Archive | December, 2011

Microsoft’s Big 2012

by on December 21, 2011 in Lync, Microsoft, Wave 15, Windows 8

Next year is a big year for Microsoft with new releases slated for Windows ( Desktop, Slate and Phone) and Office. There are also  announcements due for the next Xbox and how they aim to grow Skype but these are far outweighed by the need for Microsoft to get their Windows and Office release right.

The major issue that Microsoft must face and halt is the erosion of  the Windows Platform dominance which amongst all else is posing a major challenge to the Office franchise. The Office team are constantly being told within Redmond that they have to be ‘first and best with Windows’ but their customers are giving them a very different message. Customers are saying; we still rely on your Office software but we want it to be available on all major devices and operating systems ie Apple and Android.

This problem will not go away in 2012, even if Windows has the most successful launch.  Due to the general lag of the IT industry Android and Apple growth will only increase within the Enterprise in 2012. The calls from enterprise customers are only going to grow louder. How Microsoft respond will be fascinating – do they attempt to stall and give a ‘Wait for 8′ message or do they allow the Office team to invest further in iOS and Andoird?

Microsoft represent the best elements of consumer and Enterprise IT and they are in position to help Enterprise drive into consumerisation of IT but they can not let the dominance of Windows ‘best and first on Windows’ philosophy win out.  Ultimately if the non Windows franchise have to wait and stunt their non-Windows development Microsoft may find that the entire market has moved on without them.

I find Microsoft a fascinating company to observe.   They are so large and such an integral part of consumer and Enterprise IT you see different contradictions and tensions within the same organisation you tend not to see in other technology companies.  There is nothing more interesting than seeing the tension between products that are OS agnostic who wish to exploit the new devices and the Windows machine that attempts to squash this by insisting on the ‘best and first on Windows’.

Ultimately HTML5 may be the answer, it seems to be the one standard that  Apple, Google and Microsoft all broadly agree on.  Perhaps Microsoft developing a rich set of Office applications that work on all HMTL5 browsers and devices could be the big story of 2012.

 

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Lync Mobile Update

by on December 14, 2011 in Lync, Microsoft

Just a quick update for everyone:

Finally the iPad and iPhone are fully available within the Apple App store

Anyone seen the Symbian client?

Microsoft Android App now available in the Android Marketplace from here

Microsoft Windows Phone App now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace here

It is worth noting the first warning on the application download that you do need either an On Premise Lync installation with an Edge Server or Office 365 to take adavantage of the mobile clients.

The On Premise Lync pre-requisites will require some effort and skill set to enable. Although there is a wizard, it is misleading, you simply can’t run the wizard and be ready to install. There are other tasks to complete, I’m certainly not skilled enough top explain what these tasks are but a search of twitter on the #lync hashtag will bring up plenty of helpful blog posts.

Office365 also require some changes in the admin panel – the addition of Cnames for lyncdiscover is an example, be sure the read the documentation.

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Kinect is Just Over 1 Year Old

by on December 10, 2011 in Kinect, Microsoft

I’m a big fan of the Kinect technology.  I’ve written before that I think there is more business use to Kinect than entertainment and the release of a non commercial use SDK by Microsoft has resulted in a number of interesting concepts being developed.  Microsoft promise a commercial SDK early next year.

We are still very early into this technology life cycle.  I anticipate MS will attempt to embed Kinect into some of their products slated for a 2012 release such as Office, Sharepoint, Lync, Windows8 and Exchange but these are likely to be further early stage concepts rather than deeply embedded features within the product.

I would anticipate incremental development with Windows8 and a major push to embed Kinect into their post 2012 release of Office products which would be around 2014/2015.  This should give enough time for three important factors to mature which are not available today:

  • The sensor technology must improve (and I’m sure it will).  At the moment we all put up with the limitations because we are excited by the potential.  Mass adoption will not be so forgiving.  The technology must work first time, especially if it is to be deployed to business
  • A wider developer base will be available so business can exploit Kinect’s potential by hiring developers and service providers to deploy into their specific business environment
  • The camera must be smaller and built into laptops/slates.
I believe all three of the above will combine over the next 3 – 4 years.  In the meantime it gives us all time to understand how this technology can be applied in the real world and change for the better.

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Impending Lync Mobile Release

by on December 10, 2011 in Lync, Microsoft

Almost a year after the release of  Lync Microsoft has this week released the server code and supporting documentation for Lync mobile clients, with clients to follow sometime next week.  While the lack of voice and video capabilities has disappointed some within the community I think this release is a good start.

I emphasise that Microsoft hasto view this as a start of the Lync mobile journey and not an end.  Mobile and Tablet adoption is simply moving too fast within the corporate IT system for Lync to fall behind on these devices.  For Lync to justify its licence fee and be the unified communication platform in an enterprise it must provide feature parity with the desktop version.

This is no easy task for Redmond, especially when the Lync team have to go and invest in non Windows platforms.  While the Lync team understand the need for a broad base of clients I’m not so sure this message is well received by their Windows counterparts.  Future Lync mobile and tablets are for another day, lets take a look what Microsoft will be delivering this week.

First off a broad and comprehensive set of clients, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia and Windows Phone.  The Blackberry client was developed by Blackberry themselves.   The iPad and iPhone clients are probably the stand out in terms of look and overall feel.  The functionality revolves around three core components (a much more detailed feature list and comparison can be found below):

  • Corporate address book with the ability to see presence and share instant messaging (individual and multi party).  This is the core element of the clients.
  • Call from work – while voice and video calls can not be started the clients do have the ability to initiate a standard GSM call, with the Lync server calling a mobile/cell upon request by the user.  Single number reach can also be enabled.
  • One click to join Lync conference calls – this will be very popular, attempting to input conference pins on a mobile is a frustrating experience, as long as you have a data connection the mobile client will take all that entry away from you with a single click.
Implementation is not straight forward, changes are required firewalls, certificates and the Front End servers.
Further details can be found in the presentation given to partners yesterday.

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