Gartner predicts that by 2013, only two vendors will be perceived as leaders in both cloud computing and enterprise computing. Those two vendors are likely to be Microsoft and VMware, they said.
They went on to say that Microsoft has “one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud”.
Read more here
http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2010/10/gartner_will_microsoft_and_vmw.php
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Posted by Paul S
Ray Ozzie may be leaving Microsoft but he has just posted a very interesting blog article about advances in technology. Key points from his blog are:
The past five years have been breathtaking. But the next five years will bring about yet another inflection point – a transformation that will once again yield unprecedented opportunities catalyzed by the huge & inevitable shift in apps & infrastructure that’s truly now just begun.
We’re moving toward a world of
Moving forward, these ‘connected devices’ will also frequently take the form of embedded devices of varying purpose including telemetry & contro – from the remotely diagnosed elevator, to the sensors on our highways and throughout our environment.
For each of us who can clearly envision the end-game, the opportunity is to recognize both the inevitability and value inherent in the big shift ahead, and to do what it takes to lead our customers into this new world.
In the short term, this means imagining the ‘killer apps & services’ and ‘killer devices’ that match up to a broad range of customer needs as they’ll evolve in this new era.
Whether in the realm of communications, productivity, entertainment or business, tomorrow’s experiences & solutions are likely to differ significantly even from today’s most successful apps. Tomorrow’s experiences will be inherently transmedia & trans-device. They’ll be centered on your own social & organizational networks.
For both individuals and businesses, new consumption & interaction models will change the game. It’s inevitable.
It’s the dawn of a new day – the sun having now arisen on a world of continuous services and connected devices.
See the full article at
http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/
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Posted by Paul S
Beginning with Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft is not bundling Crystal Reports in with their software. Crystal Reports can instead be downloaded directly from SAP’s site. The product is currently at beta 2 with “production release planned for November 2010″.
-Krip
Leave a Comment » | Reporting, Visual Studio | Tagged: Crystal Reports, reporting, Visual Studio 2010 | Permalink
Posted by Krip
The long awaited Windows Phone 7 has finally launched! The first devices were sold in New Zealand yesterday.
Handsets in other countries including the UK go on sale today, and if you’re in the US, well it looks like you’ll just have to wait until 8 November.
There’s no doubt the handsets themselves (like HTC’s) are very powerful devices. They always have been. The real question is: Can the OS deliver and compete with the likes of iPhone and Android? Is it user-friendly? This really remains to be seen. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was always very developer focused. I will applaud Microsoft for their fantastic Visual Studio integration for developing for WM and have no doubt it’s just as good if not better for WP7.
However phones are about the general public and it will all be about the apps including ease of use, ease of download and installation, ease of upgrade, finger friendliness, and social media integration. From what I’ve seen they may even have surpassed the competition when it comes to that last point. Let’s see how it pans out.
Oh and by the way, the UK division of MSDN will run a competition for a free handset. More details here.
-Krip
Leave a Comment » | Windows Phone | Tagged: Windows 7, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone | Permalink
Posted by Krip
Last week I spent the day at the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 Europe event. My objective was to focus on the new features of Dynamics CRM 2011.
Outlook integration has improved significantly, benefiting from using Outlook objects for entity views rather than embedded web pages like previous versions. The advantage of this is that you get features such as sorting and filtering for entity views (i.e. Contact, Account), making the user experience similar to working with standard Outlook lists such as your inbox.
The User experience has changed considerably within the Web client, I think mostly for the better. The first thing most people will notice is that Tabs on forms have been replaced with continuous forms including links, compressible/expandable sections and a fixed header and footer (I’ll reserve judgement on this!).
I could go on for ages about all the new features, however to spare you from that I have listed a few of my favourites below.
My favourite features include:
Some disappointments:
Leave a Comment » | Dynamics CRM | Tagged: Conference, Convergence, CRM, CRM5, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 | Permalink
Posted by Steve Adam
