October, 2008

Following from my earlier Educause posting the other day, I'd like to introduce you to one of my fellow Microsoft bloggers Ural Cebeci.  Ural is a senior product manager on the Office Live team and he was fortunate enough to be in Orlando this week for the Educause conference where he's showcasing our Software plus Sercices plans for Educaiton.

In particular, he's announcing Office Web applications for students, universities and consumers.  Eventually extending to 4 of our office apps, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote and Excell and giving an office experience across PC's, phones and web browsers.

Read more here and expect even more soon.

https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/blogs/teamblog/archive/2008/10/28/microsoft-extends-office-to-the-browser-via-office-live.aspx

Whilst I'm not there this year, many of my Microsoft colleagues are in Orlando at this year's Educause conference.  So sadly I'm missing out on meeting up with my colleagues who I rarely see, accompanying customers to various conference sessions, the lively conference atmosphere and all the announcements that this conference usually delivers.  For news and highlights use the following graphic on their website which has logos from Office 2007.

For those attending and also for those like me not attending details of the sessions are here:

http://www.microsoft.com/education/events/educause2008.mspx

In particular, Anthony Salcito's keynote session on  The next generation of computing: Software + Services Thursday Oct. 30 at 8:10 – 9:00 AM in room W223 is something I would love to have seen.  I'm certain this will be a great blend of the announcements being made at Microsoft's PDC this week particularly around Windows Azure.  This session will also focus on the Office Web applications and a specific mention of several universities that are already seeing gains from using live@edu and other services in the cloud.

I'm actually on holiday at the moment so shouldn't be writing this but I'm really very keen to learn more about Windows Azure and its potential for Higher Education.  I'm hopeful that at next week's TechED conference in Barcelona I'll be able to learn a whole load more.

I always like to plug other people's blogs when I find them useful.  The other day I posted a short article on www.educoms.net about qualifying operating systems so I'll come totally clean and admit that I pinched the information from Emma Healy's blog.  Not many of you will know Emma but I've struggled to find licensing questions that can't be answered by her and now that I've found her blog it will be my first port of call to check any question that come up.

Here's an example of some of the content in the shape of Hot Licensing FAQs:

I was at the UK HEFCE endorsed Shared Services conference last week and despite a lot of discussion about "what exactly is a shared service" one of the most obvious aspects of the conference seemed to be that there is even less money to go round than usual.  However, at the same time the expectations of students as consumers and universities as business has never been higher.  This is leading to considerable pressure on many university IT organisations to deliver more but at the same time they are being given less, with IT budgets only set to increase by realtively small amounts that will hardly cover the increase in staff and utility costs.

So what suggestions does Microsoft have to enable universities to save money?  Here's a sample list to begin with:

• Deploy virtualisation -  Reduce server hardware needs with Windows Server Hyper-V
• Consolidate vendors and reduce database Total Cost of Ownership
• Lower desktop deployment and management costs by deploying Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and Application Virtualization – Click here for a customer example
• Realise a significant cost reduction for server ownership by improving data center operations management with Microsoft System Center – Click here for a customer example
• Consolidate suppliers and product purchasing through the Core CAL & eCAL offerings
• Deploy the software that is already owned and maximize current IT spend -  Click here to see how one partner has created a program to help customers deploy what they already own
• Reduce travel and communications costs with Microsoft Unified Communications solutions
• Reduce costs and improve security with standardized configurations of Windows desktops, servers and mobile devices that optimize infrastructure – Click here for resources and customer examples
• Using Windows Vista can save energy costs, increase mobility and productivity, and reduce deployment and data protection costs
• Proper Project and Portfolio Management gives organizations visibility into areas where costs can be eliminated – Click here for a customer example
• Broaden the skill sets by using the IT Academy in your university to both save on training costs and deliver life long learning opportunities
• Microsoft Online Services can reduce the total cost of ownership in most cases -  don't forget live@edu

This is only the tip of the iceberg and I'll start filling in some more details on the above with some examples over the next few weeks.

I went to visit the University of Sheffield this morning (my hometown) to catch up with one of their teams which has a massive enthusiasm for Vista.  The bad news is, I fell off my bike in my rush to get there and now I'm bruised all over.  The good news is they signposted me in the direction of this article which states that the university must ensure that its students consider the University to be leading edge and that part of this must include providing up to date software.  This has led to all student open access machines having Office 2007 installed before the start of the academic year 2008/9.  Go Sheffield!

Whilst on the subject of students and state of the art software.  Some of my colleagues over in the US have done a bit of research into what're the key things students find useful in Vista.   There's a focus on mobility here, laptop or UMPC users; here they are:

• Choice of devices
1. Express personality
2. Consumer choice to suit needs
3. Students on any budget have a wide choice to suit requirements
• Choice of applications
1. Vista has wide range of apps to suit learners needs
• Network and Sharing Center, an easy-to-use interface graphically showing the connection status of the computer
• A simple wizard to create or join networks
• Peer-to-Peer platform support for collaboration with Windows meeting space
  1. Small Group collaboration
  2. Sessions Near Me
  3. Multi-Party file sharing
• Productivity with integrated search, live icons and thumbnail views of files students will find the documents they want quicker
• Make presentations easier
  1. Network Projection and Presentation Settings
  2. Collaborate more efficiently
  3. Windows Meeting Space
• Resume work quickly
  1. Sleep - Power State
  2. Power Plans
  3. Network Center
• Update files automatically
  1. With Sync Center
  2. Offline Files and Folders
• Configure settings quickly
  1. Windows Mobility Center
  2. Most frequently used settings
• Power management:
1. Power plans to control and manage battery life based on how you are working.
2. Efficiency and environmental concern
• Integration with Live
1. Think back to the small group collaboration
2. When no longer on Campus, there's still the need to easily share
3. Live messenger - where would they be without it after all these years?

For most universities, students have been back several weeks but when I was at Oxford last week for the launch of their Groupware project they reminded me that it was their first week of the academic year.  So, they might have missed some of the on going dialogue the rest of us have been enjoying about the Ultimate Steal and, for that matter, perhaps lots of others have too.

The main area of focus is around how to let students know about the offer, as in this post.  For one of our London universities which only gave the Microsoft email address to its students as some kind of punishment to us then I do hope they are reading this posting.  One request was a presentation to play on the plasma screens around the university advertising this cheap (and legal) way to buy office.  I've posted a deck in my Skydrive folder for just this purpose (it's in Office 2007 format).

I've also put a slide in there about OfficeLive Workspace just to make sure that students are using everything possible that's free.  IMHO, this is not only significantly cheaper than a memory stick but also much more flexible and secure.

Oxford University publicly launched its "Groupware Project" on the 15 October with a series of presentations from the Vice Chancellor (John Hood), Microsoft's UK Managing Director (Gordon Frazer), Oxford's IT Director (Paul Jeffreys) and the Director of Oxford University Computing Services (Stuart Lee).

It's with great pleasure for my Microsoft colleagues and me to announce that Oxford has chosen Microsoft products for its Groupware solution.  This will see Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint deployed to all the university's 32,000 staff and students to enable them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.  The collegiate university selected Microsoft following a thorough investigation of the university's needs and evaluating these against a number of possible solutions.

During the launch, Professor Paul Jeffreys gave some of the reasons for Oxford's choice:

"The Microsoft solution was strongly favoured over competitors because of the range of Groupware functions that it offers, its ease of use, the size of the installed user-base, its interoperability with existing applications, its market share, and developments anticipated on the software roadmap."

Following the formal launch, the audience of some 150 delegates visited booths outside Said Business School's Nelson Mandela lecture hall to gain further understanding on how the solution will begin to take shape.  Several members of OUCS and colleagues of mine from Microsoft were on hand to discuss elements of the project from Identity to SharePoint.  Nick Umney on the SharePoint booth was inundated with excited question for the whole day.  It was fantastic to see so much passion and commitment to the project from both Oxford and Microsoft and I look forward to continuing to work with Oxford through the delivery of the project.

more information is here.

Between November and January, we’re running a free “Virtualisation Unplugged” roadshow – 9 events, 7 cities, 420 PowerPoint slides (only joking…I think)

There’s a lot of interest in virtualisation from universities at the moment, because of both the technical flexibility it can give, and especially because of the potential energy & cost savings it can deliver. Some universities have told me about a doubling of electricity costs in their data centre in the last year, and suddenly virtualisation starts to look even more attractive!

Although originally focused on consolidating resources in the data centre, virtualisation now has applications across the IT spectrum, driving down costs and improving agility. 

Virtualisation Unplugged will replicate the format of the successful Exchange Unplugged tour of last year, so the event will provide a top to bottom view of the Microsoft Virtualisation strategy and give you the information you need to go back to the campus to make this actionable.

The day runs from 9:30 – 4:30, and is hopefully coming to a city near you. The day includes how to virtualise with System Center, Hyper-V, MDOP (to virtualise applications), VDI (to virtualise desktops) and finally Terminal Services 2008. Who could resist booking?

To find out the dates, and register, for events in Edinburgh, Cambridge, London, Leeds, Reading and Barlborough (yes, I had to ask too – turns out to be near the city with the twisty spire – Chesterfield) check out the Virtualisation Unplugged website.

To the famous Diana Ross tune I’m Coming Out*

I’m BitLocker’d up,
I want the world to know,
Got to let it show,

I’m BitLocker’d up,
I want the world to know,
Got to let it show…

I don’t know why it took me so long to get started. My new laptop has a TPM chip in it, and even though it doesn’t contain any sensitive customer data on it, it deserves to be encrypted. And so, this morning I went into Control Panel and set BitLocker encryption. It was an incredibly easy process. To demonstrate, here’s the four things I had to do:

• In Control Panel, go into Security
  
• Then I chose BitLocker Drive Encryption
  
• I then had to reboot and tell my PC that I really did want BitLocker to control my TPM chip (ie press “Y”)
• And then finally to store my BitLocker “password” on a USB stick (which is now carefully locked away, and not stored in my laptop bag!)

And for four hours, this message moved across my screen while I continued working

And that’s it. I’ve now got a fully encrypted laptop, with an encryption system certified by the CESG (The Govt’s National Technical Authority for Information Assurance).

Having read that last week’s data loss could be up to 1.7 million people’s records (is anybody keeping a count?), then I will sleep easier..

Want to use BitLocker yourself?

1. Make sure you’ve got Windows Vista Business or Enterprise version
2. Preferably choose a computer with a TPM chip
3. Prepare the machine (there’s a techie stage involved, which all of our laptops have done to them before they leave the Lenovo factory)
4. Get BitLocker’d up… (catchy tune still in your head?)

(And if you just want to BitLocker an USB memory stick, to protect some data being transported, read Jerry’s BitLocker instructions here)

* Note to self: If Diana Ross song leads in wrong direction, I might have to disable comments on this post!

I’ve had a few questions recently about the Ultimate Steal promotion – where students & staff with a “.ac.uk” email address can buy Office 2007 Ultimate for £38.95 for home use. Working on the assumption that other people are interested in the same questions, here’s my answers to the Ultimate Steal Frequently Asked Questions:

What’s in the Office 2007 Ultimate version?

Amazingly, I couldn’t find a table which compared the different versions of Office available for education – because both the home user versions and the business versions are relevant, and they’re normally on two different comparisons. So here’s my handy table of all of the educationally relevant versions of Office, and what’s in each one:

Your university probably licences Professional (Plus) or Enterprise for your work use.

And for your home computer, it’s most likely you’ll have Home & Student.

Which is where the Ultimate Steal promotion comes in handy! It gives you everything - including Groove, which is a good way to securely synchronise files between multiple computers/users, and OneNote, for collecting text, web and multimedia information together as a series of note pages. Normally Office Ultimate would cost £500+ via a retailer, which is why we’re so strict about users needing a “.ac.uk” email address to qualify for The Ultimate Steal.

Will there be an Ultimate Steal for Mac users?

Yes, there will be, but it’s not ready yet - it’s due for release in January. The delay is waiting for the digital download version to become available. In the meantime, If you want a Mac version (sadly the download isn't available until late summer), and you’re a student, then pop over to one of our partners that sell educational licences for students. They are RM, Software4Students and the Pugh student shop, and from under £35...

Can I use my Hotmail email address?

The way we validate that you are a student is by sending your access code to your .ac.uk email address. So if you try to sign up with a hotmail/gmail/yahoo/bradfordstudents.co.uk email address, then the system will tell you that it’s not valid. (Despite this, hundreds of students every week try, and then send us requests to let them use their hotmail address. But it’s not going to work :-)

Where do I get support for Ultimate Steal?

Before you ask, No, it’s not me!

The Customer Support link on the Ultimate Steal home page not only answers 90% of the questions that people ask the support team, but also has a “Still need help?” section where you can contact the Ultimate Steal support team directly. Now, if you have given them a chance to help you, and not getting the support you need, drop me a line (using the Email link at the top of this page), then I can see if I can help. But please…give them a chance to respond first.

One student (no naming & shaming) sent 7 emails to the support desk, put 3 comments on this blog, and then sent me 3 emails – all within a two hour block between 9pm & 11pm on one day. And still hasn’t responded to the email sent from the support desk the next day…