Ok, so everyone has an opinion - but that's what blogs are for, right? So here's my take on cloud computing, S+S and all those cool new devices we're seeing....

Cloud computing is different from most of today’s hosting solutions. For example, Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite - www.microsoft.com/online) is really about hosting existing systems like Exchange in our data centres instead of yours. That does offer some real savings due to simple economy of scale, but that’s not really what I’d call cloud computing.

With cloud computing, we’re talking about a completely new platform in the internet that provides the basic services that allow you to build completely new types of applications. That platform is like an operating system that’s built from the ground up to provide massive and very flexible scale, geographic presence and  complete reliability. At present, there’s really only a few examples of these cloud based operating systems including Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, Google's App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure.

These cloud based systems provide all the infrastructure and flexible scale that enable new applications and solutions in ways that we’ve never seen before. Because you can write some code on your local laptop, post it up to the cloud and scale from no users to millions very easily (well, that’s the promise) we have the ultimate innovation platform. You can literally start in your garage and overnight get millions of customers. 

The business model for the innovator is basically pay-as-you-go so as millions of users come on board, you’ll have to pay for the resources they use. Of course maybe the innovator pays, maybe the user pays, or maybe advertisers pay. If one of the many services that the cloud infrastructure provides is an advertising engine then it should be possible that your new application could at least pay for itself through advertising.

Ok, so we have a few new super flexible, ultra reliable “mainframes in the sky” that enable innovation in computing that we’ve never seen before. But what’s that got to do with Microsoft’s “Software + Services” spiel?

Well, first of all it’s all about the Software. That software can be hosted locally by you or in the internet by others. In both cases, the software delivers a service to you. Those services might be email, displaying photos and maps, communicating with people, doing accounting etc. Cloud computing and online hosting provide some of those services delivered over the internet while local devices (Servers, PC’s, Phones, Xboxes etc) provide other services locally. The combination of Software (on your local server or device) plus Services (from the internet) take the best of both worlds (local processing power and control plus massive scale and low cost generic services) to deliver solutions that make the most of all available computing power where it's best utilized.

Ok, so I know I'm old. In fact, I'm older than most people on the planet - I passed that threshold about 15 years ago! Anyway... I remember when "walkman" was everyday speak for "portable music player". Of course, back then it meant you had a cassette tape, but Sony, the maker of the Walkman, was the undisputed leader of the portable music player. Yes, it came in different sizes and bright colours and yes, all the cool people had one.

Then the world changed, but Sony didn't see it coming. Portable music players went digital and after a while, Apple joined the party and brought with it a new word for portabe music player - "ipod". The ipod now owns 70% of the market, while Sony has a mere 2% (even less than the Zune!). See http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/zoom/html/2008167480.html 

While Sony were trying to perfect their cassette players, others came along with something totally different. Of course, it wasn't just the technology that made the difference. There were many digital music players before Apple grabbed the limelight and the customers. The iPod success is a the classic Tipping Point example (see http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/) but to me it really highlights that it's more important to understand your customer than your technology, your strategy or your results from last year.

Seems to me that every new OS release brings cries of “but we love the old stuff!”. This article from Computerworld puts some numbers on that. It’s a good read..

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=324685

The other issue that we have with each OS is that we use all the capabilities of existing machines (and then some). I remember the outcry with the release of Windows 95 when we recommended 8mb of memory and a clock speed of 20mhz. It didn't take long for that to be a minimum spec machine.

Having said that, it seems that our customers are saying that maybe we turned the dial a step too far for both the device compatibility bar and hardware utilisation. The hardware compatibility requirements seem to have been (mostly) solved (though I could see why it's still pretty hard to convince the manufacturer of a $70 printer to spend a lot of money updating drivers for no extra revenue). And apparently Windows 7 is aiming at getting some performance gains (see http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/28/Performance_improvement_integral_to_Windows_7_IE8_1.html). And yes, it is amazing how much processor and memory Outlook uses. 

From the anecdotal evidence, it seems to be: if your PC (with at least 2GB of memory!) and attached devices are certified for Vista, then you'd be one of those many people who love Vista. But if you've never used Vista and don't like change, then it'll take a few more years for you to move. Same as it ever was.

OK, so here's a confession - I've always been a huge fan of BizTalk. I remember back in the day (that's last century to you, young fella) when James Utzschneider and his team came up with the BizTalk name, the library and community. But let's face facts, when BizTalk Server 2000 came out, it was still a great idea (using XML and derivatives as the core to your central messaging hub for EAI and B2B) but lacked the ‘complete engineering’ required for you to bet your business on it (things like monitoring, staging and performance tuning were, um, 'challenging'). Since then we’ve improved it with BTS 2000, then 2002, 2004 (which was the “bet your business on this” release) then 2006 and today we’re at BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and now it’s a magnificent beautiful beast of a product.

(Incidentally, if you’re using BizTalk as the central pillar of your SOA strategy, then you’ll want to take a look at our ESB Guidance, here.)

It is a big beast though – for a couple of reasons. The main one is actually business politics. Because it’s a central messaging hub, it’s really an infrastructure sell and there aren’t many people in organisations that understand both the technical and business significance of that. Getting both the Enterprise Architects as well as the General Managers to invest in such infrastructure can be interesting. The second reason for BizTalk being a “big beast” is that, because it’s a central messaging hub, it touches so many systems. And while we try (!) to have well defined interfaces into all these systems, it often takes a knowledge of those systems to get the end-to-end business process flowing smoothly. So, that’s a big chunk of technical knowledge required – outside the knowledge of BizTalk.

The answer for a successful BizTalk implementation appears to involve the following:

-       Executive buy in and support – after all BizTalk is going to span many groups both internal and external to your organisation. It’s going to have a big impact on how you do business.

-       An “integration” centre of excellence run by passionate and committed people

-       Great core infrastructure optimization (ie a metric driven IT department that keeps the lights on and is always looking for ways to improve)

Fortunately, things are getting easier. We've now got some great BizTalk partners here in Australia (Avanade, Breeze, Data#3, DataCogs, Oakton, Stargate to name a few). Additionally, the folks in Redmond have produced some great “how to” manuals that you can download. In particular, I’d highlight the Operations Guide and Performance Guide. You can get the full list here.

BizTalk just gets better – and if you look at where we’re going with Oslo, you can see it continues to be pretty core to our enterprise development strategy.

We often get embedded in the technology and forget the big picture, so this quote from Sir Winston Churchill reminds us that the basics have always been the basics:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

As you can probably deduce from other entries in my blog, I’m a big believer in using the power at the edge of the network (as well as any other power you can get your hands on). The best example of a device that enables that “power at the edge” is of course the Personal Computer. In early 2007, I  (with help from others – particularly Charles Fitzgerald) summarized what I thought might be the future of the PC. Oliver Bell has recently unearthed that document in his blog.

Some companies encourage you to spend time doing stuff outside your job description. I think that's a great idea, but I'm kinda lucky in that my job description (Application Platform Specialist) means that I could spend my life just exploring all the cool stuff that my job entails without ever going outside my job description. Things like Silverlight, mobile development, Expression Studio, Robotics Studio, BizTalk (now there's a big beautiful beast of a product) keeps me more than happy with my lot.

Having said that, along comes something that makes you think "ok, that's a little outside my job description". And in this case, that something is the Space Elevator Conference that Microsoft is sponsoring. Check it out at http://www.spaceelevatorconference.org

enough said. 

The other day I invited a customer to have a look at a Microsoft Software Development Centre here in Brisbane. At the moment, we have about 40 developers (including testers, architects, project managers etc) working on a solution for another customer.

It was a very impressive setup – from the rows of dual monitor PCs, to the massive C-class safe. That safe stores customer-sensitive printouts and even the key to the server rack where the software lives. I guess the most impressive part was their use of Team Foundation Server and the associated processes they use around the Microsoft Solution Framework. At any time, they get all the graphs and reports they need to track work item status, bug counts etc etc. It really allows any project meeting to start with the facts as to where the project is at – rather than individual opinions (which is how too many projects seem to work).

And finally, because they are part of Microsoft, every line of code they cut needs to go our internal security group in Redmond who give it the thumbs up (or not) on the code.

It’s great to see software engineering – as opposed to cutting code. And on that topic, I’d really recommend this book by Sam Guckenheimer: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?ISBN=9780321278722

So now that's BillG's gone part time, what is Microsoft going to do?

The answer, not surprisingly, is "software". However, I've noticed a slight change of direction in the last year or so. It's a subtle change, but it's also a pretty major change in the way we approach things. It's as though we've decided that - architecturally speaking (as in "how we think about the design of the software") that the PC is not the centre of the software universe - it's actually the internet that everything revolves around. (And I'd forgive you for thinking "well, duh" but when you're doing quite nicely making hammers you do find that there are still plenty of nails out there.)

The "Microsoft" difference is that we still think that the centre of what's really important is the person using that software. So whereas some companies might see the internet as an excuse to hide a mainframe in the cloud and see the browser as just a modern day terminal, at Microsoft we still think it's very important to use the power at the edge of the network for the benefit of the user.

So what's changed? Well (and remember this is just my observation) it seems that in the last year or so, we've realised that the PC is not the only "first class citizen" working for the user. There are also mobile devices, TV's and even rich applications running in the browser - and maybe even a non-Microsoft browser running on a non-Microsoft OS. And it's clear that Microsoft wants to deliver the software for all those end user experiences - and of course the software for the services in the cloud (or in the enterprise) to which they connect.

So Live Mesh is a lot more than just "Groove Again". Or as Ray Ozzie says "At this moment in time, I see nothing but opportunity as we're moving into a world where the internet has taken a very big role and our vision really is to build compelling experiences that bring together the power of the internet with the magic of software across a world of devices".