Houston: We have a paradigm shift...

It’s funny how many “paradigm” shifts we seem to have in our industry. When I started at what today is Xpertise Training, way back in 1986, then we wrote emulators for Honeywell Bull Mainframes. One paradigm shift later we went all WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mice, Pull-down menus). The next shift saw centralised, Mainframe delivered applications shift down to the PC, now I feel there maybe another shift on the horizon, that is if Microsoft comes good on their rhetoric.

Let me explain, last week I attended the Microsoft worldwide partner conference (WPC) in Houston. I've attended a few over the years; they have a lot of value, especially as over the last few years the number of products from our friends in Redmond has gone through the roof. 
This year was one of the best yet - but it was different, with few new products this year the focus was on two key areas. Not Server 2008 or Silverlight, for now the future is Microsoft Optimisation and Software Plus Services.   O'h and they started the week with a Vista confession...

The Highlights - Vista

An admission from Microsoft that Vista remains in the doldrums, although the certificication numbers look healthy, the number of enterprises deploying it still hasn't hit their targets. So what's to be done? They are starting by putting the WOW back into Vista with a positive spin on all that is Vista coloured. Oddly, 18 months after the product shipped there is a "new" beta Vista compatibility site. This will help ensure we upgrade offending applications and drivers before they are broken by Vista. A little late for a beta me thinks. Smaller businesses have received very mixed messages about Vista, is it simply too big a risk? To make it less of a jump into the great unknown, Microsoft have launched the Windows Vista Small Business Assurance Program - they will provide free support on Vista to the small business.

Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President, Windows Consumer Product Marketing, made some interesting comments about the WOW going out of Windows and the mistakes Microsoft have made in Vista marketing - as he announced  that " We're going to tell our story - our story, the real Windows Vista story." Personally I'm going to wait for the movie.  I am after all a Vista fan.

The Highlighs - MO

Contrary to popular belief, MO is not the fifth Teletubbie, MO is actually a slightly rebranded IO. Still none the wiser?  Have a look at my IO Blog from March. I've become a fan of Microsoft Optimisation over the last twelve months or so. I've been working on a couple of BIG BPIO projects, (IE SharePoint) this year and look forward to the trend continuing, what this says to me is that customers genuinely see some value in assessing the Microsoft  maturity  in their businesses. The message that MO is king ran through all the sessions in Houston, and as I've said before I'm a believer. There are simply too many products and too much functionality in the Microsoft stable these days to buy off the shelf, so..:

• Assess where you are
• See where you can go
• Purchase solutions to get you there.

A 360 degree view of the Microsoft product stack. O'h and if those identified solutions are "Cloud" based then so much the better. It's all starting to sound a bit  Captain Scarlet to me...

The IO Model

The Highlights - Software Plus Services

Whilst the name might be new to us, the idea behind Microsoft's Software Plus Services isn't.  (We are back where we were when the mainframe ruled). It's all about services (ie functionally) delivered from the ether to the consumer - not this time to a green screen VDU but to your device of choice.   At its heart, Microsoft's Software Plus Services is a hosting platform for services (and data), the services and data live in the "Cloud" - we don't know or care where they are, as long as they are available. In order to manipulate the hosted files and services, you'll need something Microsoft installed on your device (be that Silverlight, Office or the .NET Framework). With one eye on what Google are up to, Microsoft has porting some of its key products into the "Cloud". In the future we won't need to buy expensive servers to host our SharePoint site, we will buy the functionality from either Microsoft or a hosting partner.  So let's say you want the functionality offered by Exchange and Live Communications Server, our options are:

• Deploy it "on premises" much as we do now, with servers in our datacenter
• Purchase it as a partner hosted service, with servers in our suppliers datacenter and accessed via the Cloud
• Purchase it as a hosted solution from Microsoft themselves, with servers in their datacenter, or implement a hybrid solution.

In theory, our complete environment and data could be in the Cloud, following us from location to location and device to device. The latter could be the reason that Microsoft big hitter Andy Lees has moved from the Server & Tools business  to become Senior Vice President, Mobile Communications Business. (By the way, Silverlight is coming to Windows Mobile  - joining up the dots, you can see where this maybe going). Not familiar with Silverlight? Have a look at this for an example of a Silverlight powered web site. This was built using Silverlight and Deep Zoom technology. Keep clicking or wheeling on an image and it keeps zooming in.

Inch high Steve Ballmer explains S+S to 10,000 partners - he's the one on the left

These Cloud based solutions have some compelling advantages, not least the fact that we get the latest version and functionality by default, with very little effort and expense on our part (it seems we will license by the seat and pay by the month). At the moment, Microsoft Online Services  comprises of five core services. In 2007, they introduced a dedicated offering that included Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communication Online to enterprise customers with more than 5,000 users. This dedicated offering also included the latest versions of Office Live Meeting and Exchange Hosted Services.  By 2009, these and other offerings should be available to all. Customers of all shapes and sizes will have the opportunities once reserved for large organisations with a substantial IT infrastructure. I found a statistic from Gartner that forecasts that 20% of all Exchange seats will be hosted by 2012.

Coming soon to a Cloud near you.

By 2009, we should all be able to buy:

• Office SharePoint Online
• Exchange Online
• Office Live Meeting (available now of course)
• Office Communications Online
• Dynamics CRM Online
• Exchange Hosted Filtering (a collection of attached services for messaging that include filtering, archiving, encryption, and continuity)

As the oil tanker that is now Microsoft slowly changes course to this  new more web-centric services business model, extending its tools and platform to the Cloud, it has some demons to lay to rest, not least the software license model it has used  and confused us with successfully for years. The company has to revise both its strategy, catching up with competitors such as Google that started business on the Web and have no traditional software business to protect, but it also has to help us as partners and customers make the change, too. Like I said, I can feel a paradigm shift coming on.

 

It's all a MESH - Your files in the Cloud

I missed the boat on this one, had I been just a bit quicker I could have changed my regional settings to US and signed up  for Microsoft Mesh preview. Mesh is a Microsoft Live service that provides you with sync'ed access to your files no matter where you sit down or on what device. Apple have beaten Microsoft to this (although Apple has had an issue or two with scalability) but there are a lot of Live users out there, when MS throw the switch and make this live for all, I'll be in the queue.

Houston - We have some tips:

If you happen to be planning a trip to Houston, here are my top tips.

• Go to gift wrapping in Macy's and get your tourist 11% discount card (Macy's is an American John Lewis)
• If you put twenty dollars into the automated bus ticket  machine to pay the standard $1 fee, you don't get any change - there is still an Xpertise $20.00 sponsored bus doing the rounds of Houston
• If you get a cab to the best Mexican diner in town, make sure its not been demolished BEFORE you let the cab drive off...

If you are in Houston look out for the Xpertise bus :-)

Till next time