Another reason to set Bing as your homepage

If you haven't tried Microsoft's latest answer to Google - the Bing search page - you should. I say this not as a Microsoft shill (even though I am one), but as a user who has seen worthwhile results out of it. Bing search is every bit as good as Google's. Microsoft has been working for the better part of a decade to earn the previous sentence, and they have finally done it.

Outside of search excellence, I love Bing, and have it set as my homepage, because Bing brings you, every day, a stunning image you will see nowhere else. Some of the best, most original photography in the world is featured, for free, on Bing, with a new image appearing daily.

Today's image, of a flower farm in the Netherlands, is a particularly good example, and prompted this post. Click on the picture below for a much larger, and much more impressive, view.

Bonus YouTube: Bill Gates' last day at MSFT

I can't figure out if this is self-deprecating or obnoxiously arrogant. Oh well, its mildly amusing either way...

Random Microsoft joke

One of Microsoft's finest techs was drafted and sent to boot camp.

At the rifle range, he was given some instruction, a rifle and bullets. He fired several shots at the target. The report came from the target area that all attempts had completely missed the target.

The tech looked at his rifle, and then at the target. He looked at the rifle again, and then at the target again. He put his finger over the end of the rifle barrel and squeezed the trigger with his other hand. The end of his finger was blown off, whereupon he yelled toward the target area: "It's leaving here just fine, the trouble must be at your end!"

Daily YouTube: Microsoft humor

Um, I think they're kidding. But, I'm not completely sure. You decide:

Microsoft MVP humor

Microsoft certifies a group of what they call "Most Valuable Professionals", or MVPs. Microsoft MVPs are the people who can answer the most arcane questions you can imagine about a specific Microsoft product; for example, the Microsoft Word MVPs can answer pretty much anything you can come up with regarding Word.

I work with a couple of MVPs, and they are freaking geniuses.

Anyway, the MVPs had their annual meeting at the Mother Ship in Redmond last week. Bill Gates spoke to them. Here is how one of the Microsoft Project MVPs, Jack Dahlgren, described the meeting. VERY funny!

A vote for Vista

Brad Feld weighs in on the "To Upgrade or Not To Upgrade" question - he's a Vista fan, preferring it to both XP and Mac OSX running on what sounds like a sweet set-up.

I haven't taken the plunge yet, as Catapult is still sorting out licensing for Vista and Office 2007 (An aside - this seems awfully silly to me. We're a Gold Certified Partner, for God's sake. What's the hang up?) but will as soon as I get the official okey dokey from our IT group. I'm looking forward to it.

For the IT pros out there - I suspect that, for those of us in the trenches who have fought with XP for the past 4 years, the thought of upgrading is compelling. However, I empathize with your struggles to justify it. I'll keep looking for ammo you can use with your management to support an upgrade.

Electronic opportunity knocks

New rules go into place today regarding how companies' electronic records, including emails and instant messages, are handled by the legal system. Long story short (if anyone still says that): ALL electronic documents are subject to discovery and have to be provided as part of pre-trial prep.

These seemingly onerous regulations represent and ENORMOUS opporunity for Microsoft and the Microsoft Partner Community (of which I am a proud part). The new version of Exchange (the client/server email application which is running just about everywhere now), Vista, Live Communication Server (the internal instant messaging application which really hasn't managed to get much traction yet), and Office are all tailor-made to help comply with the new directives.

The trick is, as always, planning, configuration of the tools, and training for both IT pros and end users. And that's where your friendly, neighborhood Microsoft partner come in. Folks in my line of work specialize in exactly those tasks. The good ones in the Partner world (and there are lots of good ones, but many charlatans too) have proven methods for helping businesses plan for and implement what they really want and need. Partners should, and by-and-large do, provide expertise in both the requirements of the new rules, the capabilities of the software tools, and an experience-based body of knowledge which will speed an implementation and greatly enhance it's chances of success.

If this sounds like an advert for certain Microsoft Partners, so be it. The point here is businesses have new rules they must comply with. There's a group of extraordinarily smart people out there who stand by ready to help.

Another blog worth reading

Jim Allchin, longtime head honcho of the Windows group at Microsoft (and, therefore, one of the top 10 most powerful people in tech) has started to blog. One assumes that, with Vista about to RTM and his own January retirement date approaching, he finally has found the time.

This is another one to keep an eye on. His unfortunate name aside (Allchin? Tragic.), this guy is no dummy.

Office 2007 RTMs

Last Friday, the fine folks at Microsoft officially released the Office 2007 suite to manufacturing. What that means in regular-folk-speak: The product is complete and is being pressed onto CDs right now. Business customers will get it VERY soon (like within the next two weeks), while the general public will get it early in 2007.

And, by the way, Jim Rapoza from eWeek Micorosoft Watch gets it absolutely right when he points out that SharePoint (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or MOSS) is the biggest piece of a very big pie. MOSS is really the base technology which the entire release revolves around.

If you're looking to get into the Micorosoft Partner-o-sphere, I would STRONGLY suggest you immerse yourself in MOSS. And, once you're an expert, give me a ring - I'll just bet we'll have a spot for you here at Catapult Systems.

One last addition: Vista has gone gold as well. That happened today.

There're gonna be some parties in Redmond tonight!

Next gen Microsoft products - the visual

Here's the packaging for Vista and Office 2007.

I have no idea why this is so fascinating to me, but it is.

Life after Bill: Microsoft tries to reinvent itself, again

Another great article in Wired this month, this time looking at Microsoft as the Gates era winds down and the Ozzie era spins up.

As seems to always be the case, Microsoft finds itself beset by tough competition on many fronts - Google is now offering Web-based apps which could compete with Office, YouTube is way out in front in online video publishing, Apple dominates the electronic music and video business, etc. This is, of course, nothing new for the boys and girls in Redmond. Since the early 90s, company after company and innovation after innovation has been hailed as the Microsoft-killer, and none have lived up to the hype yet.

However, that doesn't mean Microsoft can rest on it's laurels. Far from it.

Ray Ozzie, the heir to Bill Gates' throne in Redmond, is trying to shift Microsoft from a big, scheduled, marketed software release company into a much faster, much more nimble purveyor of online services. This is akin, as stated in the Wired article, to an aircraft maintenance worker, used to rolling an airplane into a hanger for regular maintenance, being asked to do all his/her maintenance work while the plane is in flight.

Can Microsoft pull it off? Can an enormous (and enormously successful) organization change itself in a significant way? While Microsoft has done so before (think back to 1995 and the start of the Internet Revolution), overall human history says it's unlikely.

This promises to be a fascinating struggle to watch (and be involved in, albeit in a small way). For starters, you should go read this article.

The business case for upgrading to Windows Vista

Fascinating post on Microsoft Watch today, examining the business case for/against upgrading to the next version of Microsoft Windows, the highly touted Vista.

If you ask Microsoft, Vista is going to add significant value in a number of areas, including ease of deployment, reduced support, increased security, improved reliability, and increased user efficiency. All true, and much of this is quantifiable.

However, the part the Microsoft won’t spend much (any) time discussing includes beefy hardware requirements to run it, a hefty price tag to upgrade, and the professional services required to deploy some of the really cool collaboration features included in the OS.

As a good Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, I’m going to tell you an upgrade will pay for itself, but I’d have a tough time proving it.

How do you quantify the cost savings of security improvements? It’s like spending money on better Mississippi River levees, right? It’s sunk dough until you need those levees. Even then, how do you prove the increased spend was what protected you?

User efficiency? Same thing, how do you prove it saved you money? Some of the efficiency will be offset by the user’s ability to do more things. So, yeah, they’re more efficiently turning out more/better work, but you didn’t save money there.

Microsoft (and those of us in the Partner community) is going to have its hands full quantifying a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) for both Vista and Office 2007. The “shiny new toy” effect only works for geeks, which describes very few CFOs.

It’s worth mentioning that this is not a new phenomenon. Every time a major software upgrade is released, by Microsoft or anyone else in the business, we go thru this same argument and same “prove it” exercise. As always, the proof will be partially objective, but partially a leap of faith as well.

Vista delayed again?

According to Gartner, Microsoft will delay the next version of Windows from January 2007 to April-June 2007. Microsoft denies this.

I have no insight into this news. I can tell you that a great deal of emphasis is being applied by Microsoft to do Vista as right as possible. On the flip side, delays are always frowned upon by the Softies.

On the whole, my impression is Microsoft is more adverse to bad press due to bugs than they are to bad press due to delays, so this would not surprise me.

Microsoft Project Conference 2006 impressions

It's been two weeks since the Microsoft Project Conference was held in Seattle, so it's WAY past time for me to post some of my impressions from the event. Without further ado:

The conference was an excellent event in just about every way that matters. I liked the content, the execution, the venue, the attendees, the food, even the weather and the chairs. I have no major complaints of any sort, and only a few little quibbles to honk about.

Some specifics:

First and foremost, Microsoft Office Project 12 looks like an enormous improvement in just about every major area of the product. The desktop client is still with us, and some usability improvements (multi-level undo and highlighted schedule changes being the biggest) make this the easiest-to-use version of the venerable MS Project product ever. The communication between Project Pro and Project Server looks to be much better thought-out and more efficient, although I really want to see it working - I have concerns about keeping info synchronized between the desktop and the server. PWA does a heck of a lot more than it used to, is much cleaner, and is easier to modify - all thanks to it's newfound status as a legit SharePoint app. Better reporting, more configuration changes, and more-solidified time reporting make the product finally (I think) ready for prime time.

EVERYONE in the tiny, incestuous world of EPM was there. I ran across folks I've worked with, customers, contacts from Microsoft, bloggers, MVPs, contractors, VARs, partners, competitors, and others from all over the EPM ecosystem. It was tremendous to connect/reconnect with so many people in the field.

Microsoft usually puts on a good show, and this was one of the best that I've seen. The Westin in Seattle is a first-rate hotel, rooms were scheduled correctly, signage was omni-present and helpful, the Westin staff was omni-present and helpful, the food was plentiful and, for the most part, very good (although I wound up having a salami sandwich for breakfast one morning - what's up w/ that?).

Speakers and sessions were uniformly good and appropriate. I have to complain a bit about how jammed the schedule was. I counted at least 5 breakout-slots where I wanted to be in at least two different sessions, and in some cases three or more. There was EASILY enough content to justify a four-day conference. We'll get all of the material on a DVD in the next few weeks, but my experience w/ conference DVDs is they are usually good cures for insomnia. We were all there, and I think a lot of participants would echo my thoughts on extending the duration of the conference so we could get to more of the content.

INS was well represented both in attendees and visibility. We had an appropriate number of people at the conference, although more would have been OK too. We were a Gold Sponsor of the event, so INS signs were everywhere. Sandy Sharma (my hero) did a couple of breakout sessions and did a masterful demo on-stage w/ Steve Ballmer during the keynote on Thursday. Even your goofy correspondent got into the action, presenting w/ my pals at Project Hosts during one of the breakfast sessions.

To sum it all up, the Project Conference was a great experience, in large part because the news from Microsoft is all good with regard to the product, and in smaller part due to the planning and execution of the event itself, and the response from the EPM community in terms of attendance and participation.

You can read more about the conference from Dieter, Dr. Porkchop, MPA, Jack Dahlgren, Brian Kennemer, and probably a bunch of other places I don't even know about.

Microsoft news of the day

Microsoft has announced that Beta 1 of the new Office 12 suite will be available in 2 to 3 weeks.

Beta 1 is generally a very rough version of the product with many unfinished features and bugs to be expected. Beta 1 testers are a select group who have to apply for and be accepted to the program.

No official word yet on a more-widely available public Beta (which was Beta 2 for Office 2003), but one assumes that it will be available sometime in the spring.

Monday is another big day for Microsoft

On Monday, Microsoft will officially launch the three products that make up the application platform of the future. Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 will be the underpins for everything that's coming next year.

Sorry for geeking out, but this is a biggie!

Good news from MSFT

Big earnings news from Redmond. And the really exciting stuff doesn't even show up until next year.

BIG event in Microsoft-land

SQL Server 2005 has been released to manufacturing (along w/ several other major upgrades to existing Microsoft products).

While "Yukon" (as it's been called during development) has been coming for some time, this represents a HUGE step forward for Microsoft. All of their major server products, including my beloved Project Server, have been based on SQL Server 2000. While there have been a few service packs released over the years, the database product hasn't fundamentally changed in over 5 years, which is an eternity in the software biz.

We in the Microsoft partner community have seen most of the new SQL product, and it is a vast improvement. Look for lots of feature and functionality gains in most of Microsoft's enterprise products in the coming months as a result of this launch.

Another MSFT backer, but I said it first

Two Brad Feld items in two days. I am NOT sucking up. Really. I resent the inference.

Regardless, Brad is quite bullish on MSFT for 2006. As is a certain Project Management Consultant with a slightly smaller readership. And we agree on why it will be a good year in Redmond.

My quote was there first. Just pointing that out for the record.

More regarding Microsoft geek blogs

Here's a Microsoft developer blog starter-kit. This is heavy-duty geek stuff - don't look for warm and fuzzy here.