Microsoft – Page 55 – Cloudy with a chance of Licensing

February 13, 2009

Windows 7 Enterprise SKU

As we all know, there are going to be a number of different version of Windows 7 and, as with Vista, I’m particularly interested to see what extra features/benefits customers will receive if they get the Enterprise SKU. Luckily, Gavriella Schuster over at Windows Team Blog has a post about just that 🙂

As with Vista, the Enterprise SKU is only available to customers who have current Software Assurance (SA) on their desktop OS licences and/or buy new licence with SA. The list of Enterprise Specific features includes:

DirectAccess:This is one feature that I’m really excited by. Being able to get rid of or at least reduce the dependency on, VPN’s would be a huge boost for the vast majority of corporate customers I speak to; and I think this could well be the big driving force that pushed people towards this top end licence.

BranchCache: Helps reduce branch office connectivity problems and network speeds by caching information on local servers.

Enterprise Search Scopes: allows IT administrators to populate links to the commonly used internal sites — for example, SharePoint sites – to the Windows Explorer UI or to the Start menu or in Windows 7, using Group Policy.

BitLocker & BitLocker to Go: protect data on PCs and removable drives, with manageability to enforce encryption and backup of recovery keys. BitLocker to Go extends this to removal USB drives.

AppLocker: is a flexible, easy-to-use mechanism that enables IT professionals to specify exactly what is allowed to run on user desktops. It restricts unauthorized software while allowing applications, installation programs, and scripts that users need. This is also an excellent new feature, controlling what users do on their desktops can be the hardest part of Corporate IT and this goes a long way to making Admin’s lives much easier 🙂

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Optimizations: Windows 7 provides for better user experience in VDI scenarios, with better graphics, audio and local device support.

Multi Lingual User Support: the Language Packs in Windows 7 Enterprise enable you to support up to 36 different languages using a single Windows master image, rather than creating a separate image for each language used in the organization. This will makes things much easier for customers that have centralised IT across Europe and/or companies that have various nationalities in one office (like our HQ).

Also, the allowance to run 4 virtual instances of the desktop OS is still included along with the Sub-System for Unix Apps and it includes the rights to network boot Windows.

I don’t think the uptake of Vista Enterprise has taken the world by storm and I imagine it is lower that MS hoped but I think that will all change with Windows 7. The main reason our clients consider Vista Enterprise is for the virtual licences and that’s it but Windows 7 Enterprise offers a number of good reasons to pay the extra cost.

February 13, 2009February 13, 2009

Microsoft to open retail stores

In what is surely a long overdue move, Microsoft are set to open their own retail stores to “create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide”.

The guy brought in the head it all up is David Porter, former heard of Worldwide Product Distribution at Dreamworks SKG. I’ve often thought it’d be cool to pop into the Microsoft shop to check out the latest releases of products etc & soon we’ll be able to. With the huge buzz around Windows 7 and the upcoming releases around Windows Mobile, this is a perfect time to open the stores as they’ve got consumers back on their side 🙂 People will love going in to see products such as Windows 7 & WinMo 6.5 being used to their full abilities which will help people make more informed purchases in my opinion.

Will these stores offer tech/setup support as well in a geek squad style? That would really help regular home users make the most of their purchases. Porter being in the Entertainment division suggests that Xbox’s and Zunes will feature heavily in the stores-perhaps leading to Zunes being available in Europe?

It’s interesting to note that Porter served 25 years at Walmart, rising to “vice president and general merchandise manager of Entertainment” and he’ll be reporting directly to Kevin Turner; himself a former Walmart star.

Also, it should be decreed that every store MUST have a Surface-that would be wicked 🙂

February 11, 2009

Microsoft Patent Milestone

Microsoft recently passed the 10,000 patents milestone and are now on 10,541 according to Gizmodo.

“Is that a lot or is that rubbish?” you ask, as did I. Well Apple have a mere 2541 patents in their name so 4 times that amount is pretty good going 🙂

However, IBM lead the field with a whopping 53,413 patents with 4000 of them in 2008 alone!

February 10, 2009February 11, 2009

Microsoft Enterprise Search

This weeks FASTForward ’09 conference has brought more news on Microsoft’s Enterprise search plans.

Microsoft have announced that they will integrate the recently acquired technology into Sharepoint 14 (the next release due late 2009/early 2010) to beef up it’s search capabilities.

Fast adds more sophisticated user-interface elements, like thumbnail and preview views; cluster support and more compute-intensive tasks like entity abstraction and the creation of relationships between concepts, explained Jared Spataro, Director Enterprise Search (via Mary Jo Foley).

The new entity will be known as “Fast Search for Sharepoint” and MS have said that customers will existing Sharepoint CALs will be able to use those to access the new Fast Search servers once available, though they’ll of course have to buy the new server licences.

It also seems that current Sharepoint Enterprise customers will be able to purchase “ESP for Sharepoint” licences to gain access to high-end search features before the arrival of Sharepoint 14.

Kirk Koenigsbauer, general manager for Microsoft’s Office business platform group said Sharepoint & FAST together will give customers “50 per cent or greater cost savings over what they pay today…We are going to make the business productivity solution really more cost effective”.

We will also see the release of “Fast Seach for Internet Business”, which is a version specially tuned for web sites. This is slated to beta 2nd half of 2009…

February 9, 2009November 23, 2009

Spotify on Windows Mobile

Spotify is the hot new kind on the block and it looks like it’s about to get even hotter-Spotify is coming to Windows Mobile!

If you’re not familiar with Spotify, it’s an online catalogue of music that you can listen to from any desktop/laptop on which you’ve installed the application. There are no restrictions on what you can listen to, you don’t have to wait for anything to download and the catalogue is truly huge-I’ve managed to fox it with some relatively obscure early 90’s hip-hop (Souls of Mischief, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien etc) but it’s hard to do 🙂

Anyway, the one thing that you can’t do is listen to Spotify via your mobile device which, as the world is getting more and more mobile is a bit of a shame. I’ve been using Spotify for about 1 week now and already there have been occasions where I wanted to pull out my Diamond and get on to Spotify-but I couldn’t.

However that all looks set to change because Gustav Söderström (@GustavS) (former Yahoo “Director of Product Management” and later “Director of Business Development” and before that CEO of “Kenet Works AB”) has left Yahoo and set up camp over at Spotify. Kenet Works focused on allwoing mobile devices to access internet fourms/communities wirelessly and while I don’t know if this tech helped Yahoo, it certainly sounds like just what Spotify need!

Also it isn’t just conjecture and guess work that Mobile Spotify is his project. On his blog Gustav says:

“Starting in February, I will head up something that a lot of users have already requested and discussed extensively, Spotify on the Mobile”

Nice 🙂

Spotify’s site list a vacancy for a Nokia S60 platform engineer so it’s apparent Nokia users will be getting this excellent addition to the world of music meets mobile. There is also a vacancy for a Windows Applications Engineer so hopefully they’ll be working on Windows Mobile…

*Update* It was announced in the past week that Spotify have created an app for Android phones which will allow you to play your Spotufy tracks offline! Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also said that an iPhone app is in the works…but no mention of anything for Windows Mobile 😮 Hopefully, it won’t be far behind!

*Update* I’ve just had a Twitter reply from Gustav (in response to my “any news on a Windows Mobile app”) which said:

“Sorry, can’t comment on future plans 😦 Just keep you fingers crossed!”

Not much to go on-but at least it’s not a definite no!

*Update* Spotify have had their iPhone app approved by Apple so Premium users will soon be able to download songs to their handset to listen to when offline…which is pretty good. I’d like to see it make an appearance on Windows Mobile too but the more I think about it, the less sure I am that I’d pay £120 a year for it. I’m perfectly happy buying songs from Amazon for as little as 29p and listening to them in Media Player on my Diamond 🙂

*Update* Today, 23/11/09, Spotify announced that they now have an app for Nokia phones. I find it very strange that they’ve developed for Symbian before Windows Mobile, are they purposefully shunning Microsoft’s mobile platform?

February 7, 2009February 7, 2009

Steve Ballmer on the Economy

Steve Ballmer has been speaking on the current economic situation at the recent Democratic Caucus Retreat and I think it’s a great speech.

Just like Kevin Turner’s at WPC 2008, it’s upbeat, positive and gives ideas for the future, rather than focusing on the bad points of this “economic recalibration”. The whole thing can be seen here but I thought I’d give you a few of my favourite soundbites:

“We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime economic event, but it’s not unique frankly in U.S. history.”

“In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset.”

“In addition, despite the tough economy — I might even say because of the tough economy — our company will continue to invest more than US$9 billion a year in R&D, because we think it’s that R&D spending that will cause us to remain strong.”

February 5, 2009

Windows Mobile Timeline

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has again dug up more information on Microsoft’s plans for Windows Mobile, this time in the form of a rough timeline:

Windows Mobile 6.5 RTM (release to manufacturing): April 2009

First Windows Mobile 6.5 devices from cell phone makers: September 2009

Windows Mobile 7.0 release to testers: November 2009

First Windows Mobile 7.0 devices from cell phone makers: April 2010

I’m hoping that WinMo 6.5 is going to be available as a software update for current 6.1 devices but I’m not particularly hopeful. If it isn’t I think I’m gonna skip it completely & go straight to WinMo 7 in 2010..how about you?

February 3, 2009February 3, 2009

Windows 7 versions

As with Vista, there are going to be various versions of Windows 7, according to CNET:

“Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. Unlike with Vista, however, the Home Basic version will be sold only in emerging markets.”

I’m a huge fan of Windows 7 and also a big fan of Vista AND my job mainly revolves around Microsoft licensing-but even I think all these version is overkill. It confuses people and makes them apprehensive about buying a new licence-and people often hate what they don’t understand; I really think all these extra versions were a big part of Vista’s problem. It also makes it much more likely that people will buy a version of the OS that doesn’t include all the features they want and while MS have gone some way to combat this feature disparity (I.e. Pro will include Media Center), it isn’t perfect.

It seems a lot of people have been worrying that they wouldn’t be able eligible for an upgrade licence unless they were running Vista, but that of course isn’t the case. All those XP users are perfectly able to purchase the Upgrade SKU to their chosen Windows 7 version.

That said, the beta of Windows 7 is fantastic and you should definitely look at upgrading as soon as it’s available 🙂

February 3, 2009February 3, 2009

More Windows Mobile SkyBox Info

Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet has got some great new info on Microsoft’s plans for SkyBox and Windows Mobile.

SkyBox is the central online hub-a place to store photos, mp3’s, contacts etc as a backup for your device and we now have visibility of the timeline for this product.

SkyBox 1.0 will go to beta in Mid-Feb and due to it’s ad-supported web portal, will be free which like the sound of! You’ll be able to backup/restore your data as well as share it with other users-this is quite a neat feature as it means you no longer have to be in Bluetooth range…

Come Summer ’09 we’ll have SkyBox 1.5 at which point it will branch off in to 2 versions: the free version with ads and a premium ad-free flavour. This 1.5 release will be available on WinMo 6.1, 6.5 AND select NON-WinMo phones.

Sometime after that, I’d guess Q1 2010 will mark the arrival of the all-singing, all-dancing SkyBox 2.0, at this point users will be able to alter/manage their devices from the web. So you can change your wallpaper, add a new ringtone, install new apps etc all from the web-this is pretty freakin’ cool!!! Also by 2.0 Live Services including Mesh will be integrated and it will integrate with the upcoming SkyMarket where you can purchase new apps etc-a Microsoft version of the iPhone App store.

I’m really excited about both of these services. My mobile is always a little bit out of the loop and to get things from there on to a pc-especially if not at home-can be a pain so SkyBox will make all that much easier and SkyMarket will mean us WinMo users can get some of the cool apps iPhone users have available 🙂

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