The Sikh Geek

We all know how SBS 2008 will be adopted, new installs and refreshment of hardware. For anyone who has listened to Gareth Hall, the Windows Server Product Manager for Microsoft, around the UK SBS Groups recently then you will know that he’s a pragmatic person and understands very well how these things go. I am discussing with several customers about being early adopters because I am confident that SBS 2008 will give them significant value and if we can get some good PR/Case Studies out of it, well that is something that I’m not going to turn down. It’s a differentiater for us.

Check out the WESS Partner Readiness Tour which is focused around the SBS Groups which is coming to a location near you over the next month or two.

I can confidently say that I’m not waiting for Microsoft to tell me what the value and opportunities are around SBS 2008. I would be very surprised if they were able to tell me anyway! I’m the one who knows my business and my customers and it’s me the customers pay to advise them.

If you want to tell Microsoft they are getting it all wrong then maybe consider actually engaging with them face to face.

At the recent Remix UK Conference, Scott Guthrie talked about ASP.NET MVC which is a framework that has been developed based on the Model-View-Controller Paradigm/Pattern. This is a web framework which separates out an online application into a number distinct roles which are as follows :

• Model - provides access to the data which is typically stored in a database
• View - provides the presentation layer which is the web pages that you will see and will provide the styling etc
• Controller - provides the handling of web requests and scheduling the access to the model and view parts

This pattern is not new but what is new is Microsoft’s implementation of this as the ASP.NET MVC. There are a number of advantages of using this approach which are :

• more control over the html generated
• separation into these roles allows a test driven approach i.e. you can test each aspect without having the other parts available
• basic plumbing such as authentication is built in

Whilst this might not be the right approach in all scenarios it gives a great new option which is free and for us gives us a framework where something like Sharepoint is not required. ASP.NET MVC is also supported by Microsoft in a production environment.

On Wed 12th November at 5.30pm AMITPRO will be hosting one of the Microsoft SBS/EBS 2008 Launch Events at the Arden Hotel. Other events will be going on around the UK at various SBS Groups on various dates in Oct/Nov. This is a great endorsement and engagement by Microsoft with SBSC Partners who have been attending SBS Groups regularly. It’s brave of Microsoft to not go with a single big launch event and I’m sure this approach is going to pay off.

Thanks to Emily Lambert, SBSC Programme Lead and Gareth Hall, Windows Server Product Manager for making the right choice in my view.

Emily will be announcing the details very soon in the SBSC Newsletter, so keep an eye out for that. I just wanted to give a heads up for our Group Event, even though I’m going to miss it myself as I’m flying out to India on that day, doh! If you haven’t got one near you then come along to ours, there will be some serious networking being done at the bar afterwards over some liquid refreshment

Also keep an eye out on the other Midlands Group blogs for further info :

Steve Wright - Group Leader

Richard Tubb

Andy Parkes

Apparently Microsoft isn’t exciting enough (nice to see Steve Clayton stand up for what he believes against someone like Seth Godin - very brave!) and it’s employees can’t get passionate enough for some people. Apparently Microsoft is boring, Apple is cool and well Linux is … no one really cares about Linux. Fair dos to Apple, they are doing great things and they have the products and marketing to back it up.

Except that in the present economic climate boring is the new exciting! What I mean by this, if you look at Lloyds who just bought HBOS, then Lloyds has also been considered a very conservative organisation. Because it had a healthy balance sheet it became the predator and essentially took over HBOS overnight!

Microsoft for all it’s supposed boring mediocrity has just announced a Share buyback programme and increased dividends to its Shareholders. Microsoft is one of the best run businesses out there and had some of those Financial Institutions run their organisations like it, then maybe the taxpayer’s burden might be significantly lighter and a lot of people wouldn’t have lost their jobs. I’d take Steve Ballmer over any Wall Street boss any day of the week.

I like the new "I’m a PC" campaign and could become quite viral I think! The Facebook Group, "I’m a PC" is growing steadily and my entry says

I’m a PC …I’m a Vista Ultimate PC …I am what I am …I am nothing more and nothing less

Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things in their lives or maybe doing just boring run of the mill things, who cares! That’s what life is!

I’ve been trying not to comment on the Microsoft Ad Campaign but I thought Seth Godin probably summed it up for me. If something is broken in Microsoft then a Marketing Campaign isn’t going to fix it. He says :

Microsoft has fallen into a trap that befalls many large companies in search of cred, buzz or respect. They’ve decided to buy some via advertising.

In Bill Buxton’s keynote that I previously blogged about he recounted the story of Steve Jobs and his turn around of Apple by “Industrial Design” and it wasn’t by Ad Campaigns, that came later when Apple had something cool to say.

Seth Godin doesn’t say things are broken in Microsoft but he does make the point when did you last hear a passionate Microsoft employee. Well, I saw a good many passionate Microsoft people at the RemixUK Conference but I understand the point he’s trying to make. Microsoft has become “safe” and “corporate”. Microsoft, the original upstart tech company, fought hard to be accepted into the Corporate boardrooms, now trying to get out of them is not so easy!

UPDATE

I’m a PC, Life Without Walls Site

I’m back now from the Microsoft RemixUK 08 Conference in Brighton and what a great experience it was. It is focused on Microsoft’s web technologies. It described itself as a "48 hour conversation about the Next Web". The sessions were split into the following tracks :-

• More developer
• More designer
• User interaction/business
• Beyond work

There were a range of people including developers, designers, advertising agencies, so an interesting mix of people who probably would otherwise not come together. In fact Arturo Toledo of Microsoft in his Expression Session said that Designers should team up with Developers and that is something which I believe is a great opportunity.

Check out the site Web Harmony for tools, resources and training.

It was good to be at a Microsoft Conference where people were coming out of sessions visibly impressed. Could Microsoft actually be this cool?

The technologies on display were

• Silverlight
• Photosynth
• ASP.NET MVC
• WPF (check out the new WindowsClient site)
• ADO.NET Data Services (Project Astoria Team Blog)
• Virtual Earth
• Visual Studio
• XNA Games Studio

As part of attending the conference delegates will received a copy of the Expression Subscription.

One insight I got was Microsoft’s focus towards Advertising in David Pugh-Jones session entitled "Digital Advertising: Now and the Future". It’s clear that Microsoft is keen to use these new technologies to drive digital campaigns and to be a key player in this market.

The other highlight was seeing Scott Guthrie code on the fly!

Here is my Photosynth of the Brighton Seafront where the Microsoft RemixUK 08 Conference is being held. I just some photos uploaded them to Photosynth and within 15 minutes I had the result. It’s very cool technology!

The main keynote at Remix UK today was delivered by Bill Buxton who is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. He started his speech by saying that "Not Everyone was a Designer". He also praised Apple for it’s design and raising the game in the technology sector. Apparently this competition is helping to drive and motivate Microsoft to do better. The whole keynote had been started by the Bill/Jerry Ads and Bill Buxton commented that Bill Gates could be a stand up comedian. I’m not convinced on that one!

Luckily, I found Bill Buxton’s talk more compelling and his focus on "Industrial Design" was interesting. He contended that people didn’t buy the end product of the design but the whole experience from the packaging to the support to the reliability. He highlighted Jonathan Ive, the lead designer at Apple who has apparently been at Apple since 1993, well before Steve Jobs arrived. At that point Apple was on a downward path and Ive had not succeeded in delivering for Apple. When Steve Jobs joined he decided to reinvigorate the company through "Industrial Design" and everyone thought he was crazy and this was no strategy. The rest as they say is history and under this new culture Ive started to deliver. The same people who before were losers suddenly became winners. I guess it says a lot about Steve Jobs and the culture he created. Bill Buxton asked the question "could company culture change?" and answered it by saying that it could in the same way societies cultural norms change over time.

The other interesting points he made was that small consultancies would be the driver of innovation out of the bad economic times were having and pointed to a number of designers who started during the last depression in the 20s and which are still in business. His other contention was that larger companies inevitably always acquire their innovation through acquisition.

I had hoped he was going to tell us how Microsoft was changing its culture but that never came. It’s a question that a lot of people ask and seek to try and find clues to. I’m not sure Microsoft is able to give that "total experience" that you feel with someone like Apple. You could see people at Remix proudly carrying their Macs and showing off their iPhones, whilst people like me opened our laptops secretly and felt very inadequate with our Windows Mobile Smartphones!

I did go on to see some very cool stuff during the day such as Silverlight Media Support, Deepzoom using the Seadragon Technology and Photosynth but how do you get people to have the "total experience" with these.

A while back Google bought Postini which provides hosted message security and compliance solutions. I’ve been using Postini for anti-spam filtering and I’ve been very impressed with it. Firstly there is no noticeable delay in delivering valid email and it is pretty accurate in determining spam and keeping upto date with new attacks. It has been very robust and reliable and with over 12 months use I have no problems to report.

You can buy the services directly through Google Apps from $12 per user per year. If you only need inbound filtering then you can buy it for $3 per user per year.

I wondered when Vlad would perk up when he caught wind of discussions around SBS Consultants. We know his views around this even though his own services are seeking to make the click-through wizard approach of SBS even simpler with hosted services where you don’t even need the infrastructure.

I thought about all the responses to David’s second article and all the technical arguments but at the end of the day you only have to ask yourself the following questions :-

Is your customer happy with your services?

Is your customer happy with SBS 2003 as a solution?

Are you making money out of it?

Are you happy doing what you do?

If you answer yes to these questions then you can ignore what anyone says about SBS and you as an SBS Consultant. In life there is always people wanting to do you down but if you have confidence in what you do then these things shouldn’t matter. The customer is king!