £20,000-£35,000 a year, so if you can reclaim say 40% of that and add £8000-£14000 back into your budget straight away, that’s got to be a good thing. With the continued increase of energy prices at the moment, just this aspect on it’s own can be a compelling reason to move to a virtual environment.
A virtual infrastructure can be a lot easier to manage as well. It reduces the amount of time administrators spend on repetitive tasks such as provisioning & configuring servers. If you need a new server quickly, you can simply boot up a pre-configured Virtual template and you have a new machine up and running in minutes.
There are a number of management tools such as VMWare Virtual Center and Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager which make administration even easier.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 