Dominic Watts - blog

Dominic's blog is going coporate

2007-05-14T13:34:00Z

Hi readers, This blog is now moving to: http://blogs.msdn.com/ukhe/ As in - Microsoft UK Higher Education. Thanks - Dominic...(read more)

Thanks to my colleague Jason Langridge for this

2007-04-16T17:36:00Z

Thanks Jason, another good example of why I should keep reading your excellent blog is this post: Career Education Corporation wanted to offer mobile computing to all 75 of its campuses worldwide, but, with RIM BlackBerry devices, reliability was poor and costs were prohibitive. The company then switched to devices based on the Windows Mobile® 5.0 operating system. The move is saving 37 percent compared to RIM; e-mail availability is 18 percent higher; and the company can enable mobile access to...(read more)

It’s Coming: Mac BU Announces Intent to Deliver Office 2008 for Mac

2007-04-13T16:34:28Z

I've been asked by a university recently about Entourage 2008 which I previously knew even less about than Entourage 2004 – not being a Mac user. So this has led onto a number of discoveries for resources both internally at Microsoft and also on the Web including the site that the title this blog post comes from: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-09MacworldPR.mspx SAN FRANCISCO — Jan. 9, 2007 — Microsoft Corp.'s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today revealed at Macworld Conference...(read more)

Ray Ozzie Interview

2007-04-10T17:17:00Z

This is a fascinating insight into how Ray Ozzie views the potential future of technology: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1698 I'm hugely enthusiastic about his vision and description of how technology and the process of making new technologies is going to change. Great English accent on the audio file too ;-)...(read more)

How Green is the IT on your Campus? Can Vista help?

2007-04-10T15:19:30Z

You don't need me to tell you that across the UK universities are being encourage to make their Campus more green and to reduce the rather large carbon footprint each Campus has. Paradoxically, as each campus is looking to reduce its CO2 emissions many of its investments in IT are potentially undermining these attempts. Consider the amount of electricity consumed through High Performance Computing for a minute. If a 200 node grid is not being fully utilised to support a research endeavour then its...(read more)

Office Communications Server 2007 - BETA is now public

2007-04-10T14:17:00Z

Just to let you know the beta of Office Communicator 2007 and the Office Communications Server 2007 is available for public download http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F7D34DF9-29CF-4BFC-824F-7A382CE8BA8B&displaylang=en http://www.microsoft.com/uc/ocsbeta.mspx If you're begining to explore the possibilities that VoIP has to offer or interested in hosting a web conferencing (Live Meeting) system for virtual teaching and learning then this is certainly worth taking a look...(read more)

Are you in control? ... Technet Microsoft Management Summit (UK) 1st May

2007-03-19T13:54:00Z

Microsoft Management Summit (UK): Are you in control? How to manage and secure your infrastructure Is your customer interested in responding to the challenges of managing their infrastructure and what we have to offer? Does your partner want to understand our new System Center management products and how to deliver new and compelling solutions based on them? The TechNet MMS UK event "Are you in control?" provides a selection of the most valuable content from the year's global Microsoft Management...(read more)

Welsh University Improves Document Control and Collaboration with New Technologies

2007-02-28T12:44:00Z

In Preparation for St David's day, I'm posting this recently published case study with details of the project that University of Wales institute Cardiff and Morse Solutions (formerly known as Diagonal Solutions ) have delivered. I am particularly pleased about This Project because it shows commitment to the vision that delivers ‘best in class’ quality using every day familiar interfaces. Also I think the quotation from Mike James, the university’s IT Director, is extremely powerful and marks a new...(read more)

Sharepoint Community Portal

2007-02-21T13:43:41Z

I received this in an email from my colleague Steve Audis the other day: Not sure if any of you have seen this site: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/default.aspx Great place to show the new templates that have been released for SharePoint 2007. It also has links to other websites, blogs, presentations etc (really good one stop shop for SharePoint material). This is the worldwide site but we do have a UK specific one; lacking content at the moment but managed by Mark Harrison and Rob Gray:...(read more)

More on ADFS and Shibboleth integration

2007-02-20T12:54:42Z

Following the work on Active Directory integration with Shibboleth reported here I am now able to point you to the published paper. This paper describes the work we carried out in the proof of concept back in 2006. To access the white paper please visit to Oxford Computer group's website ....(read more)

Microsoft - managing users, computers and internet access, Learning Network Manager

2007-02-09T00:55:00Z

The latest version of Learning Network Manager (LNM) has been updated and released for worldwide use, on CodePlex. Please direct your thanks to the EMEA team and our Gold Partner, ITWorx, for their years of good work making this application what it is today. This new LNM Version 1.4 includes support for dynamically creating desktop OS profiles (Windows Vista, WinFLP, and XP as examples) at anytime. LNM Version 1.4 is available to download at http://www.codeplex.com/LNM . Placing LNM on CodePlex affirms...(read more)

What does the student experience mean to you?

2007-02-07T23:58:00Z

A couple of years ago, no, a couple of months ago, if someone talked about the "student experience" they would have been laughed off the campus. It's the sort of phrase that made listeners squirm and speakers sound pretentious. However, now - it's all anyone is talking about and the difference is remarkable. Maybe it's a symptom of the Leitch Report and a realisation that skills in the UK has to be a priority focus for education in order for prosperity to become a reality. Anyway, I'm all for this...(read more)

Kingston University speaks about its recent launch of Sharepoint 2007

2007-01-22T12:12:00Z

Ian McNeice of Kingston University has recently been interviewed by Darren Strange (Microsoft's Office Rocker) about his recent experience introducing SharePoint 2007 to the research community in his university. Ian is the head of Technical Services at Kingston and is known by many for his enthusiasm for portal and information management solutions and the power these can bring to an institution looking to modernise and enthuse students and staff. The full trasnsript of the interview can be found here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/officerocker/archive/2007/01/15/kingston-university-the-future-s-bright-with-2007-office.aspx

It's worth anybody looking at portals, blogging and, naturally, Sharepoint to have a good read through. Ian manages to capture many of the current Higher Education evelopments and trends in his answers to Darren's questions such as the fact universities are having to treat students as customers and also that collaboration with industry for research is becoming increasingly important and through the use of common and familiar technology this has now become a reality.

Happy reading - Dominic Watts

email hosting - further update

2007-01-02T20:01:00Z

Due to the high interest in this, I'm going to run a Webinar on 1 February at 14:30 GMT to discuss Microsoft's options for student email hosting. For more information:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=3RKQ63&role=attend&pw=2K%3E%5B-kbxW

Subject: Windows Live@EDU
Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join
Meeting ID: 3RKQ63
Meeting Key: 2K>[-kbxW
Role: Attendee
Audio Conferencing (Toll): +44 (118) 9092000
Participant Code: 901985

Click to add to your Outlook calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/meetingICS?id=3RKQ63&role=attend&pw=2K%3E%5B-kbxW&i=i.ics

FIRST TIME USERS: To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is compatible with Microsoft Office Live Meeting: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52354

For assistance, visit Live Meeting Help and Support:
http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidLiveMeeting?p1=7&p2=en_US&p3=LMInfo&p4=support

Email - do you host your own?

2007-01-02T19:30:00Z

There's been some interesting discussion this week about hosted email, and in particular Microsoft's Windows Live @ EDU http://www.imagine-wl.com/Education/en-US/ programme. In the UK there are around a dozen institutions using this programme representing something like 120,000 students. The discussion is focusing on the following areas:

Why wouldn't a university use this facility?
What would encourage universities to start using the facility
Are the students who already have access to it using it?

So let me give a few thoughts on these points

1. Why wouldn't a university use this facility?

There may be many reasons for this such as:

They have not heard about it
They have some ideological opposition to using it
They have a fully featured existing collaboration system that integrates into personalised learning environment
No desire

I could go on but one thing seems to be certain is that the reason why a university carries on hosting its own Student email service is subjective and it is not possible to generalise.

2. What would encourage universities to start using the facility

I'm discussing with many universities some options for providing this service to their students and each one, as you can imagine, has different legitimate objections, fears and reasons for denying or delaying its introduction. So one of the discussion points is around the possibility of a dual service. This could enable the university to carry on hosting its own email but to also offer students who require it the potential of having a university branded email address with 2GB of email. So, for example, a student may have an existing email address which is something like:

dominic.watts@maths07.yorkshire.ac.uk and this is his main university hosted email. Why not allow this student to also have:

dominic.watts@live.yorkshire.ac.uk as an alternative with the higher levels of storage?

This way, the university gets to carry on providing an integrated email solution but allows the student some flexibility to store greater levels of data without the university increasing its costs.

Also, this universities could start with it today for both applicants and alumni. This can create a powerful draw to keep the university top of mind in these stakeholders.

3. Are the students who already have access to it using it?

Great question! Of course, we should take a look at how students communicate today. Do they use email at all or is it just the university that mandates that students must access their university hosted email account to receive official communication? But, this is the age of personalised learning and treating students as customers; therefore shouldn't universities be asking students how they want to receive communication? Many students use alternative methods of communication/collaboration now and new media like youtube, facebook, Flikr where (spot the link back to personalised learning) people are involved in a more collaborative/creative method of communication rather than store and forward email.

To summarise, there are many varied and legitimate reasons why a university is not using hosted email for students today but I believe there is a role for providing an alternative service to students, applicants and alumni in all universities. Also, let's not forget that by waiting we are potentially missing the boat and today's students already find email is yesterday's solution.