March, 2008

It's always pleasing when the work of education establishments is held up as a shining example of best practice use of technology.

And it was pleasing last month, at the Windows Server 2008 launch event, that there was a fascinating insight into the way that one of the research teams at Cambridge University is using technology to unlock information from data originally collected 150 years ago. Researchers knew that Darwin’s mentor at Cambridge, Professor J.S. Henslow, had been studying variation since 1821 and he'd actively trained Darwin from 1829 to 1831 to study variation—before Darwin ever set foot on the Beagle. Using Microsoft database software, the research team analysed the Cambridge Herbarium.

The University team were involved in using the software when it was still in beta, via the Microsoft Community Technology Preview (CTP) programme. The researchers at Cambridge successfully developed a database that used the new spatial data types, and it wasn’t just the database that was important - the team wanted to visualise this data on a map, which they did by creating a 'mash up' - linking data from the database with Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Mark Whitehorn, Research Associate, University of Cambridge, is the group’s database specialist, and his view was

In theory, we could have plotted the points by hand on a map, but to answer just one of our complex questions would have taken days of work. We wanted to ask questions and get the answers back in real time. The analysis we’ve already done with this software would have been impossible without the spatial data types and has already produced some very interesting findings.

Professor John Parker, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Leader of the Research Group, says:

We’ve always known that the collection was centred on Cambridge. But, we were very keen to understand the dynamics of the collection in more detail.

Once we had the data in spatial data types, it was easy to plot the cumulative number of plants against distance from the site of the original Botanic Garden in Cambridge. When we did so, we were surprised to see that the result was clearly biphasic. In other words, there were two phases in the collection with an intersection at around 23 kilometres. We rapidly realised—and equestrian experts were able to confirm—that this represents a reasonable distance for a rider of a horse to travel out and back in a day, with some time set aside for collecting. In other words, the pattern of collection was heavily dependent on horsepower as the prevailing transport system of the day.

There is much more about this case study on the worldwide Microsoft case studies website.

(The written case study is a little less easy to understand than the video I saw - mainly because the words 'biphasic', 'herbarium' & 'spatial' benefit from more context! The video's not yet been released, but I'm hoping to get a link to it soon)

Oh, I know. The title's corny. But it is Friday afternoon, there's hail outside, and we can all do with some light relief!

Yet another old friend has shown up - this time Nick Russell, who's now "Civil, Defence & Education Divisional Director" of SCC. We work with SCC in all kinds of ways, and one of the ways that is likely to be of interest for universities is our work on Infrastructure Optimisation (IO). IO starts with a model, created by Gartner, which allows an organisation to look at their IT resources in a more strategic way, and where necessary move it away from being a "cost", to becoming a strategic business asset. I don't know what it's like in your university, but for many IT Directors, having an ability to control the strategic direction of their IT systems, to support the university, helps to support the long-term success of the team. We talked about IO with the 50 universities who attended the IT Forum event in November, and there was a widespread feeling that this could help your planning.

So, SCC & Microsoft have put our heads together to bring you a day full of content to help you understand how the IO model can help you.

The events are called "The Best Route To Ensure The Success Of Your IT Infrastructure", and they're being held over the next 6 weeks in Halifax, Birmingham and London.  I'll let the SCC team tell you a bit more:

Before making a journey, it's important to know where you are before you set off in any particular direction and your IT infrastructure is no different. You have an IT budget, you need to deliver strategic value and you must show a business benefit. This can all be done through Infrastructure Optimisation.
Infrastructure Optimisation helps to drive a more secure, well managed and dynamic core IT infrastructure to enable organisations to help reduce their overall IT costs, make better IT resources and make IT a strategic asset for the organisation.

By working with SCC and Microsoft and using this model as a framework an organisation can quickly understand the strategic value and business benefits to the organisation in moving from a basic level of optimisation, where the infrastructure is generally considered a "cost centre", towards a more "dynamic use". This is where the organisation's value of IT infrastructure is understood and viewed as a business enabler and asset.

SCC in partnership with Microsoft are inviting you to attend one of our Infrastructure Optimisation FREE events to be held at various locations throughout the UK. The events are aimed at Chief Information officers, Chief Technology officers, IT Managers, Infrastructure Managers and other IT Industry Professionals in Education who are responsible for delivering budgets, in particular cost savings or green credentials and working practices.
If you work in the education sector you can't afford to miss out on this opportunity to meet and discuss with SCC and Microsoft industry experts in your area.

The events are in HALIFAX on Wednesday 16th April, BIRMINGHAM - on Wednesday 23rd April, and our offices in LONDON on Friday 9th May.

To register, either visit the website www.scc-microsoft.co.uk/ioevent/public or call SCC on 0845 351 1157

There's a PDF flyer available here

Not only do I like the content of the event, but I really like the style of the invitation - it looks like a dog-eared A-Z atlas. Which gives a hint of how helpful it can be if used well.

We're working on updating our UK Education website and we'd like to know what you think of it as it is now - what works and what doesn't? Apart from accessing the blogs, do you even visit it and is the information relevant to you?

If you don't visit the site, we'd love to know why; and if you do, whether it's what you'd expect from Microsoft in Education. Your opinions and suggestions are very important to us in developing the site - after all, it's there for you to get the information you need from us, so we want to know what you'd like and expect to see there.

Now, I know that you're all very busy people, so to try and tempt you into spending at the most 10 minutes of your time completing our survey, every survey entrant will be entered into a prize draw to win a free copy of Office 2007 for personal use.

So if you haven't already done so, you can complete the survey here and it will be open until the end of the day on Friday 28th March.

The prize draw will take place on Friday 4th April and the winner notified by email, so make sure you leave your email details along with your name and job title at the end of the survey. Good luck!

The countdown to the end of the Ultimate Steal student offer has started. The deal (Office 2007 Ultimate edition for £38.95) ends at the end of April. Lots of students have used the deal to get their own (legal) copy of Office (our earlier research says most students use MS Office, but few paid for their licence) - but there are still students who don't know of it. How do we know? Well, answers like these in the post-purchase survey:

More coverage. Here (******* University) the Ultimate Steal is the best-kept secret on campus, very few people know of it.

My only suggestion is to advertise more, as I am shocked that I have only just discovered this incredible offer. If you keep this up, I will keep participating and telling my friends! - although tragically I graduate next year :(

Make it more widely known. The site of my university does not give a clue about this offer. Only the portal writes about the offer and this can lead to wrong purchases. Look at my case: I made a wrong purchase before I realised the Ultimate Steal offer!

I found out about the ultimate steal from a bulletin board that pops up when we login to the university system. The bulletins are rarely read. You might like to put up a few posters at universities and colleges. I do not know how many purchases you have already had from *@londonmet.ac.uk, but you will now have a few more.

If you want your students on campus to hear about the offer before it closes, you can let them know about it by some of the other universities' techniques - put it on your portal, email students and pop up some posters etc. There's a mini-html flyer (for email) here, and some email/portal text here.

I always like reading verbatim responses from surveys - there's always one or two that make you laugh. Here's one that made me laugh (and, it seems, casts doubt on my parentage and the spelling & grammar capabilities of today's undergraduates)...

At the university of ********* it is not widely known that we can get a cheap version of microsoft office although to be honest when it comes to writing essays i think microsoft should offer a much more standerd package for less money because lets face ti word should be part of any windows operating system as standard jesus christ the b*****ds earn enough as it is and i dont care if acording to the economy if a company doesnt increase its profits every year its seen as a failure

My colleague, Matt Fox, has been bitten by the blogging bug. He's our UK specialist for the Microsoft Live @ Edu service - a range of online collaboration services for colleges and universities, including email, file storage and Office collaboration - all based in the Internet. (Oh, and all free, which makes them doubly attractive).

Now, Matt's blog is a bit more technical than this one ('Thank Goodness' I hear you cry), and he's concentrating on the technical and implementation side of the Live @ Edu service, and I can heartily recommend it if you're considering using the service, or if you want to know some of the ups and downs of moving a service from your own in-house servers to an Internet-based service. (However, given that we currently run the whole Hotmail service on the same service infrastructure, then I guess we've learnt a thing or two about mass-online-communication-services in our time).

We're working on updating our UK Education website and we'd like to know what you think of it as it is now - what works and what doesn't? Apart from accessing the blogs, do you even visit it and is the information relevant to you?

If you don't visit the site, we'd love to know why; and if you do, whether it's what you'd expect from Microsoft in Education. Your opinions and suggestions are very important to us in developing the site - after all, it's there for you to get the information you need from us, so we want to know what you'd like and expect to see there.

Now, I know that you're all very busy people, so to try and tempt you into spending at the most 10 minutes of your time completing our survey, every survey entrant will be entered into a prize draw to win a free copy of Office 2007 for personal use. 

You can complete the survey here and it will be open until the end of the day on Friday 28th March.

The prize draw will take place on Friday 4th April and the winner notified by email, so make sure you leave your email details along with your name and job title at the end of the survey. Good luck!

Just after the the OCS launch,  the UC team in the UK embarked on the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 that saw them travel to 9 venues during 3 weeks on the road seeing nearly 1000 attendees.

Well,  similar to any good rock and roll tour,  they have decided to reform for more dates the bus will again be on the road during March.

Reserve front row seats for your team at the Microsoft Exchange Tour Unplugged for Government.  Discover how the latest unified communications technologies can help you to deliver integrated voice, data and web communications that: help reduce your carbon footprint, meet your Gershon and CSR07  efficiency targets, make mobile and flexible working easier; contribute to real estate rationalisation and address other key challenges on the government agenda.

Microsoft's Unified Communications Experts will take your team through a rich agenda covering Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server, Live Meeting, the Nortel Alliance, Compliance for Public Sector and how Unified Communications will drive Transformational Government. Your team will learn how to map out the upgrade and see how Exchange Server enables your organisation to operate securely anytime, anywhere.

If you are public sector customer,  sign yourself up for one of the following 'gigs'.

12^th March – Cambridge Garden House, Cambridge

13^th March – Arora International, Manchester

20^th March – Cardinal Place, London

The Microsoft showcase at the UCISA conference will be presented in partnership with Helen Fletcher from Buckinghamshire New University and Salford Software, one of Microsoft’s Gold partners in the education sector.

The topic presented for discussion will be how hosted services (email, online storage and collaborative technologies) can contribute and form an integrated part of a collaborative campus.  Helen Fletcher will discuss BNU’s own experiences in using the Microsoft http://www.liveatedu.com services and their plans for the further use of services like SkyDrive & Office Live Workspaces.

During this interactive session, we’ll also demonstrate some of these innovative services.We look forward to seeing you at UCISA and welcoming you to our showcase session on Thursday 13^th March.

The TechNet roadshows are coming soon - in April and May the team will be on their way around the country, talking about (and showing) lots more of Windows Server 2008 and the other products launched this week. I know that the launch event in Birmingham in March was filled up very quickly, and there were a number of you that couldn't get a place.

So here's your second chance. The roadshow will be heavy on demos and light on PowerPoint (you don't hear that every day at Microsoft). We'll look at various scenarios, such as managing Windows Server 2008 and how Windows Server 2008 works alongside Windows Vista. There will be  opportunity to meet the Microsoft Community, user groups and Most Valued Professionals, as well as experts with top technical information and real-world scenarios.

Places really are limited so register now:

22 April 2008, Cardiff

24 April 2008, London

30 April 2008, Manchester

12 May 2008, Glasgow

15 May 2008, Newcastle