Microsoft Excecutive Briefing Center visit about 'Cloud' with a special event at the end: 'the ASHcloud'

The 13th of April me and my collegue took a plane to Seattle. We planned our trip back to The Netherlands on the 18th. Well... The volcano 'Eyjafjallajökull' on Iceland changed the plans of a lot of people depending on the 'Cloud'. It took us some extra days to get back to Europe.

Cloud was the theme of the Microsoft Excecutive Briefing. Azure and BPOS. These developments at Microsoft are huge. Major investments in this area. Checkout the -We're All In- statement of Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer at his keynote at the University of Washington.

During this briefing the latest developments were unveiled. We had the opportunity to take a look at the investments in datacenters all over the world. More important is the evolution in the way the datacenters are build, a different level of utilizing 'flexponsive' computing and storage.

This is the layer 'Azure' is build on. Eventualy most of Microsofts products will be ported to this platform in the cloud. At this moment BPOS is not yet build on the Azure platform.

BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) is the name of the suite that includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. This package with this terrible name has been given the code name 'Union' and will be rebranded. Expect this to happen at the WPC10 (Microsoft Worldpartner Conference) in Washington DC July this year.

The functionality set of Union is much, much more comprehensive than the functionality available now in BPOS. The first step is the launch of all wave14 developments (Exchange2010, Office2010, SharePoint2010 etc). One of the biggest complaints in the market (partners and customers) was the problem that the SharePoint part of BPOS lacked the possibility to be customized. Well you have some possibility's to make changes, but no custom code in the multi tennant BPOS environment. A single tennant environment (dedicated version) is available from 5000 seats. This is all going to change.

The pricing per seat per month has been changed since the introduction about a year ago. In the Netherlands you can have the functionality of a total set for just €8,52 pppm. So you get a Mailserver; a collaboration site where you can store your documents, share information etc; one can setup online conversations and even choose to do so if a person appears to be available (presence). Think of the infrastructure needed to build and maintain this in your own datacenter!

House of the future at the Microsoft Campus - an impressioin

Short impression of the house of the future at the Microsoft Campus. I've been there March 2009 visiting an EBC. Some very interesting technologies and implementations - not even this far of reality.

Seattle - The community is roaring

The community is roaring

You could have expected a storm of reactions in blogs, wiki's, forums etc. And of course there are people who are enthusiastic and there are some rumors. The critics posted are not only about organisation (Mark Miller for instance), but also about what the Microsoft Marketing Machine is trying to tell the world (Michael Sampson).

The MS Sharepoint Conference in Seattle at the state convention & trade center is just one day old and there are a lot of people here. Some are very critical about the number of people registered. Personally I did not experience this problem of overcrowded sessions. I hope it will stay that way for me.

More interesting critics are those who trying to question that what is said by Microsoft about Sharepoint. As stated by Michael Sampson for instance, what was Bill Gates talking about in his keynote.

"Breaking the milestone of 100 million licenses sold and surpassing sales of $1 billion this year, SharePoint is helping customers solve their most pressing information management needs."

Is it true that already 100 million licenses are sold? I do like to think that this is true. Are 100 million people using it already. No I do not think so. But by putting these two tings in one sentence leaves you the opportunity to think so. Even to think that this is the holy grail.

Michael has a point when he is writing in his blog that Sharepoint is slipped in the platform rather than sold to solve the business pains. So it is hard to believe this is THE business driver, or the only business driver.

On the other hand I do not think this Trojan horse is a bad platform, not capable to solve a lot of problems. It has been smart to slip it in and yes marketing of Microsoft is successful in selling the dream of the holy grail. But still there are opportunities. We can leave them there if we do not believe in them, but still. We are here in Seattle with about 4000 professionals from all over the world.

This holy grail thing is also used on the engineers who are exposed to all this 'good stuff'. It is all easy, very fast, out of the box or even better OOB. It is hard to stay on the ground, not to take the story for granted.

So that's our job at this Sharepoint conference. Think about what Microsoft and partners are telling you. Keep your own experience in mind and ask yourself is this a holy grail or a Trojan horse? Is this a opportunity or a hoax? Can I be creative with it, fill some of the needs?

And do not forget, have some fun to!

Third day in Seattle - Keynote Bill Gates

Start MS Sharepoint Server 2007 conference - Seattle

3 Maart 2008 de eerste dag MOSS 2007 conferentie start 's ochtends met een keynote van Bill Gates (en vrienden - Tom Rizzo, John Betz ea.). Inhoudelijk niet heel spectaculair, althans als je met hoge verwachtingen naar een conferentie afreist. De aanwezigheid van Gates heeft die hoop ook aangewakkerd.

De conferentie blijft niet helemaal verstoken van nieuwtjes, maar wel steken bij geruchten en uitspraken die al een tijd de ronde doen: Bijvoorbeeld het onderstaande bericht geeft weer wat Bill Gates over de Microsoft ambities heeft verteld rondom Sharepoint Online.

REDMOND, Wash. — March 2, 2008 — Monday from the annual Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference, Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., will announce that the company will offer Microsoft Online Services to businesses of all sizes. This announcement marks a significant step for Microsoft toward expanding its software plus services strategy.

“The combination of software plus services gives customers advanced choice and flexibility in how they access and manage software,” Gates said. “With Microsoft Online Services, businesses can deploy software as a subscription service, from servers they manage on-site, or a combination of the two, depending on their specific needs. In the future, customers and partners should expect to see this kind of choice and flexibility for all of Microsoft’s software and server products.”

Today Microsoft also opened a limited beta trial of the new services; U.S.-based companies can register for the trial at http://www.mosbeta.com. The new services are scheduled to be generally available to businesses of all sizes in the second half of the year. Lees verder...

Een aantal kernwoorden uit de keynote van Bill and friends:

• Sharepoint Online - Cloud Platform
• Search
  

Mmmhhh Niet spectaculair. Later meer.

Second day in Seattle

Seattle

Op de tweede dag in Seattle de tourist uitgehangen. Zondag in een 24x7 economie was even wennen. Althans een beetje jet lagged had ik het toch niet in de gaten. 2 Maart een fiets gehuurd en vanuit Down town Seattle een rondje rond het meer gemaakt.
Zo vanaf de fiets veel kunnen zien van de omgeving. Fantastisch weer, veel mede fietsers op de weg en Amerikaanse gezinnetjes in het park. Day well spent. Het was de moeite waard. Hoewel... Het was al even geleden dat ik mijn fiets de sporen gaf en dat heb ik geweten. Vooral de terugweg vanaf de Apple store in University Village (ik heb me beheerst) was een kleinde hel. Bedankt Bert.
Het is ook de tweede dag dat we bloot gesteld worden aan de All American -Hello How are you today. I'm Zack, I will serve you today. If you need ANYTHING just call for me. - Voor ons Europeanen is dat even wennen. We kenmerken het al snel als overdreven, oppervlakkig.
Aan de andere kant als je dan als toerist op zoek bent naar de juiste afslag en je durft een kaart te raadplegen aan de kant van de weg, dan zal die zelfde Zack je ook weer komen vragen of you need help. Is dat oppervlakkig of beroepsdeformatie? Of is dat toch een diep gewortelde cultuur waarbij het gewoon heel normaal is om de medemens te helpen?

First day in Seattle

Seattle

Today my first day in Seattle. Yesterday landed at Tacoma 15:00 Seattle time and checked in at the Sheraton. In the evening site seeing in town and had some diner downtown. After 25 hour non-stop enough for the day.

Today it's sunday. I'm wondering what is Seattle doing at sunday. Let's find out today.