A colleague mentioned the Digital Forum solution during a meeting today. I think it's an innovative way for Microsoft to help its partners publicize their offerings and, after a cursory review of the content, watched several interesting video case studies.
The solution was built by a parnter in combination with Microsoft's Partner Labs and there's some background info on the solution and the press' reaction in this post on their blog.
"Native e-mail, contacts, calendar, and task synchronization from Zimbra to Outlook 2007"
Services great.....accessing them using the familiar tools of the Office system, priceless!!
The
OBA Composition Reference Toolkit is a tool to aid with the rapid assembly of components into new OBAs. The toolkit is itself an OBA, a meta-OBA that helps build OBAs. The toolkit uses a WPF client to provide an elegant visualization of and surface upon which the OBA components may be selected and assembled.
Microsoft has published several OBA "Reference Applications Packs" or RAPs that provide the guidance and sample code to help educate folks on how to build OBAs of their own. The theme continues with the following two scenarios:
Yesterday Microsoft launched a new site for Microsoft Success Stories. The solution leverages Silverlight to provide a more compelling way for people to understand some of the success our customers and partners are having leveraging Microsoft's technologies. First out of the gate is a great set of OBA examples but, stay tuned, as additional Software + services solutions will be added as they're completed.
http://microsoft.com/success
Additional validation for Software + Services and my argument that OBAs prove Software + Services with the integration of Microsoft Outlook and Excel with NetSuite's CRM services:
http://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/crm_plus/pt_ms.shtml
Kevin Marshall at Clarity Consulting blogged today about how he's integrated Tafiti - a Silverlight-based experimental search front-end from Microsoft - with the enterprise search capabilities of Office SharePoint Server. Kevin provides the source code too. Good stuff!
OBAs are a key manifestation in the enterprise of Microsoft's strategy of Software + Services.
In the past month I've learned of 3 innovative examples that marry social networking services with - the definitive social interface in the enterprise - Outlook.
LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar
http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_download
Xobni Insight
http://www.xobni.com/learnmore
Plaxo Pulse Toolbar for Outlook
http://mashable.com/2007/12/11/plaxo-pulse-outlook-toolbar
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=BW&date=20071128&id=7865582
"SharePoint Server 2007 has gained significant traction among companies looking to manage content and facilitate information sharing, as well as enjoy the benefits of web services," said Jon Dorrington, vice president of strategic alliances at Business Objects. "Offering this free integration kit is yet another example of how Business Objects makes it easy for our customers to extend business intelligence to their constituents and empower all users to make more informed business decisions."
I couldn't resist and here are a couple of my favorites from the OBA eivdence on Microsoft Case Studies. Like friends, pets and children, all of the stories are great, but these, for one reason and another, piqued my excitement:
Customers
Banco de Venezuela
Using Visio to help visualize customer claims processe in real-time
Calypso Healthcare Solutions
One of several great BI-based OBAs that extends the benefit to legal teams beyond the firewall using Groove
Canada Post
Canada's largest SAP customer facilitates data upload to SAP's applications using WinShuttle technologies
Energizer
A pioneer of Microsoft "online"
London Stock Exchange
One of the world's pre-eminent financial exchanges using OBAs to enable its people to improve customer service
Schneider Electric
An example of a WPF client being used in an OBA
Skanska USA Building
Many good pieces here but, in principle, a great way to derive value from a SOA implementation using OBAs
WorkflowOne
An Oracle customer that augments its Oracle ERP system with an OBA
Partners
Approva
A compelling ecosystem ISV that is reducing development time and helping its customers with its OBA
Convergence Communications
An OBA in-the-cloud that enables its event organizing customers to rapidly deploying its solution
Dassault Systèmes
An OBA helps revolutionize the process of managing fault diagnoses
Epicor
One of Microsoft's Global ISVs that's benefiting from wider use of its software thanks - in part - to OBAs
There are many OBA case studies available on Microsoft Case Studies and the teams continue to ensure that existing OBA evidence and new OBA evidence will be correctly tagged as "Office Business Applications" on this site. Unfortunately, the set is not published as RSS but I'm going to start blogging here on newly posted stories.
For now, you may wish to watch this URL. It is a shortcut to the OBA stories on Microsoft Case Studies:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=3132
"Microsoft SharePoint is a data and document collaboration tool in use by millions; it is starting to find its way into the CAD and PLM-using marketplace. Publisher Rachael Taggart says the new, hosted option will make SharePoint even more of a Trojan Horse sneaking its way into manufacturing and construction. (October 11, 2007)"
https://www.newslettersonline.com/user/user.fas/s=63/fp=3/tp=47?T=open_article%2C962101&P=article
