Category Archives: microsoft

azure, cloud computing, microsoft, software development, sql, visual studio, windows

PDC day one: Windows in the cloud

Today was cloud day at PDC. Microsoft announced that Windows Azure will become a production platform on January 1st, with billing starting from February 1st. It also announced the beta of Windows Server AppFabric role, for on-premise apps that can either stay on-premise or be deployed to Azure later; and some new developments like the Windows Server Virtual Machine role on Azure, a pre-configured Windows Server VM into which you will be able to deploy an application.

Azure was first announced at the 2008 PDC, and had a stuttering start, with a CTP (Community Tech Preview) that was difficult to use, major changes to SQL Server Data Services – a simplified cloud database that was scrapped and replaced with full SQL Server – and generally poor marketing from Microsoft. I was not sure whether the company was serious about Azure, or merely trying to tick the cloud box.

I do now think it is serious, and delivering some interesting technology for easily scalable cloud-hosted applications. Microsoft does not sees its cloud services as replacing your in-house servers (no surprise there), but more as a way of deploying certain kinds of web applications. A great feature is that thanks to Active Directory Federation Services in combination with the new .NET library called Windows Identity Foundation you can relatively easily have use your Azure applications authenticated against your internal Active Directory.

The surprise of the day was when Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame turned up to demo WordPress running on Azure, which now supports PHP and MySQL as well as Java applications. Another unexpected guest was Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, who introduced Seesmic for Windows and also talked about a coming Silverlight version.

That said, the keynote did not exactly crackle with excitement. Microsoft seemed almost to downplay what is now possible with Azure, perhaps sensing that it could be disruptive to its own business model. A telling moment came during a press briefing when Doug Hauger, Azure General Manager, denied that Windows or Office were in any sort of decline. Despite his position he seems to be under the illusion that we will happily continue with our fragile on-premise, single platform, micro-managed IT systems.

I enjoyed the day though. The beauty of PDC is that Microsoft rolls out its best speakers; it was great to hear Mark Russinovich explain the kernel changes in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 – same kernel of course – and I will be writing more about the session shortly.

I’m expecting more focus on Office, Silverlight and Visual Studio tomorrow, when Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene will be giving the keynote, and hoping for some compelling announcements.

cloud computing, microsoft

A critical PDC for Microsoft

I’m in Los Angeles for Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference – one that has a strangely subdued build-up. I have been to many PDCs but this one is different. One thing I’ve noticed is that a combination of the difficult economy and a rumoured shortfall in attendance has resulted in some obvious slimming-down: flimsy bag, no breakfast for attendees, no free shuttle to the airport on the last day, no big party at LA Universal Studios.

There’s always a case for less extravagance at conferences; but it conveys a subtle PR message that isn’t a good one for Microsoft.

What matters though is the content. Clearly there are two strands to this. One is the regular turning of the Microsoft wheel – Windows 7 development, new Office, new SharePoint, maybe a new IE and a new Silverlight.

Microsoft has to do this; but there is no escaping: the world is changing, and bloated desktop apps and complex in-house servers and server applications are not the wave of the future.

I am still mulling over something said to me recently by an IT admin in education, when I was researching the progress there of Google Apps and Microsoft Live@Edu. He had overseen a migration of student email to Google Apps, over 20,000 accounts, and I asked him what problems he had encountered. I’ve been in IT for years, he told me, and there are always unexpected issues; but this time there really were none.

So the other theme at PDC is whether Microsoft’s cloud efforts can get off the ground and compete in this new world. The interesting thought is this: even if Windows Azure is a wild success, and if the Live properties start to perform, what chance does Microsoft have of even sustaining its current level of revenue and profit?

In practice, the company will always be under irresistible pressure to use any cloud success to promote the products from which it makes its money: Windows and Office. And that in turn will undermine its cloud efforts, as users realise they are not getting the liberation from hefty client-side dependencies which is inherent to a true cloud story.

Just to remind you: check out the “online” section of recent Microsoft financial reports.

That said, there is an unexpected twist in the run-up to PDC, which is the gathering Google backlash. The must-read is Tim O’Reilly’s War for the Web:

We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.

And it’s time for developers to take a stand. If you don’t want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don’t wait till it’s too late.

O’Reilly closes his piece with a thought-provoking comment:

P.S. One prediction: Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.

It sounds unlikely; but where do you go if your mood is “anything but Google”? We could see some surprising new alliances; though I honestly do not see the Windows-Office empire within Microsoft accepting that kind of role under the current leadership.

The PDC is generally where Microsoft sets out its strategy for the coming year or more. It had better be good.

microsoft

Xobni makes its point on the streets of LA

I’m in Los Angeles just before Microsoft’s Professional Developers conference, where one of the themes will be Office 2010 and its new features. Yesterday though the streets near the conference centre were full of “ambassadors” for Xobni, handing out T-shirts to attendees going to pre-conference events and promising a chance of cash prizes if you are seen wearing one of them at the show.

Xobni is an Outlook add-in (read the name backwards) that pulls out contact details in a side panel as you read your emails, complete with previous activities and social connections from Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce.com and elsewhere.

According to the ambassador I spoke to, there is a similar feature in Outlook 2010; and the company is hoping that the hall will be filled with Xobni T-shirts when this is announced.

You have to give the company credit for its initiative.

Every add-on vendor has this problem – what to do if your feature ends up baked into the main product.

Picture to follow.

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microsoft, security, windows, windows 7

Have Windows OEM vendors learnt anything from Apple?

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I’ve just set up a new consumer Windows 7 PC – it was HP’s Compaq Presario CQ5231UK, not bad value at £399 (VAT included) with Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93 Ghz), 3GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit – yes, 64-bit Windows really is mainstream now – 500GB hard drive and NVIDIA G210 graphics.

For comparison, the cheapest current Apple Mac is the Mini at £499 – it’s not directly comparable since its neat compact size is worth a premium, but it is slightly less well specified with slower processor, 2GB RAM and 160GB drive. As for an iMac, this comes with a screen but costs more than twice as much as the HP Compaq.

A good deal then; but have Microsoft’s efforts to make Windows 7 “quieter” and less intrusive been wrecked by OEM vendors who cannot resist bundling deals with 3rd parties, otherwise known as crapware?

I draw your attention to my interview with Microsoft’s Bill Buxton last year, when I raised this point. He said:

Everybody in that food chain gets it now. Everybody’s motivated to fix it. Thinking about the holistic experience is much easier now than it was two years ago.

I was interested therefore to see what sort of experience HP delivers with one of its new home PCs. Unfortunately I forgot to keep a list, but I removed a number of add-ons that the user agreed were unwanted, including:

I also removed a diagnostics tool called PC-Doctor and an HP utility that stuck itself prominently on the desktop, HP Advisor Dock. It is possible that these tools might in some circumstances be useful, though I’m wary. I have no idea why HP has decided to supply its own Dock accessory after Microsoft’s efforts with the Windows 7 Taskbar.

We left in place an application called HP Games which is a branded version of WildTangent ORB and includes some free games.

The short answer is that the Windows ecosystem has not changed. The deal is that your cheap PC is subsidised by the trialware that comes with it. Another issue is OEM utilities – like HP’s Advisor Dock – which jar with the careful design Microsoft put into Windows 7 and offer overlapping functionality with what is built in.

In mitigation, Windows 7 runs so well on current hardware that even this budget PC offers snappy performance. I also had no difficulty removing the unwanted add-ons. The speed of setup – number of restarts – was much better than I recall from the last Toshiba laptop I set up.

Nevertheless, on the basis of this example there is still work to do if the experience of starting with a Windows PC is to come close to that offered by the Mac. Further, bundling anti-malware software that requires a subscription is actually a security risk, since a proportion of users will not renew and therefore end up without updates. I would be interested in other reports.

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microsoft

Surveys are useless

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I’m at Microsoft Tech-Ed in Berlin where 7000-odd IT admins and developers (though more admins) are looking at Microsoft technology.

I was browsing round the stands in the Technical Learning Centre here when I came to one where the technical documentation team at Microsoft was handing out a survey. Fill in the survey, get a plastic rocket. I looked through the survey where you had to rate innumerable aspects of the documentation on Microsoft’s technical resource sites (MDSN, TechNet etc).

I refused to complete it, on the grounds that it would not yield anything of value. I can put numbers in boxes as well as anyone else, but they tend to be arbitrary, and all too often the real answers cannot be easily condensed into a 1 to 5 rating. I said that the way to find out what people thought of the documentation was to ask them, not to get them putting numbers on a form.

Inevitably, the guys asked me that question, and we has a discussion of the issues I’ve found with the sites including:

  • Broken links. I don’t think Microsoft should ever delete a knowledgebase entry. Mark them obsolete or even wrong, but don’t remove them.
  • Too many locations with overlapping content – MSDN, Technet, specialist sites, team blogs etc.
  • Documentation that states the obvious – eg how to enable or disable a feature – but neglects to mention the interesting stuff like why you would want to enable or disable it and what the implications are.
  • Documentation that is excessively verbose or makes you drill down into link after link before finding the real content.
  • Documentation that is not clearly dated, so that you might be reading obsolete advice.

Anyway, I felt I had a worthwhile discussion and was listened to; whereas completing the survey would not have brought out these points effectively.

cloud computing, microsoft, virtualization

Love and hate for Microsoft Small Business Server

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I’ve just completed a migration from Small Business Server 2003 to 2008. I’ve worked on and off with SBS since version 4.0, and have mixed feelings about the product. It has always been great value, but massive complexity lurks not far beneath its simple wizards.

The difficulty of migration is probably its worst feature: it chugs along for a few years gradually outgrowing its hardware, and then when the time comes for a new server customers are faced with either starting from scratch with a clean install – set up new accounts, import mailboxes, every client machine removed and rejoined to a new domain – or else a painful migration.

I took the latter route, and also decided to go virtual on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. In most important respects it went smoothly: Active Directory behaved itself, and the Exchange mailboxes all came over cleanly.

Still, several things struck me during the migration. Microsoft has a handy 79-page step-by-step document, but anyone who thinks that carefully following the steps will guarantee success will be disappointed. There are always surprises. The document does not properly cover DHCP, for example. The migration is surprisingly messy in places. The new SBS has different sets of permissions than the old one, and after the upgrade you have to somehow merge the two. The migration is not fully automated, and there is plenty of manual editing of various settings.

Even migrating SBS 2008 to SBS 2008, for a new server, has brought forth a 58-page document from Microsoft.

Then there are the errors to deal with. There are always errors. You have to figure out which ones are significant and how to fix them. I would like to meet a windows admin who could look me in the eye and say they have no errors in their event log.

Things got bad when applying all the updates to bring the server up-to-date. At one point SharePoint broke completely and could not contact its configuration database.  There’s also the mystery of security update KB967723, which Windows Update installed insisting that it was “important,” and which then generated the following logged message 79 times in the space of a few seconds:

Windows Servicing identified that package KB967723(Security Update) is not applicable for this system

Nevertheless, a little tender care and attention got the system into reasonable shape. It is even smart enough to change Outlook settings to the new server automatically. A great feature of the migration is that email flow is never interrupted.

One problem: although running SBS virtual is a supported configuration, the built-in backup system doesn’t handle it well, because it assumes use of external USB drives which Hyper-V guests cannot access directly. There are many solutions, none perfect, and it appears that Microsoft did not think this one through.

That said, the virtual solution has some inherent advantages for backup and restore, the main one being that you can guarantee identical hardware for disaster recovery. If you shut the guests down and backup the host, or export the VM, you have a reliable system backup. You can also back up a running guest from the host, though in my experience this is more fragile.

Migrating an SBS system is actually harder than working with grown-up Windows systems on separate servers (or virtual servers) because it all has to be done together. I reckon Microsoft could do a better job with the tools; but it is a complex process with multiple potential points of failure.

The experience overall does nothing to shake my view that cloud-based services are the future. I would like to see SBS become a kind of smart cache for cloud storage and services, rather than being a local all-or-nothing box that can absorb large amounts of troubleshooting time. Microsoft is going to lose a lot of this SME business, because it has ploughed on with more of the same rather than helping its existing SBS customers to move on.

Nevertheless, if you have made the decision to run your own email and collaboration services, rather than being at the mercy of a hosted service, SBS 2008 does it all.

cloud computing, google, microsoft, windows

The cloud in education: Google Apps vs Live@Edu

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I’ve been researching the use of cloud apps in education for a talk I am giving next week. I’m normally more business-focused, and it’s been interesting to uncover another area where Microsoft and Google are in hot competition. Both companies are happy to give educational institutions free cloud email and collaboration services; and the offer is being snapped up by colleges and universities hard-pressed for money and tired of fighting spam-clogged inboxes. 

Microsoft has first mover advantage here: Live@Edu has been around since March 2005 as a service based on hotmail, though its evolution into a fuller collaboration system is more recent, whereas Google Apps for Education did not appear until October 2006. They are both generous schemes – of course the providers want to get students hooked on their stuff – and as far as I can tell both are well liked.

What is interesting is to look at the points of differentiation, which show the contrasting approach of these two companies. Microsoft is pursuing its “software plus services” strategy, which means desktop applications still play an important role. The email is Exchange-based, so you can use other email clients, but only Outlook on Windows will deliver full features. Document collaboration is based primarily on cloud storage rather then editing, though when Office Web Apps appear next year users will have some lightweight editing tools.

Google on the other hand is primarily web based, with desktop support as an add-on. Google has the lead when it comes to online document editing, since it has had Google Docs for some time, whereas Office Web Apps are still in beta. Google has no bias towards Windows and Office. With Google, a document’s primary existence is in the cloud, although you can export and import with possible loss of data or formatting.

Something else I noticed is that Google has big plans for integration with mobile devices, whereas Microsoft seems mainly concerned with Exchange synchronisation.

Microsoft’s pitch is that if you live in Windows anyway, with Exchange and SharePoint on the server, and Windows and Office on the client, then its cloud service integrates nicely. Google on the other hand is more revolutionary, not caring about what you run as long as you can connect to its services.

Although the software plus services idea has attractions, it sounds more like a transitional strategy than one for the long term. Over time, as the web platform gets more powerful, and as rich internet applications take over from pure desktop applications, the services part will grow absolutely dominant.

Google is a cooler brand than Microsoft, which helps its case when students are asked which platform they prefer.

Has anyone tried both platforms? Or even just one of them? I’d be interested in hearing your comments.

microsoft, windows

Windows activation annoyances – not one but two

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I set aside today for doing a Small Business Server 2008 installation. We had the new HP box, the new HP Small Business Server 2008 Premium pack, a stack of CALs. All legal, decent and honest.

Problem number one: the Microsoft-supplied Certificate of Authenticity has an unreadable product key. There is some kind of printing error; two of the letters are actually missing, and three more are partially obscured. It is, in other words, useless.

After making a number of calls, I’ve discovered that it is hard to get anyone to take an interest in an unreadable COA. The whole system is built on the theory that you get one COA with the product keys, and one only, and if you lose it, that is that. That said my supplier is helpful and I’m sure will sort it out, probably by treating the entire pack as faulty … of course that means a delay while a replacement is arranged. You would think there might be a database somewhere, where you can key in the serial number of the COA (which is fine) and read out the product keys; but apparently not.

In the meantime, I made a start by installing Server 2008 Standard (the 2nd server in SBS Premium) without a key, as a supposedly 60-day trial. The 60 days didn’t last long; it is already telling me I must activate “today”, probably because I fitted more RAM.

However, it did throw up another little issue. The HP version of SBS is meant to be locked to HP machines. That’s fine; I have an HP box, I have HP software. However, I want to install SBS as a virtual machine hosted on the 2nd server – a fully supported configuration. How can the BIOS-locked installation tell the difference between a virtual machine hosted on an HP box, and a virtual machine hosted on any other box?

The answer: it can’t. My perfectly legitimate installation throws up the error: This system is not supported platform [sic].

For this one, I have found a solution. What you do is to download the trial and install from that, entering your HP product key when requested (this one I do have).

I am not sure which is more silly, the fact that the legal media will not install, or the fact that the trial media bypasses it so easily.

All these are hassles which only the honest have to suffer.

I understand Microsoft’s need to protect its intellectual property; but frankly the user experience when encountering this kind of issue is appalling, and one soon tires of endless recorded messages that do not address your issue. It doesn’t help that Google searches bring back mostly information on piracy, or exhortations not to be a pirate.

Linux anyone?

Update: Here’s an interesting tech note from HP about a similar Hyper-V issue for HP-branded Server 2008. Looking on the SBS media, the exact files referenced there are not present, but there is one in the same location called HPActive.cmd which adds a registry entry to the host and does some funky licensing stuff. That said, it also seems to replace the product key which is odd. Could running this fix the issue? No promises, and at your own risk.

.net, adobe, iphone, microsoft, mono, open source, silverlight, software development, windows

Miguel de Icaza on eight years of Mono, its future, and the Silverlight desktop

Mono founder Miguel de Icaza spoke at the Monospace conference – 250 enthusiasts in Austin, Texas – on the past and future of the project. I wasn’t there but enjoyed listening to the keynote as posted by Redmonk’s Michael Coté.

“Never ask for permission, ask for forgiveness – that’s how we’ve done a lot of things in the Mono world,” said de Icaza, who also remarked that in the beginning “we thought it would be a walk in the park, we thought it would up and running in 6 months.” His motivation: “We think that .net is a fantastic development platform – we were envious when Microsoft came out with it.”

Eight years on and the Mono team is now around 35 people at Novell, plus 30-70 external contributors. “We don’t dictate the direction of mono, it’s mandated by the direction of the community,” says de Icaza. He talks about MonoDevelop, the Mono IDE, which is now licensed under LGPL allowing commercial plug-ins; about MonoTouch which lets you develop for Apple’s iPhone and “will expand towards Android”; and about XNATouch, a Mono game framework for iPhone.

The task of keeping up with Microsoft – insofar as Mono succeeds – has become easier thanks to open source. “In the last couple of years Microsoft has become very open-source friendly in some areas,” says de Icaza. “For example ASP.NET MVC, we don’t have to do anything, it just runs on our ASP.NET implementation.”

Someone asked about Mono’s plans for WPF, which is becoming more important on Windows, and this led to some intriguing comments on Moonlight/Silverlight and its future. “I think Silverlight has more potential than WPF has, because it runs on the Mac, it runs on Linux, it runs on Windows, and Silverlight is easier to learn than WPF is. We like the Silverlight model but we don’t like that it is limited to a sandbox on the browser,” he said.

“Moonlight can be used in two modes. One of them is moonlight in the plug-in, like you do with Microsoft, and you can out-of-browser if you want, but you are still restricted by the sandbox. We also offer the same graphical engine that we use for Silverlight [Moonlight] but with the .NET 4.0 APIs. You have full access to .NET 4.0 with the Silverlight UI. Isn’t that awesome?”

“WPF is interesting but a lot of work, and we don’t have the bandwidth and the resources. Our best possible option is to use Silverlight with the .NET 4.0 APIs. Our wish is to bring this expanded Silverlight to Windows and Mac OS. Maybe we’ll gently push Microsoft in that direction.”

One of his team is working on “the whole desktop rendered by Silverlight.”

In general I agree that Silverlight is more significant than WPF, particularly if Microsoft keeps up its current energetic level of development. I will be surprised if we don’t hear from Microsoft about an enhanced desktop Silverlight at the forthcoming PDC and Mix conferences.

There is another side to this though: if you can do your cross-platform .NET development in Microsoft Silverlight, do you still need Mono? Particularly if official ports to Linux start appearing?

Of course there is more to Mono than Moonlight. Running ASP.NET on Linux web servers is an attractive proposition, though historically its performance and reliability hasn’t matched that of Microsoft .NET – not surprising given its relatively small resources. Eight years on, and Mono has done more than just survived, yet has not quite tipped over into a platform popular enough to attract the level of contributions it needs.

cloud computing, exchange, google, microsoft

Los Angeles chooses Google over Exchange for email – who will follow?

When the city council of Los Angeles needed to replace its Novell email system, it looked at two main options. One was Microsoft Exchange, the other Google Apps; and Google won the deal.

There is one, fascinating, caveat. According to David Sarno at LA Times:

The contract was approved pending an amendment that would require Google to compensate the city in the event that the Google system was breached and city data exposed or stolen. No such clause existed in the contract.

Compensation sounds like something more substantial than the fee refund offered by a typical SLA (Service Level Agreement) – and this is about security, not interruption of service.

I would be intrigued to know whether Microsoft pitched a traditional on-premise solution (most likely); or whether it sought to do like-for-like with Google with a hosted Exchange offering.

It’s been a good month or so for Google Apps. I’ve heard of deals with Rentokil Initial (up to 35,000 users worldwide) and Jaguar Land Rover (15,000 worldwide). Deals like this put Google on the map for many more organisations.

Could 2010 be the year of the cloud?