Month: July 2012

Early Impressions Of Office 2013 Beta

I installed Office 2013 on my Windows 8 Build slate PC on Monday night.  Here are some early impressions:

  • It’s very different looking.  The layout has been optimized to make it touch friendly, but still appears to be mouse friendly.
  • The new control that everyone is talking about reminds me of something in the Star Trek’s of the last 20 years.
  • I really like where Word has gone.  Becoming a consumer of information is a great idea.  It is now also a reader, can scale the doc to your tastes, and can remember where you left off.  That makes it very Kindle-like.  It can also open and edit PDF.  Bye-bye Adobe Reader; you and your constant patching requirements (that are usually not done) won’t be missed.
  • As a person who writes the occasional white paper, I like how Word now allows flexible placement of images.  Note that we never embed images when writing books; the editors do that in the later PDF stages.
  • I love the new presenter view in PowerPoint.  I’ve been dreaming of presenting from my slate PC in the past.  I hate being tied to behind a podium when presenting and I don’t like looking back to the screen to remind me of what I’m talking about on this slide.  Plus being able to use “ink” to highlight things will be useful.
  • I haven’t looked into Lync or Outlook too much yet.  I have them working with Office365 with no extra work other than signing in (as usual).

Don’t ask me about Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange servers.  I haven’t a clue what’s new yet.  To be honest, they are usually outside of my scope of work.  There is a boat load of new documentation on download.microsoft.com for the “wave 15” betas of Office.

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Finally Some Sense – Gartner Says “Cost Savings” Of VDI Are Fiction

I think I’ve talked about how VDI makes no financial sense once or twice before.  The Register has a story on how Gartner has analysed the costs of implementing and owning VDI.  Long story short: it costs as much if not more (I say much more) than buying and owning PCs.  The reason to implement VDI isn’t simplified management, it isn’t reduced costs.  It is the side effects of centralisation such as easier data access and stricter security. 

Personally I think RDS Session Hosts (Terminal Servers) are a much more cost effective way of getting these same results, possibly with App-V to prevent application silos.

Got My Paperback Copies of Microsoft Private Cloud Computing

After a 2 week snafu by the local An Post office in my town and me being abroad, I finally gotten my copies of Microsoft Private Cloud Computing this morning.

photo

This is the point when you can finally say “it’s finished”.  Now on to other things …

Back From Vacation. I’m Sure Glad Nothing Happened …

I was off in Norway for several days taking a few pictures of White-Tailed Sea Eagles catching fish in the fjords of Norway.  I was in Flatanger, about half way up the coast, about 120 KM from the Artic circle.

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This beauty (one of my photos from the trip) is like a North American Bald Eagle, but bigger.

I’m back in the office today playing catch-up.  I guess nothing happened over the last week while I was gone?

Oh … wait …

Have We Reached A Turning Point In The VMware/Hyper-V War?

A few of us proclaimed it last September: Windows Server 2012 is to VMware as Windows 2000 was to Novell.  Evidence that others agree?

Gigaom reports that:

VMware left its core business exposed, they say, first by announcing heavy-handed vSphere price hikes last year that, in the words of one VMware watcher, “kicked the door open for Microsoft Hyper-V.” VMware has yet to recover from that, in his view.  Silicon Valley is baffled at how easy VMware has made it for Microsoft to come in and take all the easy stuff.

TechCrunch reports that:

Paul Maritz is out as the CEO of VMware and will be replaced by EMC COO Pat Gelsinger.

In my opinion, investing in a VMware solution right now would be like investing in IntraNetware in 2000.  You’ll have buyers remorse come September when Windows Server 2012 goes GA.

According to Google, the VMW stock on the New York Stock Exchange is also trending downwards over the past 3 months.  Meanwhile MSFT is running it’s usual unexciting steady.

image

I guess the people have figured out what the Emperor has been wearing for a while.

Meanwhile, the VMware marketing engine is doing their best to tell us how well they did in the past.  Yes, Novell was a market leader once.  So was Netscape.  So was Lotus Notes.  Spotting the trend here?

I’m happily waiting to moderate (aka delete) the VMware marketing/fanboy comments on this one unless they’re so badly informed that I’ll gladly approve to shoot them down with cold hard correct facts Smile

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Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit 7.0 Goes Live – Supports Windows 8 and Server 2012

I just received an email informing me that MAP 7.0 is live, and it now supports assessment to help you plan the deployment of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.  You can start planning now, with the products coming down the pipe soon.

The new version which you can download now allows you to:

  • Understand your readiness to deploy Windows Server 2012 in your environment
  • Determine Windows 8 readiness
  • Investigate how Windows Server and System Center can manage your heterogeneous environment through VMware migration and Linux server virtualization assessments
  • Size your desktop virtualization needs for both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session-based virtualization using Remote Desktop Services
  • Ready your information platform for the cloud with the SQL Server 2012 discovery and migration assessment
  • Evaluate your licensing needs with usage tracking for Lync 2010, active users and devices, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012

You should know that I believe that assessment is a critical early step in a virtualisation project, be it XenServer, VMware, or Hyper-V.  Without it, you’re shooting blind, and you’ll end up being an anecdote in a presentation on how to do a crap project.

Office 365 Open Program

Microsoft Partners have not been quiet about some of their displeasure with Office 365.  O365 committed a cardinal sin in business; in the eyes of some partners, Microsoft stole the business relationship with the customer from the partner by direct invoicing the customer.  In some parts of New Jersey, that’d get you swimming with the fishes, capiche?

I work with Microsoft partners.  I have had more than a few tell me that they wouldn’t bring Microsoft in on a meeting because of the Office 365 and cloud first strategy that would be pitched, attempting to “steal” that relationship.  To be honest, I felt their pain.  He who owns the invoice, owns the customer’s business.  And therefore, many partners continued to steer the customer away from Microsoft’s public cloud services.  Remember, in this world, the MSFT partner is the IT department, they are the trusted advisor, they are the ones presenting the viable solutions and discrediting the “bad ones”.  You have to bring the partner on board to have a hope of getting Office 365 to be the norm in this space.

Throw in the disquiet about the disappearance of SBS (with on premises Exchange/SharePoint) as a product, left with Windows Server 2012 Essentials (designed to work with Office 365), and the MSFT partner working in the SME space was left like they were not loved.

And what do you get?  Angry partners who saw Microsoft as competing with them.  That was never going to win for Microsoft.

Microsoft had to change.

And today they announced Office 365 Open Program.

Key points of this new partner friendly program are:

  • Microsoft partners can invoice their customers for Office 365, bundling in additional value added services
  • Partners can earn up to 23% margin in the first year, way above the 11% that currently is available

I use Office 365 for my own stuff.  I like it.  It has been trouble free for me.  It was a pity that the only obstacle to the product was legal crappola (see The Curse of Zune).  I’ll be very interested to see when this new program will launch, and what the actual details of it will be.

I want to hear from MSFT partners that are selling Office 365.  What do you think?

 

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Windows 8 and Server 2012 RTM/GA Dates Announced

I was actually under a rock, busy delivering some training, so I missed the WPC keynotes and the announcements today. 

  • Windows 8 is on track to RTM on the first week of August, assuming that there are no showstoppers between now and then.
  • Customers with Software Assurance will have access to the downloads via the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) by the end of August.
  • The Windows 8 Store will go live (in other words, go commercial) at RTM time.
  • GA will be by the end of October.  That’s when you’ll see designed-for-Windows 8 machines for the first time in the stores.

Windows Server 2012 will RTM in August and be “available to customers worldwide through multiple channels in September”.  Yes, Windows Server 2012 will be GA before the desktop.  That’ makes sense actually, because the OEMs will need more time with the desktop OS than they will with the server OS.

Poor Little Blog Copiers!

For those of you who have criticised my reaction to blog copiers then I ask you this …

How many of you spend countless hours of your personal time at night and at the weekends learning this stuff and sharing it freely, then to find someone taking credit for your work?  How many of you spent 6 months writing a book to find it on warez sites 2 weeks after it was published?

Sure, I reacted very strongly.  Absolutely I did.  And you know why?  These people who blatantly copy other someone else’s work to get hits on their sites should have more than enough common sense to know it is wrong.  The previous individual was in the IT business and in his 50’s or 60’s.  The latest “poor baby” is in university, and even ignored the copyright I now place on every single blog post.  They know better and still feel OK with ripping off other people’s work.

If you’re having pity on criminals then I’m sure there’s some poor misunderstood gang members on a local street corner you can go adopt.  Come talk to me after you’ve hugged a hoodie in your home.

Until then, if I catch ‘em, I’ll cripple ‘em with the truth.

Another Blog Copier–Meet Name Removed

Since this post, the individual in question sent me a sincere apology and removed the content in question.  I appreciate this, and in return, have removed their identity from the post.

Meet: Name, Job Title, University Name 
Tel: Was here
LiveID: Was here

Live Spaces : Was here
Blogs: Was here

Photo of the person was here

You see this student doesn’t want a job in IT.  Instead, he wants to steal the work of other people.  Hey dude, guess what people will find when they get your CV/resume and the go check your online reputation?  Tada!  You’re welcome!  Hey prospective employer; does the man sitting across the table look like the above picture.  Did you know he was a thief and like to associate the XYZ program and his university, ZFD University, with his crimes?  And who says crime doesn’t pay?

What did this thieving little muppet do?  He picked the one blog post that was the most moronic one of all to steal from:

Image of blog and post was here

Yes, he stole from my WS2012 Hyper-V Features list, something that has taken me many hours to assemble.  You, son, are one serious dumbass of the highest order.  Details removed.

Hey ABC DEF, ABC- GFI University, you are forever going to be recognised on the Internet as a lazy thief.

Hey ABC DEF, have you tried to Google yourself (did show how I impacted the person’s digital reputation) today?

Remove my content from your blog NOW.  .

Quite sincerely,

Aidan Finn.