Brent Phillips - Interoperability Blog : Interoperability

Eclipse Revisited - this time Windows 7

brentphillips — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:13:00 GMT

Back in February we posted about Eclipse support for SIlverlight, and this week we announced a major milestone to tune Eclipse for WIndows 7. We're working with Tasktop technology to drive the project which will consist of developing updates to the Eclipse IDE that will incorporate new features available in Windows 7 and Window Server 2008 R2. Check out the press pass article here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/oct09/10-28eclipsepr.mspx

GPL v2 double play

brentphillips — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:39:00 GMT

A couple of great milestones this week related to code contribution. Yesterday (perhaps the shot heard around the world in terms of software interoperability), Microsoft, for the first time, released code - some 22K lines - to the Linux community for inclusion in the Linux kernel (nothing more on this, as I think the trade press has covered it pretty well). Likewise today, Microsoft has released a free live services plug-in to enable calendaring, email, and instant messaging for Moodle (an open-source course management system). Further, the plug-in enables single sign-on which fosters a more seemless experience for users. For more information, please see Peter Galli's post on Port 25.

Interop Roadshow Series

brentphillips — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:05:00 GMT

Over the past few months, I, and several colleagues, hosted a number of CIO roundtables around the country for the Microsoft-Novell interoperability partnership. Here’s a video clip we pulled together…I’ve posted a full set over at our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/moreinterop. Check out audience comments - great feedback!

Heterogeneous Virtualization Revisited.

brentphillips — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:52:00 GMT

I get a lot of questions about this, so I thought I would post a short clip that walks through Microsoft's virtualization project with Novell. This can also be viewed at moreinterop.com/hyperv. This link will open a new window: http://www.moreinterop.com/HyperV/video.html.

More on Microsoft Office 2007 SP2...this time from the ODF community

brentphillips — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:01:00 GMT

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the native ODF support in Microsoft Office 2007 SP2. I use it everyday with my Novell colleagues and it makes our work go very smoothly (yes, they translate our docs sometimes, too!) At any rate, I was pleased to see this brief paper over at Patrick Durusau's blog highlighting the value of ODF support in our Office Suite. Patrick is the OpenDocument editor for the OASIS technical committee. You can check out the paper here.

Microsoft and Sun release white paper on interoperability via SAML federation standard

brentphillips — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:02:00 GMT

I'm reading this over the weekend and wanted to pass it along. Sun and Microsoft have released a white paper outlining how they are incorporating the SAML federation standard in their respective access management solutions. For more on SAML click here. For details on Microsoft's 'Geneva' project, check out the Forefront Blog.

PHP SDK for Windows Azure

brentphillips — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:08:00 GMT

Check it out - http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability/archive/2009/05/13/announcing-php-sdk-for-windows-azure-and-much-more.aspx

Virtualization with Hyper-V and Platespin

brentphillips — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:51:00 GMT

Upcoming eSeminar from Ziff Davis featuring Microsoft and Novell. Register here - http://www.eseminarslive.com/c/a/Virtualization/Microsoft052709/

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 fostering Interop for doc formats

brentphillips — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:19:00 GMT

...I actually got to share this with a customer last week. I attended a CIO Forum and was asked about compatibility between Microsoft Office and Open Office - his IT staff needed to share work-related files with a partner who used OO. He was pleasantly surprised to know that we had built in support for the OpenDocument Format with SP2. I also provided some background on how well the translators have worked for our team collaboration with Novell's staff. Read the press pass interview about the release here.

PHP + SQL Server 2008

brentphillips — Mon, 04 May 2009 03:24:00 GMT

I just pulled down the cumulative update for the SQL Server Driver for PHP (April 09 edition). For those of you who read my walk through for PHP connectivity to SQL Server 2005, the driver also supports SQL Server 2008. All steps are the same as my original walk through with the addition of a new dll file and an additional extension configuration in the php.ini file. More information on PHP and SQL Server can be found here at the sqlphp blog.

moonlight 1.0

brentphillips — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:32:00 GMT

The much awaited Silverlight plug-in for Linux (aka 'Moonlight') operating systems was released by Novell yesterday. Read the MSN article here, see the press release here, and finally - if applicable - download the plug-in here.

dell.com/interop

brentphillips — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:23:00 GMT

I'm excited to share that Dell just launched their solutions portal for hardware and service offerings that support the Microsoft-Novell Interoperability partnership. Briefly, as part of Dell's own efforts to help customers reduce complexity and improve performance in the data center, customers can purchase a preconfigured Dell box that includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as an optimized guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. In today's economic climate, these are great tools to help customers more quickly realize efficiencies and reduce costs for their mixed environments. Please visit dell.com/interop to learn more.

Driving Interactive Mobility with Microsoft Tag

brentphillips — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:13:00 GMT

If you work with documents, images, blogs, or other digital information, you are probably familiar with tagging. Keywords, or meta data, can be used to describe the information in question (a file, unstructured data, etc) which later helps indexing and searching. The following is a slightly different take on tagging that promises to foster new experiences in interactive mobility. By using coded images (think barcodes) and a small app in a camera-equipped smartphone, users can interact directly with their environment, in real-time, to receive new information, or find new experiences, through their device.

As the FAQ states, anything from billboards, to product packages, to business cards, can be equipped with such an image. As a simple use case, imagine reading a tag on someone's business card, then being shown - on your device - a small videocast describing that person's business. Or perhaps someone who is visually impaired can tag a product to 'hear' a description rather than having to read a small font on a box. The scenario's are endless...I see tremendous potential from a marketing, usability, and even transaction processing perspective. As it concerns interoperability, I see great value in the fact that we are simplifying the transaction between the device and surrounding infrastructure through a discrete and 'simple-to-deploy' component pair. The software is available for most devices today and the tags will be deployed in various media by anyone who wants to use them. The tags won't care what 'reads them' and the devices won't care what produces the tag (screen, paper, etc).

The Tag service is in beta today. For more information, check out the website here: http://www.microsoft.com/tag. If you want to try it out, by the way, visit the site to grab the app. I've created a test tag here that loads my personal blog into your mobile web browser...

Eclipse for Silverlight

brentphillips — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:58:00 GMT

For those of you following the Novell partnership, you know that we have been working on a plug-in that enables Linux users to consume Silverlight media. Here is a related project around Silverlight interoperability for Eclipse posted by JC Cimetiere on the Microsoft Interoperability Blog. Briefly this is an open source project to improve interoperability between Silverlight and Java. JC walks you through the classic 'Hello World' followed by Silverlight communicating with a Java-based web service. Here is the walk-through from youtube.com/interopbydesign.

Interop Events - Virtualization and Systems Management to drive Operational Efficiency and Reduce Costs

brentphillips — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:04:00 GMT

If you're in the Tampa, FL, Dallas, TX or Chapel Hill, NC areas we want to bring this to your attention. My team is hosting an interop event with Novell focused on mixed-source virtualization and systems management. The emphasis is how to leverage our projects to reduce costs and complexity in the data center. If you have a mixed environment and want to drive greater efficiency between your Windows and Linux estates please register. We have limited seating! For more information, visit the Ziff Davis Events Site.

Tampa, Florida - February 4 at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts
Dallas, Texas - February 17 at the Cima Club
Chapel Hill, NC - February 25 at the Moorehead Planetarium