Mini-MSFT is back, with a post about Microsoft turning The Corner. It’s
interesting to contrast his point of view with that of MG Siegler over at
ParisLemon. Given my own perception of Valley bias on the part of Siegler
(he is one of the new voices of TechCrunch after all), it’s great to see
that we’re making progress which is being met with receptivity and not
suspicion. Further, everyone is focused on the most important beneficiaries
- customers.
I have to admit, since returning to the company a little over a year ago, I
have had this sense that things are looking up. Don’t get me wrong,
there’s no shortage of frustrations for me, but that’s to be expected
when you come from a tiny company where you were the founder and CEO to a
large company where you a cog in a wheel.
With the new fiscal year, I have a new role and a new team, and I plan on
making liberal... (more)
Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates' hand-picked replacement as Microsoft's chief software
architect and the father of the Azure cloud, is leaving the company.
Steve Ballmer sent out an all-hands e-mail saying so Monday. Ballmer also
said Ozzie will not be replaced. Ballmer calls his job "unique." In his
place, Ballmer says Microsoft has "a strong planning process, strong
technical leaders in each business group and strong innovation heading to the
market."
There is no explanation for why Ozzie is leaving or what he will do next.
Ballmer says he has no plans.
When exactly he departs is unclear; apparently he will be sticking around
through a transition and paying some attention to the entertainment space
before he leaves.
Here is the e-mail:
From: Steveb
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2010
To: Microsoft - All Employees
Subject: Ray Ozzie Transition
This past March marked a signifi... (more)
My watered down translation of Long Tail theory is simply the notion that the
aggregate sum of stuff buyers take in small, infrequent quantities will
invariably outstrip the aggregate sum of the most popular counterparts.
Research evidence is beginning to corroborate what we saw some three years
ago: There is a Long Tail in Cloud Computing. Consider some well accepted
research points from IDC and others of late:
The Cloud Computing market will hit USD $42 Billion by 2012 Of that, more
than 50% will comprise business process applications (the stuff we all use
daily to run companies big and small)
So, I can infer then that some $20 Billion will comprise the 2012 feed bag
from which all the little cloud computing piggies will line up at the trough
to consume. Not a bad market, from 10,000 feet away. But here's the thing.
The cloud computing market is already becoming pre... (more)
Microsoft's Amazon-like Azure public cloud is four months away from going
live.
The company confirmed Tuesday the widely held supposition that Azure would go
commercial at its Professional Developers Conference in mid-November.
Microsoft also deigned to start explaining what it's going to cost developers
to use it after November 17. Until then the technical preview will continue
to be free to all comers.
Azure will be available on a consumption basis, a subscription basis, and as
volume licenses integrated into existing agreements with Microsoft.
Microsoft's not ready with the subscription prices that are meant to offer
predictable costs or the price discounts that it'll trade for usage
commitment but as a basic utility Azure will run 12 cents an hour for the
computer infrastructure; 15 cents a gigabyte for the storage; and one cent
for every 10,000 storage transactions... (more)
It was inevitable, and I just missed the release by a few months, however,
Microsoft is working hard on releasing the “Private Cloud”, your own
on-premises cloud computing software.
With the Microsoft cloud strategy, organizations can now move towards cloud
computing models with the confidence that their existing investments in their
datacenter are safe, and can be leveraged in this new paradigm. Existing
applications and services will be able to move to the private cloud without
the need to learn unproven technologies or introduce unnecessary complexity.
The Microsoft Private Cloud enables:
Management of the datacenter fabric as a single pool of resources Delivery of
scalable applications and workloads Focus on the management of the datacenter
service and it’s dependencies Federation of services across the full cloud
continuum
Microsoft is enabling customers to buil... (more)
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... (more)
One thing that is getting a lot of attention in SharePoint 2010 is the use of
PowerShell. It’s too cool and you really have a lot of power (no pun
intended) to automate just about anything in SharePoint. In fact Kyle Kelin
(@spkyle) is speaking this weekend about it at SharePoint Saturday Houston
(#spshou). The Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell snapin comes with over 500
commands, but you might want to create your own. Today’s post will show
you how to get started. There are a lot of great posts out there on how to
build a regular PowerShell cmdlet, but I wanted to build one that focused
specifically on building one for SharePoint.
Start by creating a new class library project in Visual Studio 2010. It’s
too bad there isn’t a built-in project template, because there are a number
of references you must add. Several of these references don’t show up in
the referen... (more)
Microsoft announced the rebranding of SQL Services to SQL Azure. SQL Server
is the data platform of Windows Server so it made sense to align the name of
the relational database platform of Windows Azure, SQL Azure. SQL Azure is
built on the SQL Server technology foundation which delivers relational
database capabilities in the cloud. The next CTP of now SQL Azure will be in
August. You can, however, get started today with SQL Express. Over the next
days there will be more details about SQL Azure, including posting the first
round of SQL Azure Database documentation to MSDN. Also the SQL Azure prices
will be announced on Monday.
Related posts: Email Archiving in the Windows Azure Cloud Using SQL Data
Services I wrote previously about the potential of SQL Data Services, the...
SQL Data Services. Your Database in the Cloud. One thing in the Microsoft
cloud I find real... (more)
With the US Government announcing a 'Cloud for Clunkers' migration plan for
Cloud computing, and also an Open Government initiative to make agencies more
transparent and responsive to the public, this overlap area is a very fertile
zone for driving adoption of the technology and new models.
Needless to say Microsoft is one vendor offering a powerful solution set for
the requirement.
They offer a Gov 2.0 resource centre, where there are tools like case
studies, news, and articles that explain what Open Government is, and even an
implementation plan template so that agencies can document their own strategy
and business plan for achieving compliance with the OG Directive.
Their white paper 'The Way to Go Gov 2.0' (22 page PDF) provides a
comprehensive overview of what's involved, covering various points such as:
Examples of how agencies are using Twitter et al, to delive... (more)
Recently, Gartner reported that the overall Customer Relationship Management
software business had grown 12.5 percent in 2008. But the two clear winners
for growth were Microsoft and Salesforce.com at 75 percent and 42.7 percent
growth, respectively.
So in the middle of a downturn, Microsoft CRM grows 75 percent. If you were
to take the Microsoft CRM as a separate business, you would be in revenue
shock right now. How can someone grow 75 percent in this economy? The high
growth is because CRM delivers the ability to get new buyers and retain
existing clients. Companies are coming to the conclusion that the category
helps them make and save money. Once the buyers see the benefits of the
category, they then choose the best solution for them in the category.
Microsoft for many companies gives them the ability to leverage the existing
usage of Microsoft Outlook so it’s le... (more)
DevExpress.com has announced the immediate availability of its newly added
Silverlight and WPF Report Viewer Control. This new Report Viewer Control
renders reports created with the award-winning DevExpress Reporting System
and prints natively within any Silverlight and WPF application.
-- Client/Server Interaction via the WCF Technology
Reports are downloaded using Microsoft WCF Technology and rendered in your
Silverlight applications.
-- Exporting and REST API
Reports can be exported to numerous formats like PDF, RTF, XPS, CSV, HTML,
Microsoft Excel and others. A RESTful API is also available to access
pre-built reports.
-- Full Support for DevExpress XtraReports Suite
The Report Viewer Control can render and print any report type built using
the DevExpress XtraReports Suite. Supported types include banded reports,
master-detail reports, mail merge reports, side-by-sid... (more)
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