September 28th, 2009

Microsoft offers no reasons for discontinuation of two Dynamics mobile products

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:22 am

Categories: CRM Live/CRM Online, Channel, Corporate strategy, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Dynamics, Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials notified the company’s partners on September 1 that Microsoft is discontinuing the mobile versions of its Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV ERP products.

(Word of the move trickled out broadly last Friday, via a report from IDG News Service.)

What is still not clear is why Microsoft officials made the decision to phase out the two products. I asked why Microsoft decided to discontinue the mobile clients for the Dynamics products, but received an answer from a spokesperson that elaborated on the “when,” but omitted the “why.” Here’s the statement:

“As you may know now, the discontinuation of Microsoft Dynamics Mobile only affected Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV. No future updates to the Microsoft Dynamics Mobile solutions for Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV will be provided and consequently, from August 31, 2010 on, it will no longer be possible to purchase Microsoft Dynamics Mobile. To be clear, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is NOT affected by any of these changes.

“The discontinuation of Microsoft Dynamics Mobile for Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV was announced to partners on September 1, 2009. Microsoft Dynamics Mobile-Server Components as well as Microsoft Dynamics Mobile-Device Components will be removed from PartnerSource and other download sites on August 31, 2010, thus providing partners with a notice period of one year before the solution will no longer be available for them to deliver to customers. Partners also provide existing mobile solutions for Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, and by clarifying Microsoft’s role in delivering mobile solutions moving forward, the company is providing an opportunity for partners to extend their mobile offerings for customers.”

The spokesperson also noted that Microsoft is still planning to provide support and maintenance for the discontinued products through January 14, 2014.

Microsoft posted a two-sentence acknowledgment of its plans to discontinue the two mobile Dynamics offerings on the Dynamics Mobile Team blog on September 24. There was no information about the reason for the decision. (Not even a “cost-cutting’s to blame” disclaimer.)

Brandon George, Senior Technical Architect with Microsoft partner Sunrise Technologies (and author of a blog that covers Microsoft’s Dynamics moves), had some educated guesses of his own as to why the Softies may have decided to pull the plug. His list:

“1.) Most mobile applications for Dynamics AX are either running third party developed solutions or fully customized to the customer needs Mobile UI to DAX processes and business logic.

“2.) There is a purchase a foot, that will lead to easier development of mobile applications for accessing and working with X++ busienss logic, and the DAX controlled data model.

“3.) Microsoft is wanting their partners to continue to be the source for such developments and vertical offerings, and they want to provide, as usual the platform in which those vertical offerings are developed and delivered on.”

Anyone else have any guesses to share about what’s going on with Microsoft’s mobile ERP strategy?

Update: It’s sounding like George’s suggested Reason No. 3 might be behind Microsoft’s plan to discontinue its two mobile ERP products. The aforementioned spokesperson just sent the following update:

“Microsoft believes the most effective mobile solutions will be those that meet specific business and industry needs and can be constantly developed to keep up with changing market conditions. The  close contact of Microsoft partners to the market and their unique area of expertise allow them to tailor mobile solutions to the specific needs of their customers. With partner-built mobile solutions, businesses can benefit from the core functionality in Microsoft Dynamics, enhanced by the mobile expertise of local partners. Due to the broad availability of such partner-developed mobile solutions, Microsoft made a strategic decision to discontinue the current development of Microsoft Dynamics Mobile.”

In other (fewer) words: Microsoft decided to drop the products to alleviate conflict with its channel. If I get any more from the company on this, I’ll update this post again.

July 7th, 2009

Life beyond Windows 7: Microsoft updates other products

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:45 am

Categories: CRM Live/CRM Online, Code names, Corporate strategy, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Office, Service Pack, Speech, Telecommunications, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office, Server, Microsoft Windows, Service Pack, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Update, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Enterprise Software

Believe it or not, Microsoft is still developing enterprise products besides Windows 7 and Office 2010. While those two are garnering most of the headlines and attention lately, other Microsoft product teams are still chugging along, rolling out updates and readying new versions.

Here are just a few of the latest updates that have come across my RSS reader:

Dynamics CRM/ERP: Microsoft has changed the support policy for service packs for its Dynamics line (Dynamics CRM, AX, GP, SL and NAV). According to Microsoft’s Support site, users will now get “24 months of support for a previous service pack, when a new service pack is released. Previously, when a new service pack was released for these products, Microsoft provided 12 months of support for the previous service pack.” Those currently deploying a currently supported Dynamics CRM or ERP service pack will get an additional 12 months of free support. Microsoft also is reactivating support for a number of Dynamics service packs that had expired, but would be grandfathered in under the 24-month policy. There’s no change in the dates for extended, paid support for these service packs.

Office Communications Server: Microsoft has made licensing changes around the instant-messaging connectivity supported by its Office Communications Server (OCS) product. Microsoft is renaming the Live Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (LCS PIC) license to “Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (OCS PIC). Those with certain OCS Client Access Licenses (CALs) will no longer require additional licenses to federate with Windows Live — but still will require them to federate with AOL and Yahoo. Windows Live Federation offers users the option to add Windows Live Contacts to their Office Communicator contact lists, view presence status and send/receive IMs between the two products. The OCS licensing changes took effect July 1.

Commerce Server: Last we heard about Commerce Server, Microsoft was planning a number of releases — including the 2009 Commerce Server “Mojave” release and the 2009 R2 “Mojave R2″ release. Microsoft is in the final throes of recruiting Technology Adoption Program (TAP) testers who want to check out the private R2 test release. Microsoft released Commerce Server 2009 to manufacturing in March 2009. The R2 release is looking like an early 2010 product, at this point. The Commerce Server team said to expect yet another Commerce Server release in late 2010 or early 2011. No word on what that one will be codenamed and officially designated.

June 24th, 2009

Five reasons why Microsoft's Hohm is more than just another Web 2.0 service

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:59 am

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Dynamics ERP, Healthcare, Live Mesh, Research, Search, Security, Utility/cloud computing, Windows CE

Tags: Web, Web 2.0, Health Care, Microsoft Corp., Energy, Hohm, HealthVault, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare

Microsoft’s Startup Business Accelerator (the folks who brought you the Microsoft Vine public-information service) are introducing another new service on June 24. That offering, known officially as Hohm and which which handles home-energy management, looks like yet another generic Web 2.0-type service.

But Hohm is more than an attempt by Microsoft to establish its cred in the “save the planet” movement. Recently, I had a chance to ask Troy Batterberry, the Hohm product manager, about the service. After talking to him, here are five reasons I think Hohm is more than initially meets the green eye:

1. Hohm is a hosted serice running on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. There are relatively few Microsoft services that already are running fully on top of Azure. HealthVault is one; Live Mesh is another. The calculations upon which the Hohm service is built are “really complicated,” Batterberry said, and require historical modeling. By running on Azure, Hohm can be scaled up or down, depending on demand, to use lots of compute cycles during peak demand.

2. Speakng of HealthVault, Hohm was patterned after it and uses the same security and privacy mechanisms that Microsoft’s health-information service uses. While energy consumption data doesn’t seem as in need of guarding that patient health data is, energy usage and pricing are information that is sensitive and to which access needs to be controlled, said Batterberry.

3. Hohm is one of Microsoft’s first — but not only — product tailored to the energy market. (The Dynamics team already launched an energy-management dashboard product last year, making it Microsoft’s first energy-specific “product.”) Remember how Microsoft began hiring doctors and healthcare experts — and even bought a healthcare-specific company — in order to build and field HealthVault and Azyxxi? The company is planning a similarly serious foray into the energy field, building out additional energy-centric software products and services, Batterberry said.

4. Is Microsoft working on an energy-centric search capability/engine, the same way that Microsoft has incorporated health-specific search data into Bing? “It could make sense to go into the decision-specific energy area,” Batterberry said.

5. Microsoft considers Hohm part of a “10-year (investment) journey” into the energy market. Microsoft’s energy-specific focus will encompass consumers, utility companies, device makers and more, Batterberry said. Microsoft may end up fielding some kind of enerprise-focused energy-management product/service, he said. The company may become a player in the energy-centric device-control space (not a big stretch, given Microsoft’s work in embedded operating systems with Windows Embedded Compact).

Users (in the U.S. only for now) interested in test-driving Hohm — which was codenamed “Niagara,” as the energy pioneer Nikola Tesla did a lot of his research in Niagara Falls — will be able to sign up for the beta this week on the Hohm page. Microsoft is expecting the final version of the service to be released in about six to nine months, Batterberry said.

May 8th, 2009

More fallout from Microsoft's moves to consolidate its ad platforms

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:38 am

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Dynamics ERP, Google, Search

Tags: Advertisement, Microsoft Corp., AdManager, PubCenter, Atlas Enterprise, Mary Jo Foley

At the end of the week of Microsoft’s Round 2 of layoffs, the dust is continuing to settle, especially in the advertising space.

Microsoft officials have acknowledged that cuts announced this week massively affected its Massive in-game ad unit. But according to a spokesperson, “the reports of a 75 percent workforce reduction are inaccurate. In total, the Massive business unit will see a headcount reduction of 28 percent.”

Massive isn’t the only part of Microsoft’s ad business to feel the impact, however. Microsoft officials have been laying the groundwork for Microsoft’s move to make all of its various ad platforms look and feel like a cohesive entity, known as “Microsoft Advertising.” But it wasn’t until this week that the effects of those consolidation moves became clear.

From the aforementioned spokesperson, whom I asked about rumors of other Microsoft advertising cuts:

“Rapt and AdManager are being consolidated with AdCenter and PubCenter. A key strategy of APS (Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group) is to consolidate various platforms around a common platform. Customers have been very clear about wanting a “one-stop shop” for our advertiser and publisher technologies, and that remains the mission and goal with these changes.

“Atlas Enterprise is not being phased out. It will be integrated into the core Microsoft Ad Platform, giving customers additional capabilities and building upon their investment in Atlas.”

Rapt is a product Microsoft acquired when it bought Rapt Inc. — “the leading provider of advertising yield management solutions for digital media publishers” — in March 2008. AdManager is a sell-side tool that currently is part of Microsoft’s Atlas suite of products aimed at smaller publishers. Atlas Enterprise is buy-side tool for agencies and advertisers.

Microsoft bought the Atlas assets in 2007 when it paid $6 billion for ad company aQuantive.

AdCenter is Microsoft’s core online ad platform. PubCenter is Microsoft’s Google adSense competitor — a public beta of which recently went live.

Microsoft doesn’t always phase out the products it buys when it aquires companies. Just look at the Microsoft Business Solutions side of the house — home to the Great Plains, Navision, Axapta and Solomon offerings. Microsoft is still supporting all four ERP platforms (to varying degrees). (Navision, for its part, has three upcoming relases on its roadmap extending out to 2017!)

But back to Microsoft and online advertising…. CEO Ballmer has made it clear Microsoft sees search and advertising as two areas where the company is going to continue to invest, no matter what. (And, as we know, Ballmer’s Google obsession runs deep.) But this week’s cuts show Ballmer & Co. aren’t willing to invest 100 percent blindly. Even online advertising has to show it is cutting costs, just like the rest of the company….

May 1st, 2009

Hosted CRM, ERP: Another Microsoft and Oracle battleground in the making

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:53 pm

Categories: Azure, CRM Live/CRM Online, Corporate strategy, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Systems integrators, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Hosted CRM, Oracle Corp., ERP, Microsoft Corp., CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Software, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Software

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is famous for blurting out potential product ideas even when they are nothing but a glimmer in his eye. But maybe in the case of offering hosted financials, CRM, HRM and other similar services, there’s a chance such Oracle-hosted entities could come to market sooner rather than later.

If Ellison & Co. do make good on their hosted services threat, they’ll be competing with Microsoft, which already offers hosted Dynamics CRM — and has made noise about possibly delivering Microsoft-hosted ERP in some way down the line.

At least in this economy, selling CRM/ERP (in the form of software, services and/or both) has proven a tough task for the Softies. Just this week, Microsoft rolled out three new “incentive offerings” aimed at the CRM/ERP space.

The three:

• Business Ready Flexible Pay, aimed at new ERP and CRM customer in the U.S. Provides “the option to purchase the solutions today but pay for them in equal payments over three years.”
• New discounts targeted at getting users to dump competitors’ products. A new U.S.-only partner-targeted program, which kicks off this month, will allow partners to “extend their customers an offer to move to a Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution with a 50 percent discount on licensing, and receive a rebate equal to 25 percent of the suggested retail price of the Microsoft Dynamics solution (up to a maximum of $25,000) to help offset the costs of switching from Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200, or Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.”
• Business Ready Licensing changes allowing Dynamics CRM to be purchased as a standalone product (even though it also continues to be available through Microsoft’s volume-licensing programs, as well).

Any of these new programs sound appealing? What other kinds of incentives does Microsoft need to offer to get (or keep) you in its CRM/ERP fold?

March 13th, 2009

Microsoft weekend roundup: Win 7, GP 11 and more

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:11 pm

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Database, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, SQL Server, Search, Utility/cloud computing, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, SQL, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Programming Languages, Team Management, Databases, Operating Systems, Software, Software Development

It’s been a relatively quiet news week on the Microsoft front — perhaps in anticipation of next week’s Mix ‘09 conference, which kicks off on March 18 in Las Vegas.

To close out the week, here are a few Microsoft-specific tidbits of potential interest:

Windows 7 Build 7057 — Windows 7, Build 7057, as numerous sites and blogs have reported — is out in the wild.  I’ve seen a number of folks speculating this build could end up being earmarked as the Windows 7 Release Candidate. The timing seems about right, as the Windows team seems to favor repeated in-house and small external tests on a build that is a month or two old before releasing it to the general public for testing. Given the Win 7 RC is expected in April, it’s not a stretch to think 7057 could get the RC stamp.

(On a related note, while the Windows 7 team has slowly but surely been sharing information on what is changing between the Beta released in January and the RC, expected in April, ZDNet’s Ed Bott and Ars Technica have published more comprehensive lists of what’s new.)

Great Plains 11 — At Microsoft’s Convergence confab this past week, there was little talk about the next releases of Microsoft’s Dynamics apps. One Microsoft blogger did share some tidbits about the next release of Great Plains, however. The next version of GP is 12 to 14 months away and will include lots of new charting and graphing features, as well as some long-awaited printing enhancements, according to the post.

SQL Data Services — Microsoft officials finally shared more specifics about the planned revamp of SQL Data Services (SDS). The team also published on March 12 a Q&A that provides additional information about Microsoft’s planned move toward making this service more of a true relational database in the cloud. In the Q&A, Microsoft officials acknowledge they aren’t yet ready to talk about how they  plan to move over existing SDS testers to the revamped SDS or how they plan to price the service. Meanwhile, on another Microsoft blog, there’s a useful list of a whole slew of Azure white papers, including ones on Azure Blob Storage, Azure Table Storage and Azure Programming Queue Storage.

Kumo — Whether you believe (as I do) that Kumo is likely to be not only the codename but also the final name of Microsoft’s next version of Live Search, it’s interesting to see the new Kumo home page, which is currently available to testers inside Microsoft only. There are very few visible differences between the new Kumo home page and the current Live Search one; perhaps most of the tweaks are in the subpages and search algorithm itself? In any case, Microsoft needs to do something: The new comScore query-share data for February is out, and Microsoft is down .3 percent, to 8.2 percent.

March 10th, 2009

Microsoft touts new CRM freebies

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:26 am

Categories: CRM Live/CRM Online, Channel, Corporate strategy, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP

Tags: Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Corp., CRM, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Sales Strategy, Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Sales

Microsoft is making new CRM services and add-ons for free to appeal to business users hurting from the worldwide recession, according to company officials.

Microsoft announced the new wares during the first day of its Convergence conference for customers and partners of its Dynamics CRM and ERP products.Among the new offerings: A service-level agreement (SLA) guaranteeing 99.9 percent uptime to all Dynamics CRM Online customers;  eight new, downloadable CRM Accelerators, or extensions, for both on-premise and cloud-based CRM customers, that provide additional marketing and sales functionality.

“The 99.9 percent guarantee is higher than Salesforce or NetSuite offers — if and when they offer these kinds of guarantees,” said Chris Caren, General Manager of Dynamics Product Management.

Microsoft also offered “qualified” attendees of Convergence “savings of as much as 75 percent on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and up to 20 percent on Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics SL,” company officials said.

Last fall, Microsoft offered its Dynamics CRM and ERP customers zero percent financing options to try to help spur sales. On March 10, Microsoft execs reiterated that offer, and also noted the company is offering Dynamics customers zero payments for six months through its SmartPay program, with extended payments from Microsoft Financing.

Dynamics is a billion-dollar business for Microsoft, but billings for that division were down two percent in the first half of Microsoft’s fiscal 2009 (ending December 31, 2009).

In addition to touting freebies, Microsoft also is planning to highlight its “CRM is a development platform” message during this week’s show in New Orleans, Caren said. Microsoft officials have touched on this in the past, mentioning the company’s Dynamics “xRM” platform as a “relationship management” framework upon which third-party developers can build their own solutions.

November 3rd, 2008

Microsoft Big Brains: Brad Lovering

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:02 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Development tools, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Microsoft Big Brains, Oslo, System Center, Utility/cloud computing, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas)

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley, Team, Oslo, Modeling, Brad Lovering, Team Management, Research & Development, Management, Business Operations

Just before retiring from day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft, Chairman Bill Gates said that he expected Microsoft’s 22 Technical Fellows to get a lot more publicly visible — now that they wouldn’t be living in his shadow. While some of the Microsoft fellows already have been active on the public-speaking circuit, many of them are not widely known outside the company.

I’ve launched this series — “Microsoft Big Brains” — to help remedy that shortcoming. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to profile as many of the company’s tech fellows as to whom I can get access.

Microsoft’s Technical Fellows came to the company via a variety of different routes. Some of them run divisions inside the company; some focus on particularly thorny technical issues that may span a variety of product units. Regardless of where they sit in the organization, the fellows all have been charged with helping Microsoft craft its next-gen products and strategies, much the way that Gates used his regular “Think Weeks” to prioritize what Microsoft needed to do next.

This Week’s ‘Big Brain’: Brad Lovering
Claim to Fame: As of two months ago, runs the entire Oslo team in the Connected System Division, and plans to do so through RTM of Version 1 in 2009.
How Long You’ve Been With Microsoft: 20 years
More About You: Straight out of college at the University of Washington, came to Microsoft and worked on a succession of developer-focused products, ranging from Visual Basic, to Visual J++, to Visual Studio .Net and the .Net Framework, to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). For the past four years, been focused on Oslo tools and strategy
Your Biggest Accomplishment (So Far) at Microsoft: “I’ve been able to ship every product I’ve worked on.”
Team(s) You Also Work With: Azure cloud team, System Center unit, Team Foundation System, Visio, Dynamics CRM/ERP units
Why Stay at Microsoft? “I’ve been at Microsoft half my life. I have my family and I have software. I love making software. I want to do this another 20+ years, if I can.”

Every three to four years during his 20-year career at Microsoft, Technical Fellow Brad Lovering has had a fireside chat with Chairman Bill  Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer and Senior Vice President/Chief Technology Officer David Vaskevitch.

“It’s a balance. I say what I’m interested in. They talk about getting the right teams and assembling the right pieces,” Lovering says.  And then Lovering goes off and works on whatever developer-focused project that he’s interested in and needs him most.

It was four years ago when Lovering initially took on the assignment of working with Microsoft’s then-fledgling Oslo  modeling tools and strategy team.

“The first year was a lot of customer stuff. Then it was a year of getting the team in place. There were various incubations in various places,” he reminisces. “It will be five years total by the time (Version 1) ships” as part of Visual Studio 2010.

It’s somewhat atypical for Lovering to be managing a team of a couple hundred people, as he is doing now.

“I spend most of my time on tech design,”  he says. “Half my job is typically talking to internal (Microsoft) partners. Now (with Oslo), we’re also starting to talk to external partners” he says.

“I’m staying with the Oslo team through RTM and hopefully for another turn for Version 2. I’m excited to do a Version 2 for the first time,” says the typically on-to-the-next-thing Lovering.

What’s left to do after the first set of Oslo deliverables  (a shared repository, the M modeling language and the Quadrant visual-modeling tool) are completed? Lovering says there is a never-ending laundry list, especially around the cloud. Already, the Oslo team has started working with the Azure (Red Dog) cloud OS team to build a domain-specific language (DSL) using Oslo.

“You need a model-driven approach for these big systems,” like Azure, Lovering says

There are potential synergies between Oslo and the System Center systems-management tools and technologies, the Dublin application server team, the Dynamics CRM and ERP wares, too, he says. Almost every big software-development project at Microsoft could benefit from Oslo, Lovering says. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised to see many next-gen Microsoft tools and products include Oslo integration as a feature. Visio, for example, could benefit from tighter import/export integration with Quadrant, Lovering says.

“I spend so much of Microsoft’s money doing crazy stuff,” Lovering concludes. “But they keep saying, ‘go,go, go.’”

So off goes Mr. Oslo to help build out more domains and find ways to get developers on board with Microsoft’s modeling technologies.

For all of the “Microsoft Big Brains” profiles, check out the Big Brains page.

October 1st, 2008

Microsoft readies new 'Dublin' distributed app server

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:22 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Oslo, PDC 2008, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Windows server

Tags: Developer, Application Server, Windows Communication Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Dublin, Microsoft Dynamics Team, Microsoft Windows, .Net, Application Servers, Research & Development

In conjunction with the rollout of its next-generation .Net Framework 4.0 release, Microsoft is readying a new distributed application server, code-named “Dublin.”

Dublin — a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of which Microsoft will release during its Professional Developers Conference (PDC)  — ultimately will be built into an unspecified future release of Windows Server. Before that happens, Microsoft will make the Dublin technology available to Windows Server customers as a separate download.

Steven Martin, Senior Director of Product Management with Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division, chatted with me yesterday about Dublin, as well a bit about some of the new related functionality Microsoft is prepping as part of its .Net 4.0 release, on October 1.

“The lines between Web servers and application servers are continuing to blur,” Martin told me. “Web applications are becoming more stateful, and we’re seeing developers build more composite apps.”

Microsoft developers who’ve been working with the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technologies that are part of the current release of the .Net Framework have expressed a need to have a single, end-to-end view of all of their data, pulled from multiple back-ends,” Martin said. As a result of these trends, Microsoft decided to extend the application server capabilities currently built into Windows Server, he said.

“Developers using WF and WCF today have to build a separate host for their applications. Dublin will eliminate that requirement and give developers more scalabiity and support for long-running transactions,” among other features, Martin said.

(The .Net Framework, the most recent version of which is 3.5, consists of the Common Language Runtime, Windows Presentation Foundation, WCF, WF, InfoCard, ASP.Net and a host of other developer-focused technologies. Microsoft is more tightly integrating WCF and WF in the .Net 4.0 release. It also plans to beef up support for REST, ATOM and Plain Old XML, as well as add performance, messaging and modeling enhancements to 4.0.)

Earlier this year, during a presentation at its TechEd conference, consultant David Chappell said he believed Microsoft was building a separate process server that would be a key part of its Oslo modeling strategy. My bet — although I couldn’t get Microsoft officials to say this — is Dublin is that mystery server.

Microsoft’s Dynamics team is going to be the first group at Microsoft to build appliations using Dublin, Martin said. One of the next versions of Dynamics CRM, as well as of Dynamics AX ERP, will run on top of Dublin and leverage the .Net 4.0 technologies, he said. (Martin wouldn’t specify which releases specifically or when they’d ship.) Several third-party software vendors have committed to using Dublin and .Net 4.0, too, including AmberPoint, Epicor and Telerik.

Microsoft officials still won’t provide a ship target for .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 or any of the other elements that comprise its Oslo platform. Microsoft is slated to discuss Oslo in depth at the PDC in late October.

August 14th, 2008

System Center Online: Another Microsoft-hosted cloud service in the making

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:30 am

Categories: CRM Live/CRM Online, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Exchange Server, Management tools, Security, SharePoint Server, System Center, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., Service, Online Version, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is continuing to flesh out its Software+Service portfolio and has yet another, still-unannounced, Microsoft-hosted service that it is developing. The new member of the family? System Center Online, according to tipsters who talked under the conditiion of anonymity.

System Center is Microsoft’s uber-brand for its systems management software. “Online” is the branding name for Microsoft-hosted enterprise services. So far, Microsoft has announced Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Server Online, Dynamics CRM Online and Live Meeting (the only one of the family which still has yet to be bestowed with the “Online” name.”) There’s also a bundle, known as the Business Productivity Suite Online (a bundle of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Server Online and Live Meeting) that Microsoft has unveiled, as well. And at the very low end of the hosted services market, Microsoft is rolling out the Microsoft-hosted Deskless Worker services.

Microsoft also is expected, at some point, to deliver some kind of ERP Online service. And there have been rumors of a Forefront Online Microsoft-hosted security offering, as well.

System Center Online will be an online-management service aimed at IT pros, sources said. It is being developed by the same team that has built the Windows Update (WU), Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) and Microsof Update (MU) patch-update services. Among the services that Microsoft is expected to build into the comprehensive System Center Online service are anti-virus, anti-spyware, system monitoring, backup/restore, asset inventory monitoring, policy management and software distribution/deployment.

(Does this mean System Center Online will supplant Windows Live OneCare? No. OneCare is aimed at consumers and System Center Online at business users. Whether it will also incorporate some of the aforementioned patching services, like WU, WSUS and MU will be interesting to watch.)

Given Microsoft’s S+S mantra, it’s not too surprising that nearly all of its enterprise serers are getting a services make-over. What “make-over” means in this context is not trivial, however. First, Microsoft has to find a way to make its software offering multi-tenant capable. Next, the company has to decide how much of the core software offering to deliver in services form.

As Forrester Research noted in a recent study on SharePoint Online (entitled “SharePoint Shoots for the Cloud”), SharePoint Online isn’t an online version of Microsoft Office SharePoint (MOSS). The Online version includes only the most rudimentary collaboration/management capabilities — which is fine for some and not for others. From the Forrester report:

“For the time being, there is a very significant tradeoff between SharePoint Online and a full MOSS 2007 implementation. If you are willing to give up robust content management, portal functionality, business intelligence (BI) capabilities, cross-site search, and application development capabilities in favor of low cost and quick implementation, then SharePoint Online could be your solution.”

Given that caveat, would you be interested in kicking the tires of a Microsoft-hosted system-management service? Why or why not?