Dear Readers, There was an interesting interview with Marie Huwe, General Manager of Marketing for Microsoft Dynamics at Software Advice. Here is the guest post by Hunter Richards, Accounting Market Analyst at Software Advice.
This year, Software Advice got to attend Microsoft’s Convergence conference. They spoke with Marie Huwe, General Manager of Marketing for Microsoft Dynamics, about the inevitable change to the partner channel’s business model when cloud computing really takes off. Partners will need to change to survive.
In the video below, Marie speaks about the new Microsoft Cloud Partner Profitability Guide, a collection of strategies and best practices for staying afloat as a partner in the cloud era.
Software Advice also got a private meeting with Microsoft Dynamics AX product manager Kees Hertogh. Kees gave the scoop on Dynamics AX 2012, which just entered beta, and is expected to be generally available this upcoming August. Kees explained the new embedded business intelligence tools and role-tailored user interfaces, among other new additions to this version. Check out the video below for the full interview.
Microsoft may have been giants of software but somewhere down the isle, there are a few big names who are projecting a new paradigm of software, which is “Service”. Google, are the very first in this list who presented whole lot of services, you may call it Google Docs, spreadsheets, earth or maps, wave and voice, the Android and yes, above all, Chrome OS. It’s all good, better to say, great. However, the question is, where will all the existing stuff will go? How General People are going to adopt this in an instant? Are you ready to give it all up and start using this new paradigm overnight?
Perhaps those are a few reasons for me not being able to switch to Google wave yet. I mean why would I need to have a Google account in order to be able to see any wave anyone has just sent me? or, should I expect everyone to have a Google account with whom I communicate? That’s one point that perhaps no one would consider if communications were invented today.
On the other hand, the Google Docs has made a fine job there. Irrespective of browser or the platform you are using, you can still use the Google Docs. As far as I can see, I think they have written some application to run on the browser, didn’t they? if it is, then I guess it might take a very long time to make any web app as rich and interactive as desktop is now. Instead why not we develop some engine that could ship the very desktop apps to the web. If Google or any other are able to do that, they would no longer need to write an operating system for the browser, they can easily ship the whole Windows to the web.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, I’ve just had an experience to use Windows Live Essentials Beta, and I believe that with the 25 GB SkyDrive and online Microsoft Office Suite Web Apps together with Windows live sync beta, Windows live mail beta, movie maker and writer, has taken a huge leap ahead here. The point is, this all is basically the same software that I use on my desktop and now I’m using it on the internet. The same experience and the same usability. Just got synced up!
Soon after the curtain rose from the much anticipated Cloud Computing platform and infrastructure “Windows Azure” by Microsoft at Microsoft PDC 2008, other cloud service providers also came into the scene. Cloud Computing is not hype. Yes, I can say this, although we have been using internet cloud for so many years, our emails, our chats, our music, our files etc, almost everything that somehow is a part of daily life computing of man-kind, is shared and accessed through internet. Thus, is this the cloud computing infrastructure? The answer lies beyond the traditional definition. Researchers are defining cloud computing as almost as same as the Grid or Cluster computing. More or less, the common factor among all is that, Grid, Cluster and Cloud Computing are all a form of computing that are composed of several distributed computing machines that are integrated to perform multiple tasks. Thus what makes Cloud Computing even more special? According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing "Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc." The cloud is undoubtedly a symbol of internet, based on the several assumptions about how it is portrayed in the computer network diagram. It covers the concept of the complex internet infrastructure in which IT solution providing companies have the capabilities to provide their solutions as services at extremely low cost, highly scalable, robust, reliable and secure manner. Customers or end users don’t need to bother now to hire the whole of an IT department for the maintenance and support along with the purchase of any enterprise solution. Services like GoogleAppEngine or Moss or Windows Azure now makes it possible to build applications on the cloud, and provide end users a highly scalable and on demand services for their home and enterprise. Similarly, office services like Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live are other online office suites as part of cloud infrastructure. No matter you are an Enterprise user or a home user, no matter you are using desktop PC, MAC, notebook, PDA or other hand held device, or even watches. You are connected to billions of other users to share knowledge and information, to gain access of vast amount of data and information. This is what actually Cloud Computing is, the Live, Connected, and On Demand infrastructure of computing devices, information, and the users. Dear Readers, we are heading towards the new generation of computing, the generation next. Where sharing of knowledge and information, across any kind of computing device among users everywhere is made possible. Possibilities are endless – Have your say!
Perhaps this is "The next big thing" from Microsoft.
Microsoft plans at creating core infrastructure services like storage and alerts which developers can build on top of. This set of capabilities are being referred to as the Cloud OS, though it’s not a term Microsoft likes to use publicly. But this was hinted at by Brian Hall, Ballmer and Ozzie at the Worldwide partner conference in Denver.
Microsoft has publicly announced that it too, has a cloud-like structure in mind.
This looks like the next big thing that Microsoft is working on, with Ballmer stating “”We are in the process today of building out a services platform in the cloud.”
Ballmer said that later this year Microsoft will deliver the first version of a set of developer tools to build on top of Microsoft’s Windows Live effort and noted that the tools will be based on .Net.
This looks like Microsoft is opening up more of their services and with the Web 2.0 trend of web services, looks like Microsoft wants to continue their presence on the web the way they have been ruling the desktop world.
Microsoft also previously introduced two new Windows Live Services, one for sharing photos and the other for all types of files. While those services are being offered directly by Microsoft today, they represent the kinds of things that Microsoft is now promising will be also made available to developers.
Among the other application and infrastructure components, Microsoft plans to open are its systems for alerts, contact management, communications (mail and messenger) and authentication.
