Eric Troup's Blog

Building OSS with Microsoft System Center

2009-12-04T04:23:07Z

The TM Forum’s Management World Americas event is next week, 7-10 December 2009, in Orlando, Florida. One of the particularly interesting topics Microsoft will begin discussing at Management World will be next generation, customer focused OSS that can manage service delivery from the 3 Screens (desktop, mobile, and IPTV) through the data center and out to the cloud: end-to-end infrastructure and service management. Microsoft and its partners are building telecom specific solutions leveraging...(read more)

Eclipse Gets Enhanced Interoperability with Microsoft Platforms

2009-10-29T05:30:13Z

In collaboration with the Eclipse Foundation and the broader open source community, Microsoft has improved interoperability between the Eclipse and Windows platforms. As a sponsor at the annual European Eclipse summit in Ludwigsburg, Microsoft announced this week new interoperability solutions across three major products that will make it easier for developers to create and deploy a mix of Microsoft and open source technologies. These new solutions will help developers using the Eclipse platform...(read more)

Microsoft Professional Developer Conference

2009-10-12T13:55:37Z

Microsoft PDC 2009 is coming up soon. November 17 – 19, 2009 Workshops November 16 Los Angeles Convention Center Here is the link: http://microsoftpdc.com/...(read more)

Microsoft SolutionFrameworks.NET at the TM Forum

2009-06-30T06:49:15Z

The TMF has been working on a new initiative called the Solution Frameworks Blueprint . The effort seeks to bring together the work of two distinct work streams. NGOSS Solution Frameworks used to help architect next generation BSS and OSS. Service Delivery Frameworks (SDF) & associated initiatives like IPsphere used to help architect hosted services / managed network services such as Microsoft Live Services and Online Services. Supporting both initiatives are tooling initiatives. For the...(read more)

Service Delivery Platforms vs Service Delivery Frameworks

2009-06-30T06:32:01Z

What is a Service Delivery Platform (SDP)? What is a Service Delivery Framework (SDF)? The question came up again at the TM Forum’s Team Action Week held in Baltimore, MD this past week during a joint session with several representatives from ATIS. An SDP is a system that manages service delivery across a specific domain. Typically that domain is entirely within one service provider’s environment and is controlled by rules established by that service provider. A service provider...(read more)

Momentum Shift – Microsoft Increasingly Credible for BSS/OSS

2009-05-15T04:23:47Z

If you look at just the numbers, Microsoft is used by only a very small percentage of BSS and OSS systems. In the true telecom BSS/OSS space, Microsoft can claim less than 10% market share today. The other 90% is split between legacy Mainframe, UNIX, and some LINUX. IBM IMS and DB2 predominate on the mainframe side with Oracle dominating on the AIX, HP-UX, SUN, UNIX, LINUX platforms. Most new development has been J2EE based. IBM WebSphere has dominated over SUN/BEA –...(read more)

Announcing the PHP SDK for Windows Azure

2009-05-14T18:22:07Z

Microsoft continues to enhance the interoperability of the Azure Service Platform with the announcement of the availability of the PHP SDK for Windows Azure . Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure… and much more! The goal of the SDK is to provide high-level abstractions that enable PHP developers to interoperate readily with Windows Azure http://phpazure.codeplex.com/ and a series of projects that offer samples and toolkit that enable PHP developers to easily include in their...(read more)

The New York Times API Silverlight Toolkit Announced

2009-05-14T01:00:00Z

The New York Times has posted a blog entry about the availability of the New York Times API Silverlight Toolkit with links to the toolkit and background information over at the New York Times Open blog . You can find the toolkit here created by my teammate Michael Scherotter ....(read more)

Microsoft a Service Provider FINALIST - TM Forum Best Practices Excellence Awards

2009-05-11T04:15:01Z

Microsoft Online Services was selected as a Finalist by the TM Forum for this year’s Best Practices Excellence Awards 2009. The awards were recognized at the TM Forum’s Management World event held in Nice, France from 6-9 May 2009. Traditionally one might expect Microsoft to be entered in the category of a supplier rather than the Service Provider category. But after some debate, it was recognized that the launch of Microsoft Online Services represented a converged services offerings. ...(read more)

Announcing the "WPF for LOB" Training Tour…

2009-04-06T15:43:00Z

Jaime Rodriquez has announced on his Blog a new series of Windows Presentation foundations trainings for Apr/May/Jun optimized for building business applications. The training should be well suited to those wishing to incorporate the latest Microsoft UI capabilities into their BSS/OSS applications. “This two day training is designed to teach developers how to create Line of Business (LOB) applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Day One is an introduction to the WPF graphics subsystem,...(read more)

Nomination for TM Forum 2009 Service Provider Excellence Awards

2009-03-26T21:32:29Z

A nomination for TM Forum 2009 Excellence Awards has been accepted under the Service provider category. The winner of the award will be announced at Management World in Nice on May 6th. Microsoft used TM Forum standards such as the NGOSS reference architecture, Service Delivery Frameworks, Architecture Harmonization, and Business Performance Metrics to design and implement a Microsoft BSS/OSS to meet the needs of its growing Software plus Services businesses. In this case, a BSS/OSS infrastructure...(read more)

TM Forum NGOSS Standards Fast Track BSS/OSS For Microsoft Online Services

2009-03-26T20:38:00Z

The TM Forum recently posted a Microsoft case study on how a BSS/OSS stack was rapidly designed and implemented to support www.Microsoft.com/online . Business Problem: To provide the speed and convenience of cloud computing services, Microsoft recently launched Microsoft® Online Services, a new family of offerings that combine elements of client-based programs with services hosted in remote data centers. For Online Services to be successful, Microsoft needed both a new business model and new business...(read more)

MSDN, Visual Studio, TFS Web Casts

2009-02-26T06:22:00Z

Here is information on an upcoming Web Cast Series covering MSDN licenses, Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. Date and Time Title and Link Description 02/24/09 10:00 AM PST Webcast Series: How to license and manage MSDN Subscriptions Meeting ID = K98MNK Overview of value of MSDN subscriptions and how they are licensed and licenses are managed. 03/3/09 10:00 AM PST Webcast Series: Team Foundation Server Overview Meeting ID = H9DG88 In this webcast, we will cover Team Foundation Server 2008....(read more)

Using my new HTC Fuze

2009-01-21T02:26:00Z

It's a new year and it was time to think about replacing my HTC Tilt with something new. I had upgraded the Tilt to Windows Mobile 6.1 and it was working fine. However, the HTC Touch and Touch Pro had really caught my eye. I decided to move over to the new HTC Fuze. I have had it a couple of weeks now. The Fuze has a nice feel in your hand and is considerably easier to use one-handed. The need for a stylus is virtually eliminated. The magnetic retainer of the stylus works much better than the friction...(read more)

Just Back from TM Forum's Management World Americas

2008-11-25T19:37:00Z

Just came back from the TM Forum’s Management World Americas event in Orlando, Florida held 16-20 November 2008. The theme was Create, Deliver and Monetize Digital Services . For the past several years, we have talked about how Microsoft technology can help other service providers with Service Enablement and build BSS/OSS applications. At this event, Microsoft revealed how it had truly mastered the service provider business. Microsoft presented how the Azure Services Framework had been built and...(read more)