Beyond | IT : Software + Services

Microsoft creates a “Server and Cloud Division”

john.mullinax — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:44:32 GMT

The Windows Server Division weblog announced yesterday that the people who build Windows Server, Windows Azure, SQL Server, SQL Azure, Visual Studio and System Center will all now be part of the same organization, Server and Cloud Division (SCD).

This re-org is part of a transition for the Azure cloud business from a set of incubation projects into a mainstream business, and is intended to help Microsoft continue and increase the “bilateral sharing of technology” between the groups.

For customers and partners, bringing Windows Server, Windows Azure, SQL Server, SQL Azure, Visual Studio and System Center together in the Server and Cloud Division should – over time – mean increasing the flexibility to:

Choose on-premise, cloud, or third-party hosting deployment architectures
Choose “hybrid” deployment architectures that span across on-premise environments, Windows Azure, and third party hosting partners
Migrate solution components between the Azure cloud, on-premise environments and third-party hosters
Manage applications and app portfolios that span across Windows Azure, on-premise, and hosting partner environments

Of course, these capabilities already exist in some ways… I personally read this re-organization as a positive signal that Microsoft is committed to additional innovation in this direction and is actively working to make these capabilities richer and more robust for our customers and partners.

These capabilities are at the core of what Microsoft means when it talks about “Software-plus-Services”. Ultimately, as computing devices (PCs, phones, TVs, cars, picture frames, industrial equipment, etc.) become more pervasively distributed, and the cloud becomes more mature as a complement to on-premise and hosting environments, we need all of our solutions to work together well – and be flexible, secure, and manageable, too.

One of the best ways to learn more about where Microsoft is going with Windows Server, SQL Server, the Windows Azure Platform, Visual Studio, and System Center is to check out the videos from PDC09 here, and especially the Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia Day 1 Keynote.

In addition to the keynotes, you can see all the individual PDC09 session videos, and even download session PowerPoint files.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,cloud computing,Azure

Windows Azure Service Managment API now in CTP

john.mullinax — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:16:17 GMT

The Windows Azure team released a Community Technology Preview of the Windows Azure Service Management API the other day. This API is REST-based, and currently supports the following operations (according to the Windows Azure team blog):

Deployments – Viewing, creating, deleting, swapping, modifying configuration settings, changing instance counts, and updating the deployment.

Listing and viewing properties for hosted services, storage accounts and affinity groups

Also, x509 certificates are used for authentication, and there’s a small tool called csmanage.exe to help you manage deployments and use the API.

This is, of course, CTP – so be prepared for some changes along the way to RTW.

A couple resource links:

Get the csmanage utility.
Get Windows Azure Service Management API documentation.

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,manage,API

FedEx QuickShip Revisited

john.mullinax — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:14:00 GMT

Jon Box has short post today talking about our partnership with FedEx a while back to help them build and launch their FedEx QuickShip service. The formal launch was on stage with Bill Gates at the Office Developers Conference – exciting times!

I think FedEx has been pretty pleased with the reception of FedEx QuickShip by our mutual customers. Two of the guys involved on the FedEx side are Ben Baker and Matt Howell – FedEx recently made a video of them talking about FedEx QuickShip.

For more info on this solution from FedEx, checkout my earlier posts, here. And do check out Jon’s post for links to case studies and some great quotes about how FedEx can make life better for their customers by building customer solutions on top of Microsoft Office.

Technorati Tags: FedEx,QuickShip,Office Development

Intro to Windows Azure in one slide

john.mullinax — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:27:00 GMT

NOTE: Microsoft just changed the branding a bit so this slide needs to be updated - basically, the Azure Service Platform becomes the Windows Azure Platform, SQL Data Services becomes SQL Azure. Live Services leaves the platform (does not go away, but will emphasize affinity with Windows). -JCM July 14, 2009

Here’s an intro to Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform in one slide that I put together for use at Cloud Camps or other forums where you need to get the basics across quickly. Depending on the speaker and time available, this slide could go from 5 minutes up to an hour or more. Feedback welcome and appreciated. Enjoy! :)

Windows Azure Intro In 1 Slide

View more documents from johnmullinax.

Note: I left the SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM Services boxes off this slide as they are not available in the Community Technology Preview at this time. The “finished” software-as-a-service solutions SharePoint Online and Dynamics CRM Online continue to be available as supported production offerings, of course. :)

Technorati Tags: windows azure,azure service platform,cloud Computing,software-plus-services

Ray Ozzie speaks on Google Wave

john.mullinax — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:20:07 GMT

Courtesy of Ina Fried, here’s Ray Ozzie speaking about Google Wave at Silicon Valley’s Churchhill Club.

In a nutshell, Ozzie compares Google Wave to Groove, and calls it anti-web because the ethos of the web is about open data formats, open protocols, and technologies that are simple enough for people to implement themselves.

He goes on to differentiate Live Mesh from Google Wave and Groove as being something built off the learnings from Groove… it’s web friendly, and simple enough for people to implement into their own solutions themselves.

Technorati Tags: Live Mesh,Cloud Computing,Azure,Google Wave,Groove

How WPF can help your golf game, or PING’s new beginning

john.mullinax — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:18:15 GMT

This app from PING, called nFlight, is extremely cool. Beautiful, sophisticated, and fun. nFlight analyzes your golf swing to develop specifications for custom fit golf clubs. The app performs complex simulations and renders beautiful displays that show actual ball flight with different club parameters, humidity levels, wind conditions, etc. It even shows the leaves blowing and water rippling.

For the richest experience and highest app performance, the PING team built this app in WPF. Orders are sent from the retail locations where people get custom fit for their clubs off to PING for manufacturing, and PING manages updates with Synchronization Services. A simple, but compelling example showing the best of software and services together. :)

PING originally planned this as an 18-month project, but a year into it they were struggling. Developing an app that was both beautiful and also computationally sophisticated proved a real challenge. With 6 months to go before the project was due, they basically started over.

Fortunately, they were able salvage some graphic design concepts. Those were created in Expression Blend and handed off to developers working in Visual Studio. You might guess how the story goes from here on out:

Controls that took weeks to build in their old environment were now getting done in a day
The new workflow for developers and designers had a huge impact on the teams productivity and agility
The nFlight app maintained high fidelity to design intent
The PING team re-worked their original efforts in less than 3 months, and had a production version of the app 2 months after that
By early 2009, over 400 PING dealers around the world were using the app

For PING, the benefits of their WPF nFlight app go beyond developer and designer productivity… they make better consumer experiences practical and reinforce the innovation leadership credentials for which the PING brand is known.

I’m a terrible golfer, but with custom-fit clubs maybe there’s hope for me? Well, I probably still won’t be able to golf, but getting custom-fit clubs sure looks like fun!

Like to learn more?

Learn more about what PING did and their nFlight app here.
See a cool video that shows folks from PING talking through the app and showing demos here.
Find an nFlight fitting location near you here!

Technorati Tags: Software-plus-services,WPF,User Experience,golf

Cool new spatial analysis for SharePoint users

john.mullinax — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:30:08 GMT

I’ve always been sort of a map nut. In fact, I love maps (there, I said it! :) ). Way back when I was Director of Elections for a county out in the State of Washington, I used to spend a lot of time with maps. In particular, we had a map of the county with transparent layers that folded down showing election precinct lines, school district lines, hospital district lines, and boundaries for all kinds of other districts. We even had a “Television Reception District” (really).

Working with the underlying maps and the transparent data sheets wasn’t always easy. Each transparency held data that was very precisely hand-drawn by a civil engineer (which meant we only had a couple map sets), and it was a challenge to get more than a few people gathered around the map and transparencies at any one time. Thinking back on this experience – only 15 years ago – it’s amazing how far we’ve come in our ability to make maps and spatial analysis accessible to people. And I’m happy to see that progress on this front continues!

The most recent advancement – IDV Solutions released Visual Fusion 4.0 today (thanks to Owen Allen for the tip). This solution integrates with SharePoint and uses Virtual Earth as the “base map” and plots data over the map onto transparent layers created with Silverlight. If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you already know I’m a fan of Silverlight and Virtual Earth, and Visual Fusion shows a great use of these technologies.

That said, what stands out to me is the SharePoint integration the solution offers. You can plot data from SharePoint lists – which makes it very easy for users to add their own ad hoc data. Also, you can plot data accessed via the Business Data Catalog – which makes it easy to add data from corporate data sources. And, you can even make Visual Fusion’s spatial analysis capability available to your SharePoint users as a web part! This should go a long way toward making spatial analysis available to a wider audience!

Here’s a a screenshot from IDV Solutions’ interactive demo that happens to show swine flu cases via an RSS feed. Click on the pic below for a larger version, or click here to play with demo yourself.

By the way, Visual Fusion 4.0 is a less common example of what Microsoft means by the term “Software-plus-services”. Software-plus-Services is about software from the cloud, on servers, and on devices all working together well… most examples tend to focus on either the cloud, or the device (phone, PC, etc) and cloud working together. In contrast, Visual Fusion shows software working together across server and cloud tiers, as well as composition of multiple services into a solution – a very useful solution profile!

Technorati Tags: Visual Fusion,IDV Solutions,Spatial Analysis,mapping,SharePoint,Silverlight,Virtual Earth,software-plus-services

Wait, does All Things D / BoomTown actually agree with Microsoft on Software-plus-services?

john.mullinax — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:25:21 GMT

Did I just hear Kara Swisher from All Things Digital’s BoomTown blog let it slip that she agrees with Microsoft on “Software-plus-services”?

Kara interviewed Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, about 10 days back and asked him about his view on innovation and trends in the industry. See interview below (the Software-plus-services stuff starts about 1:45 in).

I think Kara works hard to be neutral and balanced in her reporting, and this interview is a good example of that. As she discloses on BoomTown, she’s also married to a Google VP, and I’ve never known Kara to go easy on Microsoft. So getting validation from Kara on Software-plus-services (albeit with a subtle poke at Microsoft for coining the new term) is noteworthy.

By the way, Software-plus-services also shows up in a session title at Interop Las Vegas this May. Is the concept starting to get some recognition as a distinct and valuable evolution from “pure-play” SaaS?

If you’re not familiar with the Software-plus-services term, it’s first and foremost an evolutionary industry trend to marry the best of rich experiences in software with services from the cloud. Elop does a nice job explaining it in the video (at Kara’s request), and gives examples of the Facebook iPhone app, Amazon Kindle, and Google Chrome (which is both a browser and a delivery vehicle for Google-made rich client software).

Internally at Microsoft, Software-plus-services is also a strategy to lead the industry at enabling amazing experiences that bring together the best of software in the cloud, on servers, and across a wide array of “edge” devices – PCs, phones, cars, and more.

You can learn more about Software-plus-services here.

Enjoy the video!

Technorati Tags: BoomTown,All Things D,software-plus-services

Symmetry between SQL Server and SQL Data Services – video interview

john.mullinax — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:32:05 GMT

Patric McElroy, Group Program Manager of SQL Data Services team talks with Michael Cote of RedMonk about what’s coming with the new SDS, and where there will be symmetry with SQL Server. Really nice interview!

This was recorded a few weeks back at MIX09. A few nuggets that stood out to me:

SDS will support TDS protocol and T-SQL at v1 release. More in the SQL Data Services FAQ here.
For 80% of apps deployment to the cloud will simply mean pointing the deployment scripts to a new location. The same rich toolsets used by DBAs and data programmers will still be the best way to work.
Improve compliance/management of departmental apps and data without the deployment friction of creating and enforcing internal centralized database hosting operations.

Technorati Tags: Azure,SQL Data Services,cloud

Video – Zune on Windows Mobile 7 vs. The Greater Sum

john.mullinax — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:17:50 GMT

Just saw this fun video from a post over at Live Side… funny thing, they hone in on whether or not one of the device interfaces is a preview of Windows Mobile 7 with a Zune app. To me, the the far more interesting thing is the qualitatively new, boundary-spanning experience they paint using technologies that are here (or almost here) today.

Take, for example, the guy playing a video game, getting pinged with an IM (XBOX Live and ties in Messenger contacts), and then using touch UI (coming in Windows 7) to switch over to a rich graphical interface (either WPF or Silverlight 3 running out-of-browser) monitoring his cloud app presumably hosted on Windows Azure (available now in CTP, with monitoring APIs), and using the UI to literally “dial up” the capacity for his app.

One place the video doesn’t go far enough… I’ll be surprised if someone in the future has to go in and manually turn up the capacity. Ok, maybe in the first release. But I think the direction of the thinking is that you will define rules that automagically keep response time under a certain threshold, up to a specific cost point… and then enforce new rules if the cost point is crossed. For example, “maintain less than 3 second response time, up to $500/month, and then keep a 4 second response time up to $1000/month”.

Of course, if the guy doesn’t get interrupted during his video game, then you don’t get to show the cool touch UI or capacity dial. :)

Video: Overnight Success

See more “vision” videos and info here.

Technorati Tags: software-plus-services,vision,video,windows azure,windows live,WPF,future

View MIX09 sessions all online!

john.mullinax — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:10:51 GMT

Thanks to the MIX team for getting a nice, organized list of all the MIX09 session videos up – complete with multiple video formats, as well as slides!

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/All

Not as good as being there, but essentially great, free training!

Naturally, the keynotes are definitely worth seeing, and also, I like this session on the Windows Live Messenger Toolkit. It does a nice job showing examples of how Live Services can make your site more social and engaging, and also how easy it is to get started.

Unlike the Live Framework/Mesh part of Live Services – which is extremely cool in its own right, but still in CTP and not yet ready for production use -- everything Chris Parker from the Windows Live team shows in this session is ready to go into production on your site today.

The screen shot above is from the last demo in the video – it shows Chris picking an item from a list, dragging it over and dropping it on one of his Windows Live Messenger contacts, and that kicking of an IM to the user with a link to the item he picked from the list. Basically, a free and easy way to add real time collaboration to your web site! Very cool.

Equally cool, Live Services lets people leverage their existing social network and social capabilities (via Windows Live infrastructure) on your site instead of asking them to invest in creating yet another collection of friends. I believe this is important because, frankly, I’m sensing some “social networking fatigue” – users like social capabilities, but they don’t especially like the proliferation of their data and fragmentation of their social experiences online. In other words, allowing users to leverage their existing social networks contributes to a thoughtful consumer experience.

As a bonus for site owners, helping people connect with their networks on your site makes it easier for them to share your site with their friends – which helps drive both more traffic and more time on site.

Learn more about Live Services in general at dev.live.com, and more specifically about leveraging Messenger in your site here.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: MIX,Free Learning,Live Services,Messenger,Windows Live,Social

Interview: AMD in Microsoft booth at SxSW showing best of cloud and PC together

john.mullinax — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:24:42 GMT

Down at South by Southwest Interactive (aka, SxSWi) for the first time this year. What a great event! Spent most of the day working the Microsoft booth – had a great day in the booth starting out with Hanu, as well as special guest and Casey Gotcher from AMD.

Casey, who is a Director of Marketing with the chip company, spent 3 hours with us talking about how a new app they’re working on for AMD boxes called Fusion Media Explorer. Casey says it helps you explore, experience, and discover your media – no matter where it is – on your PC or online.

It has a super cool WPF UI, and finds, filters, and searches simultaneously across PC media archives, as well flickr and facebook, as well as all of your facebook friends (that you choose). Aside from being cool, this made for some, ahem, interesting, demo moments -- including a pic of this guy and his friends, as you never knew for sure what you would find!

I asked Casey to join us to show what AMD is working on because I think his app is a really great example of how software in the cloud and on PCs can work together to enable compelling new experiences. This is a big part of Microsoft’s vision on the future of computing – software in the cloud, on servers, and on all kinds of devices (and across platforms!) should just work together well!

Instead of reading my ramblings, take a look at what how Casey explained his Fusion Media Explorer in the booth yesterday (and please forgive some ambient noise from my Canon SD880.)

Technorati Tags: sxsw,software-plus-services

Getting your next yacht with Microsoft Surface – more news

john.mullinax — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:24:29 GMT

Some additional news today about getting your next Lazzara Yacht with Microsoft Surface (see here for original post). There are really two parts to this story:

Lazzara’s announcement marks the first time Microsoft Surface is being made available to consumers.
Adding Surface, and some special applications for Lazzara owners, to the yachting experience can improve the yacht ownership experience (already pretty good, I’m guessing!) in interesting ways.

The last post focused on the announcement, and this follow-up is more on what Surface and some unique applications can mean for a yachting experience.

Rich Lazzara, VP of Sales and Marketing, at Lazzara Yachts has links to pics and more info here, and says:

“With the Surface technology on the yacht owners will be able to research the various ports of call they are traveling to and find out about activities, events, restaurants, services in those locations. In addition it will also be used to display the owners manual, family pictures, control on board audio system and link to other Surface devices. With the launch of a Lazzara Yacht Club Social Network this year owners will be able to link to each other and network and share information around their yachting lifestyle.”

Additionally, MegaYachtNews has this take on pairing Lazzara Yachts with Surface.

“…suffice it to say that Microsoft Surface will improve the ownership experience, the guest experience, and even the crew’s experience dramatically.”

They also have a link to a video of the first Surface app for Lazzara taken at the Miami Yacht and Brokerage Show this weekend (which is open through tomorrow, 18-February).

Specifically, Lazzara is working with Microsoft partner Infusion on the following Surface apps for use on Lazzara Yachts:

Trip Planning – Nautical Way Finder with GPS and point of interest suggestions
Tour Guide – interactive tour guide concierge (image shown to right)
Ship Management – onboard ship management and controls
Social Networking – share photos and activities with friends and families – including connecting with Lazzara Yacht owners’ own social networking web site.

Some folks might be wondering how any of these apps will really be different from just bringing a laptop on board or having a computer installed in the yacht? The answer lies in designing to leverage the unique capabilities of Surface. Specifically, design points for Surface apps include:

Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content through touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
Multi‐touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
Multi‐user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face‐to‐face computing experience.
Object recognition. Users can place physical objects

The technology behind the design for these applications includes a range of software and services working together in harmony to enable a new kind of experience. (BTW, at a basic level this is what Microsoft means when it says “software-plus-services”.) Some of the software and services:

Software: Microsoft Surface (itself based on Windows Vista), WPF, Visual Studio, Expression
Services: Virtual Earth, Live Framework, and Windows Live ID – all part of Live Services.

Finally, if you’re not able to get down to Miami for the show before it closes tomorrow, you can also see the new Lazzara Yachts, along with Microsoft Surface, at the Dubai International Yacht Show, March 3-7, 2009.

Technorati Tags: lazzara,surface,yachts

Making tool bars interesting again. No, really.

john.mullinax — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:04:00 GMT

Here's something interesting from InfoSpace... a tool bar! No, really. In fact, see for yourself over at Sam Chenaur's site. He's got a nice screen grab, too. This is not your "father's toolbar".

I tried to get my own screen grab from the Recipe toolbar I installed, but it's really quite hidden until you engage with it... so it's completely innocuous until you want to use it... and then it looks great. Other notes:

The requirements say IE7, but seems to work just fine for me on IE8 so far.
The UI is context sensitive, and uses some of the same conventions as the "ribbon" in Office UI.
I like this is as an non-traditional "software-plus-services" example to "get" what that's all about... (assuming for the moment you can have a "non-traditional example" for a term without too much of a tradition yet!) :-)

What I mean about "software-plus-services" is this: software that runs on a computer you control, plus services delivered over the internet from a computer you don't control, working together to enable cool new experiences that make both software and services better than either by themselves. There are certainly more complicated ways to describe software-plus-services (sometimes called "S+S" around Microsoft), and i'm frequently guilty :-) ... but that's the essence of it.

I'm guessing a bit about how this all goes together, but it appears that from a users' perspective, the software pieces include the tool bar itself, the XAML UI, and Silverlight to render the XAML. The services pieces come into play because the toolbar hosts a couple services (at least): recipes and pics from AllRecipes.com, and also a search product from InfoSpace called Nation that aggregates yahoo, google, ask, and live search as a meta search engine (that is, the search service itself is actually a simple composite of still more services).

You may be saying, "big deal -- none of these things are very interesting or unique by themselves." I fully agree. And yet together, they create something completely new in character as to be, literally, unique. And that's really the punch line in some ways with Software-plus-services -- thinking about how collections of software and services can go together and make each other better is a powerful way to create compelling new experiences!

So hop on over to Sam's site and check out his and pic and what he has to say about his hand in helping InfoSpace do this good work. Or, if you can't wait, jump straight to InfoSpace's toolbars here.

Live Blogging at PDC - Microsoft says it will offer ALL Enterprise software online

john.mullinax — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:14:00 GMT

Not moving to simple software as a service, but providing a choice of on premise or subscription from the cloud. Ray Ozzie calls has called this Server-service symmetry. And the online services will not just be “fixed” applications, but in the future will be platforms that support custom solution development. Additionally, hybrid approaches will be possible that lets people run different parts of an application in different places – servers on-premise, clients, phones, and cloud. And do this securely in a way that let’s customers use their own identity management solutions.

To my mind, a this represents an inflection point for the industry, Microsoft, and for our customers and partners.

Technorati Tags: Software-plus-services,cloud computing,PDC 2008