As Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) deployment is increasing in UK Higher Education I’m getting more questions about different licensing scenarios. Thankfully, Microsoft’s ladylicensing has posted an excellent guide which is already helping universities look at evaluating when to buy MOSS for Internet Sites or CALs. There are two separate but linked postings and I’d recommend them to everyone planning their MOSS deployment:
MOSS FIS or MOSS CALs for External Users - What is the CAL Break even point?
MOSS - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - Common Licensing Scenarios
Thank you Emma.
This week will be my 5th BETT since joining Microsoft and each year I have noticed that:
It’s point 3 that really puzzles me. BETT does attract some from HE but it’s generally, and this is my counting only, from the schools of education within the university and rarely learning technologists from the HE sector. I know that this will be slightly different in 2009 for instance and I look forward to welcoming all HE visitors to the Microsoft stand.
With only two days until BETT, and currently it’s all-hands-on-deck back at TVP to get everything ready for the opening day of the show. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that 80% of the people that come through the doors visit the Microsoft stand – which makes us the busiest stand at the show. And so everything’s got to be right by 10am!
So, if you are going to be visiting Olympia, here’s a summary view of the things you can pop along to Microsoft and see:
hopefully that’s enough to whet your appetite. And if you’re coming along, both Ray and I will be there so please look us out and say hello.
Students fortunate enough to be residents in the University of Manchester’s halls will already be familiar with the Halls of Residence Network (Hornet). Established in 1998 the University of Manchester provides internet connectivity to many of the student bedrooms in the halls through its Hornet services. More information on Hornet can be found here http://www.manchester.ac.uk/halls/internet
Earlier in 2008, Hornet contacted Microsoft to ask if we could help sponsor awareness of the Hornet IT support facility so that students could easily locate where help can be found. I’m really pleased with the result, so pleased in fact that I’ve posted the photographs of the Hornets proudly wearing their hoodies.
Apparently, the university’s students have been asking Hornet reps where they can buy the hoodies from.
So now, not only do Hornet’s residents great super IT facilities and support but they are also left in no doubt about where to go for a great deal on Microsoft software, yep you guessed it http://www.TheUltimateSteal.co.uk
Like all universities, Manchester is working hard to deliver value to its students and Microsoft is pleased to be associated with the university and Hornet in helping students get the best out of technology to support their learning.
Oh dear, sorry about the terrible pun. Daresbury Laboratory, part of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, has recently deployed a dual boot system for its latest cluster using Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 and is benefiting from:
Daresbury labs, in the UK, has around 550 staff of which the Distributed Computing Group (DCG) is a part. The DCG hosts and runs national high performance computing (HPC) facilities for its user community which works on simulation code in the fields of quantum chemistry molecular simulation, engineering and environmental simulations.
It has never been more important than in today’s economic climate to justify capital expenditure, in addition to this more consideration is being given to the environment. Therefore, what Daresbury Labs has done is to deploy a system which can attract more users, therefore giving more value back to, and a higher utilisation will help to ensure that wasted cycles are kept to a minimum. Key to this is expanding the users choice and by offering them something which is easier to use than earlier deployments.
Keen to maintain its reputation as innovative, Daresbury Labs needs to provide the latest in high performance computing services and technology. It’s also seeking new ways to increase its user base by offering services to non traditional HPC users by providing the academic community new choices.
One of the reasons DCG chose a new Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster because of its strong management features including job scheduling capabilities based on SOA.
“The new functionalities offered by Windows HPC Server 2008 provide great potential”
Igor Kozin, Computer Scientist at the Distributed Computing Group, Daresbury Laboratory.
Daresbury partnered with Streamline Computing to implement the new cluster with Linux already deployed followed by installing Windows SPC Server 2008 in a short time frame using Windows Deployment Services.
For more details on this story and others please use this link. Other UK Academic customers using Microsoft’s HPC customers include Cambridge and Manchester Universities plus many others all seeking to increase the value of their HPC facilities.
Also, during January 2008 in the UK there is a pricing promotion for Microsoft HPC Server 2008 so please feel free to get in touch via the blog for more information.
I was really pleased to meet with Alex Lomas at Microsoft’s recent Tech Ed conference in Barcelona in November not least because he told me about how Imperial College London is using Office Communication Server (OCS) across the university and in particular to provide an innovative solution to space utilisation problems faced by many UK universities. Alex kindly offered to produce the following document as a case study which I hope will be of benefit to all universities looking at new and innovative ways to use technology to enhance learning, grow student numbers and make the best use of resources. Alex’s contact details are at the bottom of this posting and a downloadable copy of this document is here:
Imperial College London is also benefiting from the federating capability provided in OCS which enables presence, chat, voice, video and other communication types to be shared across institutions to allow for greater collaboration between partners, peers and colleagues across the internet.
“LiveMeeting requires little training, and allows me to stream my lectures from the main theatre to an overspill room. I am very happy with this simple technological solution to what would otherwise have been a logistical nightmare”. Dr Steven Cook, Lecturer in Biology.
“We were able to implement Office Communications Server 2007 for all of our staff for less than the cost of a competing two-room video conferencing system, so not only do we have a great solution for lecture streaming but we get all the added benefits of unified messaging thrown in!” Alex Lomas, Imperial College ICT.
Imperial College London has been using Office Communications Server 2007 since its public launch at the end of 2007. It has recently been made available more widely with the intention of deploying it to some 6000 members of staff in the next few months. Users have found its IM, presence and conferencing features particularly useful and we have found some novel uses for Live Meeting in an academic setting.
Like many other higher educational institutions, Imperial College has seen a marked increase in the number of students attaining their grades this academic year. This has caused problems in finding a lecture theatre large enough to hold the entire intake and so a mechanism of streaming from the main room to an overflow room was needed.
The Department of Life Sciences had looked at other live streaming solutions but they were either expensive or feature limited. Imperial ICT suggested to them that the inbuilt Live Meeting functionality of Office Communications Server may help in “broadcasting” live audio, PowerPoint and whiteboard between rooms.
A consolidated, load balanced enterprise pool is used to provide the core functionality to internal users at Imperial. Communicator Web Access and Edge Services have been deployed to support remote and federated access, although this functionality is not directly used in the lecture theatre streaming solution.
The Live Meeting Outlook Add-ins are used to schedule lectures so that it is a simply a matter of clicking “Join the Meeting” on both the PCs in both the lecture theatre and overflow room. Some enthusiastic students have been taught how to start Live Meeting in the overflow room so that little effort is required on the part of the lecturer.
During the Live Meeting a mixture of audio, slide sharing and application/desktop sharing is used to transmit the lecturer’s voice and content to the overflow room. Students in the lecture theatre see a normal presentation; in the overflow room the students see a Live Meeting session accompanied by the lecturer’s voice. A third party product called eBeam is also used to take real world drawings on a whiteboard and transmit them via application/desktop sharing in Live Meeting to the overflow room.
Student reaction has been excellent and some students even actively choose the overflow room.
Using the inbuilt recording ability of Live Meeting it is also possible to watch lectures back later: this may be to assist students in learning or to attract a wider audience to keynote lectures etc.
At present, Live Meeting is only used “1 way” to broadcast to the overflow room. In the future it is hoped to provide more interaction using the feedback presence and Q&A features of Live Meeting.
A number of other departments have also expressed an interest in this usage and one in particular will be providing distance learning through Office Communications Server Edge Services.
For further information, please contact:
Alex Lomas, Imperial College ICT: a.lomas@imperial.ac.uk
Dr Steve Cook, Imperial College, Department of Life Sciences: s.cook@imperial.ac.uk