Erin from PTC recently posted a guest entry on Microsoft’s Vertical Industries Blog about how companies are using social technologies to enhance their product development teams’ performance. As our lovely, romantic Valentine's Day holiday approaches, I have to admit I've strayed, Social Product Development...

  Aspentech announced the availability of AspenONE 7.2  this week.  Aspentech is one of our largest partners in the oil, gas, chemicals, and process industries, and aspenONE is their flagship product.  In addition to availability on SQL Server, the engineering modules of aspenONE...

Wow it was announced today that Chris Liddell will be the new CFO for General Motors – a big challenge at one of our automotive industry team’s biggest customers.  Best wishes to Chris in his new role! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574610010455604176.html   Technorati...

Congrats to Boeing on the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner !   I remember a couple of years ago when the Microsoft industry team led an effort to support the public launch of the 787 at Boeing Field.  It’s been a long journey but as a former aerospace industry guy, it thrills me to see the...

I got to walk past the display on 5th Avenue today, and it was packed. Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Windows 7 , Saks fifth avenue

Today, Dec. 7, Microsoft was awarded second place in the top-ranked large businesses category in Crain’s New York Business’ annual “Best Places to Work” issue. As part of the recognition, reporter Kira Bindrim interviewed Microsoft’s New York Metro General Manager Laura Wallace about the culture and...

Join Microsoft and our partner OSISoft for a HART Energy Webinar on December 8, 2009 at 11:00AM Central, to hear a brief presentation from Dr. Paul Stone, a BP technology director with considerable experience in deriving business benefits from technology initiatives, including the use of predictive analytics...

RedPrairie is one of our premier partners in supply chain execution, focusing on warehouse management and transportation planning.  We have a webcast coming up on December 8, 2009 at 11:30 Eastern featuring Tom Kozenski , VP Product Strategy for RedPrairie, and Greg Walker , Supply Chain Market...

OSISoft is one of our premier partners in the process and energy industries, and are extending their reach into new markets such as energy management for large data centers, including Microsoft’s own. Join us for an upcoming webcast with this great partner, hosted by Warren Causey of Energy Central,...

PTC is one of our premier partners in the Product Lifecycle Management space. We have some great customer case studies together, and Microsoft itself uses PTC solutions in some areas of product design. PTC recently participated in the Sharepoint Conference annoucements around Sharepoint 2010 as they...

I've looked forward to this session at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.  The focus is on power generation, distribution, and process industries, with speakers from Con Edison, Rock Tenn, and Mohawk.  Our own Brian Willson will be speaking later this afternoon on how Sharepoint is being...

Today, New York 1 , NYC’s 24 hour cable news channel, is running a piece on Microsoft Tag featuring an interview with mobility specialist Kevin Kerr. Advertisers Only A Snapshot Away With ‘Tag’ Technology April 14, 2009 New York 1 Story It's a use for the mobile phone that's taken off...

Interesting article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal about cyber security issues in the nation's electric grid and some of the emergin threats in this area.  Part of the issue seems to be slow adoption of NERC compliance around the asset protection, including virtual assets.  Jon Arnold...

I'm watching the Obama Town Meeting at http://www.whitehouse.gov - he is talking to a teacher, and said he just talked to Bill Gates yesterday about how to use video technology to assist with teacher coaching and development. Glad Bill has a seat at the table. Technorati Tags: Bill Gates , Barack...

A couple of thoughts on "leaning" people-based processes. This is an interesting problem whether you are coming at it from a lean or a six sigma perspective. I believe that the key issues are: 1) identifying the major areas of waste and addressing the low-hanging fruit ("quick hits"), 2) ensuring basic...

On Monday, Microsoft and Federated Media launched the ExecTweets site, a Twitter aggregator that allows you to easily follow the tweets of leading executives in many industries.  Check it out at http://www.exectweets.com There's a good article on the launch on Mary Jo Foley's blog at http://blogs...

Interesting summary of an interview this morning by the editor of BusinessWeek with Steve Ballmer . Bullish on cloud computing , Smartphones, XBOX, even Zune. Great perspective that although the markets will be in turmoil for an unknown period, when the recovery happens it will drive great growth on...

New InformationWeek article offers interesting insight and analysis on Microsoft's strategy in the Oil and Gas industry, following on the heels of the recent Global Energy Forum. It mention's Ali Ferling's perspective on our strategy to enable more workers with the information tools to make better...

Kevin O'Marah from AMR Research has penned a new article that estimates that information / content has overtaken agriculture as a component of global production, and is on track to outpace manufacturing in the future. He posits that this brings the issue of intellectual property protection to the forefront...

Infosys and Microsoft just launched a new online community site that will grow into an online center of excellence for supply chain practitioners. The announcement hit the press during the Global High Tech summit, and the website is http://www.nextgenerationsupplychains.com Technorati Tags: supply...

Microsoft just released the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Dynamics AX. This tool allows business users to capture data needed to measure key indicators related to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as part of everyday business processes from within their enterprise resource...

With the majority of plant floor systems deployed on the Microsoft platform, virtualization promises to be a hot topic as manufacturers look to save money using existing infrastructure in the current economic climate. This case study tells a story that is probably common to many manufacturers: 1....

I recently read the book "Brand Digital" by Allen Adamson as part of a research project I was doing on digital marketing and social networking in the business world. The interesting thing is that I also attended our own Global High Tech Summit last week, and in the panel discussions I heard digital presence...

Great new video case study on Royal Dutch Shell's use of Unified Communications and Office Communications Server for about 150,000 users worldwide. Video case study is at: ShellCaseStudy 300k.wmv Written case study is at: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003524...

Congrats on a great day, impressive speakers, and hopefully a rewarding experience for our customers and partners!