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Microsoft takes the wrapper off some more Office 2010 features as the Technical Preview is released

Posted on Monday 13 July 2009Monday 13 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

This content is 16 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Office productivity applications are pretty dull really. Or at least we like to think so, until a new suite comes along and we get excited about the new features. Three years ago, I wrote about how I was looking forward to the 2007 Microsoft Office System. These days I use Office 2007 every day and I really appreciate some of the new functionality. Even if I do still struggle with the ribbon from time to time, it does make sense – and going back to Office 2003 for a few weeks whilst my work notebook PC was being repaired was not a pleasant experience.

Microsoft gave us a sneak preview of the next version of Office (codenamed Office 14) at PDC 2008. Then they announced that it would be known as Office 2010 and today, at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in New Orleans, they showed us a few more of the features to expect when the product ships in the first half of next year and announced that the product has reached its Technical Preview milestone.

Today’s keynote only included a short section on Office (Ed Bott has some more information in his blog post about the Office 2010 debut) but Takeshi Yamoto (Corporate Vice President for Office) demonstrated:

Outlook: receives the ribbon interface (as do all Office applications, including SharePoint); voicemail in inbox with text to speech preview so it can be read without playing the audio; click on a section of the text in the preview and Outlook will play just that part of the message; contact cards include integration with OCS for click to call, e-mail or send an instant message; a conversation view (familiar to Google Mail) aids dealing with Inbox clutter as it allows a few conversations to be acted on at once – and works across folders; conversations can be ignored (“a Mute button for Outlook”); QuickSteps can be applied to common e-mail tasks – e.g. message archival, forwarding, or the creation of a meeting invite; finally MailTips warns that that someone is out of office before you send them mail, or that mail is being sent outside the organisation, or to a large distribution group. (Some features may require Exchange Server 2010, Office Communications Server 2007 R2, or Office SharePoint Server 2010)
Excel: new business intelligence tools for analysis are provided as part of Microsoft’s “democratisation of BI” – putting more useful tools into the hands of more people – including mini-charts in a single cell and slices to drill through data.
PowerPoint: new transitions; video becomes a first class citizen – insert footage and edit inside PowerPoint, including recolouring and the application of effects such as border, reflection, etc.; a new backstage view allows organisation of all features and commands for the entire file, including compression, seeing who is editing the file, and allowing integration with line of business applications; more SmartArt (building on Office 2007); slides can be advanced whilst presenting across the web, in browser and on even on a smartphone!
Office Web Applications: demonstrating Excel running in a browser – looking the same as the full client (complete with ribbon); multiple users working on a file simultaneously with syncronised updates populated on one another’s views; works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
SharePoint: More information will be made available at the SharePoint conference in October.

Whilst there are some cool new features here (and there are enhancements to other Office applications, like Word and Visio too), the most significant part of Office 2010 is the web application (webapp) functionality. Microsoft announced that webapps will be available in three ways:

For consumers: free of charge via Windows Live.
For business that require management and control: as a Microsoft Online Service.
For volume license customers: Office webapps running on premise.

With over 400 milion Windows Live customers, plus business customers with software assurance, around half a billion users will have immediate access to office web applications on the day of launch. In short, Microsoft wants to make the 2010 Office System the best productivity experience whatever the device – making the most of the power of a PC, the mobility of a phone and the ubiquity of a web browser.

Microsoft wants to make the 2010 Office System the best productivity experience – for PC, phone and browser

Office web applications are clearly aimed at competing with offerings from Google (and others) but, as a Google Apps user who is collaborating on a pretty simply budget spreadsheet (for some home improvements) with someone else (my wife), I find it Google Spreadsheets very basic and I can’t wait to see what I need to make rich Office functionality work in across browsers with the Microsoft solution.

I’m sure some of the features demonstrated today will be missing from the technology preview (I should find out soon, as should anyone else who is accepted for the technical preview) but, as someone who collaborates with others, working on multiple computers, with multiple operating systems and a plethora of browsers, when Office 2010 finally makes it to my screen I expect to be a very happy chap.

If Microsoft Windows and Office are no longer relevant then why are #wpc09 and Office 2010 two of the top 10 topics on Twitter right now?

Posted on Monday 13 July 2009Monday 13 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Every now and again, I read somebody claiming that Microsoft is no longer relevant in our increasingly online and connected society and how we’re all moving to a world of cloud computing and device independence where Google and other younger and more agile organisations are going to run our lives. Oh yes and it will also be the year of Linux on the desktop!

Then I spend an afternoon listening to a Microsoft conference keynote, like the PDC ones last Autumn/Fall (announcing Windows Azure and the next generation of client computing), or today’s Worldwide Partner Conference and I realise Microsoft does have a vision and that, under Ray Ozzie’s leadership, they do understand the influence of social networks and other web technologies. That’ll be why, as I’m writing this, the number 6 and 7 topics on Twitter are Office 2010 and #wpc09.

Competition is good (I’m looking forward to seeing how the new ~~Ubuntu~~ Google OS works out and will probably run it on at least one of my machines) but I’m really heartened by some of this afternoon’s announcements (which I’ll write up in another blog post).

Meanwhile, for those who say that Windows 7 will be Microsoft’s last desktop operating system, perhaps this excerpt from a BBC interview with Ray Ozzie will be enough to convince them that the concept of an operating system is not dead… it’s just changing shape:

(Credit is due to Michael Pietroforte at 4sysops for highlighting the existence of this video footage.)

Two more of my “How Do I?” videos available on the Microsoft TechNet website

Posted on Monday 13 July 2009Monday 13 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Last month I mentioned that my “how do I” video on backing up a Hyper-V host with SCDPM had made it onto the Microsoft TechNet website and recently I noticed that the follow-up on backing up Hyper-V using the tools within Windows Server (Windows Server Backup) is now live on the site too (as well as one on creating a cluster on Hyper-V, which I freely admit would be more useful if it was about creating a cluster of Hyper-V hosts… for which I didn’t have the hardware available…).

There are a whole bunch of guys working on videos like these and the good news is that Microsoft has commissioned more for 2009/10. So, if you’re looking for step-by-step information on perform some common tasks with Microsoft products, then it might be worth checking out the TechNet How Do I? videos.

Shoot more images = learn and develop new skills = achieve better results

Posted on Saturday 11 July 2009Wednesday 30 September 2009 By Mark Wilson

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a keen amateur photographer and, as a result, a fair number of photography-related posts appear around here (generally timed to go live on weekends). In addition, I recently spent a fortnight in northern France and my Flickr photostream is full of new images including one I took of l’ÃŽle LouÃ«t, ChÃ¢teau Taureau and the surrounding estuary in the morning mist (which I’m particularly pleased with, hence the reason it is currently the header image for this site):

I’ve also started to enter some competitions and, whilst I’ve yet to enter one that earns me any money (to pay for the Nikon D700 DSLR I bought a few weeks back when the card slot packed up on my D70), I’m pretty chuffed to have scored some points in my local camera club’s print competition of late. The results are pretty subjective (I think I’ve entered some better shots than these but the judges decision is final!) but, back in February I picked up a second place in the Open category with this image of London’s St Pancras International station:

I also picked up a 3rd place in April’s Food category for this shot of some artichokes which is part of a set taken courtesy of Matt at Much Ado Catering:

This shot of a steam locomotive cooling down in the evening scored me a second place in the Open category for May (and print of the evening):

And this shot of a mother duck and her duckings, scored me a third place for New Life in June:

Then, just to add the icing on the cake, one of the group admins for MK Flickrites saw this wild flower meadow shot, suggested I entered it in the June challenge for Natural Landscapes) and it won (by a very narrow margin – my vote would have gone to Negative Vibes’ Summer Grass entry has I been online to vote at the end of the month):

I’m not the world’s greatest photographer (you should see some of the shots I haven’t showcased here!) but entering competitions like this is making me get out there and shoot more images. And, guess what, the more you shoot, the more you learn (and the better you get). So, if you’re a keen photographer, I recommend entering a few competitions. I’m sure my run of luck will end soon (and it took me a while to get over my bruised ego when some images were sent back from a magazine competition a few years ago with a 5-tickbox comment card that said they “lacked impact”) but I get a real buzz when someone enjoys my work. It’s definitely worth a try!

HP iPrint application for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Posted on Friday 10 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

It’s not very often that I come across an iPhone app that I think is worth blogging about. It’s even less often that I’m impressed by what is basically a printer driver but, a few days back, my manager told me about HP iPrint Photo for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

This application locates HP printers (like the OfficeJet 6310 that the company supplied me with) on a WiFi network (using Apple’s Bonjour technology) and allows me to print images directly from my iPhone. Unfortunately, when iTunes copies images from my computer to the iPhone it “optimises” them to such a low quality that they are pretty poor when printed (even at 10cm x 15cm); however the prints from the iPhone’s camera (from my 3G model – I haven’t tried the new camera in the 3G S) are perfectly acceptable. A demonstration video and screenshots are available on the HP website.

It’s a pity that HP can’t provide a driver to give my 64-bit copy of Windows 7 more than just basic printing features on the same device…

Early reports of SLAT-enabled processors significantly increasing RDS session concurrency

Posted on Thursday 9 July 2009Thursday 9 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Let me caveat my next statement by saying that I think Hyper-V is a great virtualisation platform that meets the needs of many customer environments… but… Hyper-V does lack some features that would allow it to stand tall alongside the market leading product (VMware ESX) and I was disappointed when the dynamic memory feature was pulled from the second release of Hyper-V.

As I wrote when discussing new features in the Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidate:

“I asked Microsoftâ€™s Jeff Woolsey, Principle Group Program Manager for Hyper-V, what the problem was and he responded that memory overcommitment results in a significant performance hit if the memory is fully utilised and that even VMware (whose ESX hypervisor does have this functionality) advises against itâ€™s use in production environments. I can see that itâ€™s not a huge factor in server consolidation exercises, but for VDI scenarios (using the new RDS functionality), it could have made a significant difference in consolidation ratios.”

Well, it seems that there may be a silver lining to this cloud (or at least, a shiny metallic grey one) as Clive Watson highlighted the results from some testing with Remote Desktop Services (Microsoft’s VDI broker) running on Hyper-V and reported that:

“We conducted our testing using both non-SLAT and SLAT hardware and found that SLAT enabled processors increased the number of sessions by a factor of 1.6x to 2.5x compared to non-SLAT processors.”

Basically using an SLAT-enabled processor (Intel Nested Page Tables and AMD Enhanced Page Tables) in a server should make a big difference to the consolidation ratios achieved in a VDI scenario.

Of course, if SLAT allows improved performance, then other platforms will also benefit from it (although not necessarily to the same degree) but, if VDI really is a feasible technology solution (I have my doubts and consider it a “significant niche” solution), I’m sure Microsoft will come up with something for the third incarnation of Hyper-V.

Microsoft System Center licensing gets a complex simplication treatment

Posted on Wednesday 8 July 2009Wednesday 8 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Some time ago, I wrote that the most cost-effective way to license multiple System Center products is generally through the purchase of a System Center server management suite license, which includes licenses for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

It’s worth noting that Microsoft made some changes this week which complicate things somewhat as, according to a communication that I received from a large account reseller (LAR):

“Effective on 1 July, 2009, with the release of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) will be switched from an unlimited operating system environment to a four operating system environment. A new suite offering, Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) will be introduced and will include the same products as System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise, but, it will be licensed per processor and will provide for the management of an unlimited number of operating system environments.”

Whilst this kind of makes sense because it falls in line with the Windows Server virtualisation licensing it also has the potential to affect the cost of licensing management products in a virtualised environment as, where high levels of server consolidation may have previously been achieved and managed with an SMSE, now multiple SMSDs will be required.

Further information may be found on Microsoft’s How to Buy the System Center Server Management Suites page but there is also a Server Management Suite Editions FAQ for those who want to know the details.

The SVVP Wizard clears up a support question around virtualising Microsoft products on other platforms

Posted on Tuesday 7 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Earlier this week, I picked up an e-mail from one of my colleagues where he asked

“Do Microsoft officially support Exchange 2007 on VMware ESX virtual machines?”

That seems a fair enough question – and not an uncommon one either in a world where many organisations operate a virtualise-first policy and so are reluctant to deploy infrastructure applications such as Exchange on physical hardware.

One of our colleagues who specialises in messaging technologies referred us to a post on the Exchange Team blog (should you virtualise your Exchange Server 2007 SP1 environment – of course “should you” and “can you” are very different issues and it may be that the best way to consolidate mailbox servers is fewer, larger servers rather than lots of little virtualised ones) as well as to the excessively wordy Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments on TechNet.

After reading Microsoft knowledge base article 957006 (which Clive Watson referred me to a few months ago) I was pretty confident that Exchange running virtualised was supported as long as the virtualisation platform was either Hyper-V or another technology covered by the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) but we wanted better than “pretty confident” – if the supportability of an environment that we design is called into question later it could be very costly and I wanted a 100% cast iron guarantee.

Then I read Matt McSpirit’s blog post about the SVVP Wizard. This three-step process not only confirmed that the environment was covered but it also gave me the low down on exactly which features were and were not supported.

So, if you’re still not sure if a Microsoft product is supported in a virtualised environment, I recommend checking out the SVVP Wizard.

Thought for the day: coping with information overload

Posted on Saturday 4 July 2009Sunday 5 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

As I return from a well-earned family holiday, after what has been a pretty crappy few months, it seems like a pretty good time to remind myself of the key points from a magazine cutting that is permanently above my desk at home. Entitled “Your Route to the Top: Coping with Overload”, this appeared in the December 2005 edition of Management Today magazine and looks like good advice with which to reacquaint myself (indeed, an updated version of this list appeared in the May 2009 issue of the magazine):

“Focus. Successful people are rarely frantic, and frantic people are rarely successful. Take a close look at your schedule and clear out the clutter.

Make you time your own. Is your diary driving you? Take control and be as careful with commitments as you are considerate of other people’s time.

Let go. Trying to achieve everything is admirable, but impossible. Realise that an active imagination will generate more proposals than there is time to get done.

Have a single point of reference. A master to-do list will triumpth over an abundance of sticky notes, text reminders and diary scribbles.

Prioritise. What’s critical in the next hours, days or weeks? Choose your priorities and fix a later time for less urgent things.

Ditch your dependants. Are there people in your team who rely on your time? Support them in solving their problems alone. They will feel more confident; you’ll find more time to breathe.

Lighten the load. Are there ideas where others can help? Match interests to tasks – could someone else write the first draft or attend a new client meeting?

Break down big tasks. Split a job into its components and tackle each part as needed, rather than struggle to do it all now.

Bring clarity through sharing. Engaging others at the start can reassure you that you’re on the right track. It also ensures their support and cuts the risk of having to invest time later.

Use others to estimate your time. Research has shown that other people give more accurate estimates of how long something takes than the person doing the task.

Get on with it. Once you have worked out where your focus is, stop organising and start doing.”

Also on my reading list whilst I was away were a couple of MindGym books that my wife bought for me some time ago and David Allen’s Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity. Paradoxically, getting around to reading books like Getting Things Done, is something I’ve been consistently failing to get done for the last couple of years! Let’s see if any of this reading helps me to be more effective when I return to work next week!

[Postscript: I wrote this post and set it to publish whilst I was away… I never did get around to reading the Getting Things Done or MindGym books. Nor did I finish the one about understanding my strong-willed child, or even the Harry Potter that I’m mid-way through. I did manage to read a few photography magazines though and catch up on my backlog of Sunday Times motoring supplements! Never mind… maybe applying some of the actions above will help me to make the time to catch up on my reading!]

A quick introduction to HP ProLiant servers

Posted on Thursday 2 July 2009Thursday 9 July 2009 By Mark Wilson

Every now and again, I seem to find myself looking at HP’s ProLiant range of industry standard servers. The technology moves ahead but it’s pretty easy to understand where the various models sit in the range because of HP’s product naming system.

The basic principles have been the same for years – the “BMW” numbering scheme: 1 series, 3 series, 5 series and 7 series:

1-series servers are entry level servers, targetted at the SMB and High Performance Computing markets, typically with fewer enterprise features (e.g. hot plug components) on board.
3-series servers include HP’s 1U DL360 “pizza box” server and the ever-popular DL380 with 2 sockets and a range of storage and connectivity options.
5-series servers are the 4-way machines for high-end appllication workloads, with plenty of internal storage and connectivity capacity.
The 7-series was discontinued for a while (as HP didn’t have an 8-way server) but, with increasing demands for powerful servers for consolidation/virtualisation, it was re-introduced with a DL785 that competes with other manufacturers’ servers such as the SunFire X4600.

The final digit is either a 0 (for an Intel server) or a 5 (for an AMD server). DL servers are rack-mountable (D for density), with ML for tower/freestanding servers, although some of these can also be converted to rack-mount. Each ML server is numbered 10 lower than its DL equivalent – so an ML370 is equivalent to a DL380.

A couple of years ago, HP launched its c-class blades and each blade server (prefixed with BL) was numbered as for the corresponding DL or ML server, but with 100 added to the model number – so a DL380 equivalent blade is a BL480c (c for c-class).

Finally, there’s a generation identifier (e.g. G5, G6). Each generation represents a step forward architecturally (e.g. a move from Ultra 320 to serial-attached SCSI disks, or the adoption of Intel’s latest “Nehalem” processors).

Once you know the system, it’s all pretty straightforward – and, as HP controls half the market for industry standard x64 servers, hopefully this blog post will be useful to someone who’s trying to get their head around it.