Huge huge thanks to my mate Matt for helping me make this blog look soooo much better! Really needed the 'pimp my blog' experience! If you fancy checking out Vista, Virtualisation and more then check out his blog Peering through Windows.

Enjoy!

So there has been a little bit of a reshuffle in the Windows group in Corp and the search teams are now sitting under the Windows team and the 'Live' branding has been removed to sit solely with the Online Services Group (OSG). So all things Search that are inside the firewall, or in other words the business stuff wont have the Live brand from now on. They will instead be referred to as Windows Search.

It is important to say at this point that this is not a branding exercise but is a fantastic statement around how we perceive and deal with search in the enterprise. All products that sit under the Windows group face some very stringent rules for product release, Many of these don't add to the sizzle of a products edginess but they do add to the reasons why businesses love our software. I will talk about one of these here briefly but for more detail there is a fantastic blog by Michael Howard, here:

 http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard

Michael works in Redmond as a security specialist, if you have never sat in on one of his lectures or seminars they are well worth it. Essentially, he looks after (or did) the Security Development Life-cycle. I am not an expert in this and wont pretend to be so you can read until your hearts content here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2005/03/18/398833.aspx

However, this is a superbly important aspect of what the Windows group does and I believe a major selling point for our business (contrary to what some developers believe) Now, in development land there are two very healthy points of friction:

1. A crusade for ultimate development and new features bringing value to users through new ways of doing things - traits this company is built upon

2.  Professional development for business - basically this makes sure the best features for business get through to development and those that may result in security holes that could be exploited or features that businesses wont deem necessary (for example a feature that may allow a user to deploy their own cryptography software etc) do not

Understandably one persons cool feature is another persons security vulnerability so procedures like the Security Development Life-cycle are a huge advantage for Microsoft. So how does this appear in real life in the search world and what is the impact of the search team falling under the Windows group?

To understand this impact, you have to put yourself in the seat of the CXO who holds delicate secrets that protect the revenues of his company and who wishes to protect those so that he or she upholds shareholder value. The professional development of software is really important to him or her as in this case the wrong person being able to get access to the wrong data can undermine his or her position. Hence, the fact that the search group now sit under the Windows division is a huge advantage to businesses deploying our software.

 So what questions should you ask of search suppliers you are evaluating:

• What processes and systems do you have in place for the secure development of search software?
• How do you support Access Control Lists protecting the integrity of users in our business and their data?
• What commitments do you make to respond to vulnerabilities in software and what is your track record in this arena?

Now I am sure that some of you will be thinking that all companies will be responsible and support the software that they develop, all I will say on the matter is 'Buyer Beware'. For more information around this topic, have a little look at the Forrester article on the Get the Facts website here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/facts/analyses/vulnerable.mspx

Certainly opened my eyes! Enjoy!

Have to love the technology used to level the runway in Antarctica for the first regular link down there from Oz.....cannot help thinking about the irony of landing a plane on the ice in order to study the environment....lol

Good weekend all!

Check out the Search Server Demo by clicking on the logo above and the full press release here.

If you are interested in Software, Services & Next Generation Partnerships then head over to Claire's blog and check out her blog ramblings!

http://blogs.msdn.com/armadillo/

Particularly liked the posts on What is this Web 2.0 thing? and Open Borders stay tuned for more from COH!

Enjoy!

Cool new event - check it out:

SharePoint Deployment in Financial Services - Alleviating the burden of compliance and TCF

Friday 2nd May 2008, Microsoft Offices - Victoria, London

SWORD's SharePoint Consultancy is chairing this forthcoming event in association with Contrast Training.

This free morning event, hosted by Microsoft, will address how Microsoft's SharePoint enables organisations to create, distribute and manage policies, procedures, rules, regulations and the Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) infrastructure using SharePoint.

Guest speakers include Roger Cotterill from Endsleigh Insurance and Gerry Morgan of City Capital Consulting.

Delegates will learn how, with SharePoint, they are able to improve compliance procedures, reduce the burden of compliance on senior managers and assist with managing the TCF infrastructure.

Great to see some of our new partners getting out there and making some noise!

It's an interesting report that looks at the BI and Search and how they will play together in the next year or so. The resume is:

• Dont expect one to takeover from the other
• BI and Search will work in tandem

Recommendations:

• Demand integration from BI and Search vendors
• Don't implement BI and Search in isolation - they should be treated as part of an information access strategy
• Search should be the way in which businesses find appropriate BI data pools

This article is a good synopsis of the typical structured versus unstructured data query discussion. In my mind it acknowledges that the market is changing that customers are tired of the huge BI projects and associated costs and that despite some of the misgivings of Enterprise Search it does deliver on 85% of user needs.

So what does this mean for a Microsoft partner;

• Position Microsoft BI and Microsoft Enterprise Search together as compliments - one will give immediate gains whilst the other will as a medium term project satisfy the more experienced consumers of a given business
• Skill up on the Microsoft offering through Quickstart and position yourself for the Search specialisation when released in July

All in all, great ways of combining immediate short term gain for a customer with Enterprise Search and a more medium term tailored structured analysis with BI.

Enjoy!

Thought I would share my favourite books with you all:

1. Social Intelligence - Daniel Goleman
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
3. Fish! - Stephen C. Lundin
4. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
5. Good to Great - Jim Collins

All well worth a read and fantastic books!

Enjoy!

Right so when you sit back and think of how business has been fundamentally changed I thought I would look at how human interaction has been immensely changed over the last few years. Lets take a simple scenario of looking to buy a holiday:

1. In the present day: You go to your favorite search engine and type in the words: 'holiday beach' and hey presto back come the following:

holiday beach Page 1 of 19,550,412 results

or

Results 1 - 10 of about 65,600,000 for holiday beach. (0.30 seconds) 

Now, there you have it, all you need for any one of 65m holiday ideas! :)

2. 15 years ago: You walk into your favorite travel agent and sitting down opposite the young travel person you utter the words: "holiday beach". Now for reasons of explaining the story I shall call the travel person 'Doris'. In this scenario Doris wont be very likely to have a host of ideas squirming from her travel brochures - she certainly wont land 65m brochures at your feet, unless she was a very strong Doris indeed!

Now, how these two very simple scenarios differ, is that Doris will, through a set of well structured questions, define what type of holiday you desire:

1. With Children or child free

2. Cruise or island

3. Activity or relaxing holiday

4. Northern or Southern Hemisphere

5. Package or bespoke

.......you get the picture - however in the web enabled world there is no Doris, and the user would not be very happy with a form to fill out in order to start the Search or rather; their finding operation (because with 65m returns you really are just searching - think Sahara and pin)

Now how do you like to be treated when you indulge in a shopping experience - perhaps a well natured sales person or consultant who takes time to understand you and your likes and dislikes and marry that with local or regional trends? Maybe that person who understands you and is saving just the thing for you to enjoy on your two weeks holiday per year? Well in that case if you are looking for that particular experience we need to deliver the 21st century tools with the 20th century knowledge we used to impart in order to find our particular holiday kindly presented by Doris.

So how do we bring Doris to the 21st Century...we all need one! And more importantly, how do we ensure that Doris is enabled into all of our applications in all the ways in which we wish to find information wherever we happen to be working application wise. At this point the importance of categorisation and metadata tagging becomes incredibly important to businesses. A simple set of letters to one person means something very different to another, lets take CPE - would that be Customer Premise Equipment as in the telco world or Customer and Partner Experience as in Microsoft world or Charter Pan-European Trust Plc (CPE) for the Finance world which incidentally has the following financial results today:

189.98 -1.52(-0.79%) Volume 1,982 P/E Ratio 4.80 Market Cap. 56.60 M

So the importance of taxonomy is clear, perhaps one of the solutions I should share with you is the following business:

 http://www.aprsmartlogik.com/who_we_are.html

A great business with a great future ahead of it - thanks to Jeremy CEO of Smartlogic for the analogy above though i have to admit, Doris was my invention! And now maybe time for some humour:

http://blogs.technet.com/photos/mike_p/picture461399.aspx

Enjoy!  

Well why not...

ICS Solutions are a Microsoft Gold Partner and experts in delivering business solutions based on SharePoint technologies. We present a free and interactive seminar where you can learn how Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used to deliver and manage public facing web sites.

You will see live demonstrations of SharePoint’s Web Content Management features including Content Authoring, Branding and Controlled Deployment; you will hear expert opinion and advice which will help you assess SharePoint 2007 for use within your organisation from both a strategic and technical perspective; you will learn how ICS have helped clients to streamline business processes around the management of corporate web sites using SharePoint 2007.

What will the seminar cover?

• What is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?
• What is Web Content Management?
• How to evaluate SharePoint 2007 for your Web Content Management requirements?
• What are the key considerations in building a SharePoint Server farm for a Web site?
• How to get started with your Web Content Management Project
• Over one hour of live demonstrations
• Q&A

When?
Date: 14th May 2008
Time: 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

Frequency: ICS run seminars every 2 weeks throughout the year, please click here for further details.

Where?
Microsoft Victoria, London
For directions, click here

Who should attend?
Business and Technical Managers

Who are ICS?

• ICS are a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in Information Worker solutions
• ICS has the UK's largest pool of SharePoint experts with over 300 specialists
• ICS has implemented over 100 SharePoint projects successfully

To find out more about ICS, click here.

Why should I attend?

"ICS are one of Microsoft's most respected SharePoint partners with a well deserved reputation for delivering SharePoint solutions to the highest standard" - Rob Gray, Microsoft SharePoint Product Marketing Manager

t: 01256 403 800   e: events@ics.net   w: www.ics.net

ICS Solutions Ltd, .NET Solutions Campus, Skippetts House, Skippetts Lane, Basingstoke, Hants RG21 3HP

Great news for the communities focusing on Financial Services and looking to bring the value of Compute Cluster Server to the mainstream volume FS customers. Check out the press release here. The  remit of the community can be read here, the headline being:

To deliver a single platform that can give customers:

1. Low operational costs for HPC
2. Maximum Flexibility of operations
3. Lower cost of scale out computing
4. Maximise the utilisation of computing resources

What a fantastic piece of partner on partner collaboration to bring the vision of High Productivity Computing with Windows CCS to the market. Thanks to Dell and Corporate Modelling for their effort and enthusiasm!

Bring it on!

Nice slide here - very enlightening for those who want more information on what WSS is versus Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - nice views on capabilities etc

Download attached :)

- Are you using Microsoft Search Server?

- Would you like to tell us how it has helped your organisation and why you chose our software (thanks!) over other alternative software platforms?

- Cos guess what we would love to hear your views! Just click on the link below for a very simple web form to start the ball rolling!

I look forward to hearing from you!

So in many of the Search posts I have written I refer to a whitepaper by IDC called 'The Hidden Costs of Information Work', we cannot give this to you for free unfortunately for IDC licensing reasons - but for those who do wish to review it, IDC make it available here:

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=201334

There is some good commentary from Kevin Johnson the Co-President, Microsoft Platforms & Services Division (not to mention a cheesey photo :-)) here:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/may06/05-17EnterpriseSearch.mspx

Enjoy!

So it's probably worth a post to enlighten a few of you on the new title I have decided upon for this blog. There have been a few people who have impacted me whilst I have been working in the IT Industry and I love hearing new phrases that different people use around the world to really simply explain what they like, love and enthuse about. Most of these can be fantastic passive interrupts to help you to steer meetings on track and or help people to stay to the point. These are some of the phrases that still ring in my head and I try to keep on remembering when talking to partners and customers about what we do:

'Mike I don't care if it's wet string and sellotape as long as I can make money from it and or it saves me money elsewhere!'

So the big learning is really very very simple but how many times do we hear presentations or meetings that place all the emphasis on the 'what' and less on the impact or value?

Other great phrases that have stayed with me include:

'I need to know it's like selling £5 notes for 50p'

'We were born with two ears and one mouth lad remember that!'

'Have you ever been asked to do a comedy show on TV? ....no...that might be because your jokes aren't really that funny'

So what can you expect going forward from this blog. Well it will be straight talking, have more of a global outlook as I head on my travels, so far in the diary I have Canada, Wastern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and of course Seattle when I finally arrive!

I hope you enjoy my musings!

So following on from the last post you can see here what the document library woudl start to look like with all the classified documents:

In the next post I will show the impact that organising documents will have on the user experience of a website or intranet site!

I was at the last one and it was fab, you might want to go along this time:

UK HPC User Group

I wanted to let you know about the UK HPC User Group meeting coming up in June 26.  Registrations are here.

This meeting is intended for customers, partners and developers to “meet and mingle”, and compare notes.  And to provide Microsoft with direct input into our product and offerings. 

On the day speakers will hear:

- The latest news on Windows HPC 2008

- New software solutions in Finance, Engineering and Defence

- The latest in MS enabling technology like Microsoft ESP & MS Robotics

- The winners of the UK HPC student competition, and

- Customer stories.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to tour the Imperial War Museum. 

Think about registering here.  And if you know of someone who might be interested, please forward this on.

The event is being organised by the UK Microsoft HPC User Group, chaired by Professor Simon Cox, School of Engineering Sciences, at the University of Southampton.

Enjoy!

Some of you will know the great man Lord Waite (they tell me the House of Lords is considering this upgrade to the existing Mr Waite as I type..) who looks after Windows HPC development alongside a team of merry men. He is currently on bended knee asking for your help; be you a customer or partner to help in checking the new and highly exciting Windows HPC Server 2008. Check out what you need to do below:

Windows HPC Server 2008 Beta Survey

Overview

You’ve been invited to provide data to Microsoft about the beta of Windows HPC Server 2008. Your feedback is valuable and will help shape future versions of Windows HPC Server. Thank you thank you thank you.

In exchange for completing this survey we’ll mail you a copy of the brand new Microsoft Press book, “Windows Server® 2008 Inside Out” by William R. Stanek. This 1500 page book provides detailed information about administering Windows Server 2008. For more information on this book please go to: http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/11448.aspx#AboutTheBook.

There are 5 steps to completing this survey: 1) Install our beta, 2) Complete our written survey, 3) Provide HPC Server diagnostics to Microsoft, 4) Provide SQM data to Microsoft, and 5) package up and mail the results to Microsoft.

Here is more information about each of the steps:

1. Install the Beta

The Windows HPC Server 2008 beta is available from Microsoft Connect at http://connect.microsoft.com. To sign up for the beta go to http://connect.microsoft.com, click on “Available Connections” and select “Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 Beta” from the list. Follow the instructions for signing up for the beta.

Install the beta on one or more x64 servers.

Support is provided in the newsgroups at http://connect.microsoft.com. We will respond to questions within 48 hours, and often within 24 hours.

2. Complete the Written Survey

Please complete the attached survey (attachment at the base of this post)

3. Provide Diagnostics Results

Windows HPC Server 2008 provides diagnostics tests to help administrators identify problems with their clusters. Please follow these steps to provide diagnostics results.

1. Start the Windows HPC Server 2008 Administration Console

2. Click on “Diagnostics” in the lower left hand corner of the console

3. Run all diagnostics tests against all nodes in your cluster

4. Copy the results of diagnostics tests into Microsoft Word or a text file.

4. Provide SQM Data

SQM (Software Quality Metrics) is a tool that provides information about usage of Microsoft products back to Microsoft. You may have seen SQM in products like MSN Messenger where you’re asked if you want to participate in the “Customer Experience Improvement Program”.

If your server has Internet connectivity then it will automatically provide SQM data to Microsoft during the beta. You can disable SQM. Please note, SQM is not turned on by default in released Microsoft products. In released products users must “opt-in.”

If you do not have Internet connectivity from your cluster collect the .SQM files from:

%ccp_home%\data\logfiles\

5. Mail Results to Microsoft

Please package up the Survey, the Diagnostics results, and the SQM files in a .ZIP file.

If you were invited to participate in this survey by a Microsoft employee please send the .ZIP file to that Microsoft employee.

If you were not invited by a specific Microsoft employee please mail the .ZIP file to me and my colleague Alex Sutton directly. My address is ryanw@microsoft.com and Alex’s address is asutton@microsoft.com.

Thank you again for taking the time to provide this valuable feedback.

Best regards,

Lord Waite

(Nota Bene: I may have changed Ryan's title for the sake of mirth and merriment he is also known as Group Program Manager – Windows HPC)

For a number of years now I have had the huge opportunity of working with a very talented bunch of folks in Microsoft UK and the UK technology market. Whether it was in my early days in Microsoft UK in the Enterprise customer space or later on in the Small and Medium Partner world I have had a fantastic time helping partners to drive more business from the days of the XP launch and the first version of SharePoint to the heady times of Security, High Performance Computing and Enterprise Search.

Over the last four years I have worked with partners who are new to Microsoft and have helped them to build successful practices on Microsoft technology. I have now been given the opportunity lead the team worldwide and will be relocating to Redmond next week to work in the Worldwide Partner Group. It's often a cliche to say 'it is with mixed emotions that...bla bla bla' but I have to say I am sad to be leaving the UK and hugely excited to be heading off to pastures new. I am not a huge fan of leaving do's and so will be slipping out the door quietly.

This does of course mean that my insight into the Enterprise Search and HPC spaces will be dwindling as I wont have the luxury of working on those areas full time. I am therefore going to change the blog so that it becomes a discussion area for technology evangelism and how that impacts our partners and customers.

I hope you have enjoyed the show and I look forward to working with you all in the future!

Oh Yes it doesn't get much better than this - 18 hours of free training on MOSS 2007 all online so you can peruse it at your pleasure courtesy of 'english-tiger' training!

Technical Backgounder

Before you learn from the online version of the deep three-day class (below), ensure you are up to speed by viewing the technical backgrounder on Enterprise Search Architecture.

» Enterprise Search Architecture

Full three-day training class!

Module 1 - Introduction

This module introduces the full three-day class.

» Streaming @ 300K

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Module 2 - Enterprise Search Overview

This module provides some astounding figures as to why organizations require Enterprise Search Solutions! We recommend that you do not skip this module.

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Module 3 - SharePoint Search Walkthrough

This module is more than an overview. It cuts through the marketing hype in an informed, intelligent manner! We recommend that you do not skip this module.

» Streaming @ 300K

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Module 4 - Search Architecture and Deployment

This module provides essential insights, discussions, and very deep technical information on architecture and server layouts.

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Module 5 - Crawl and Query Processes

This module provides the 'under-the-hood' story about what happens at crawl and indexing time, and follows up with essential information about the query-time processes. This is how Search in SharePoint actually works, regardless of what you see in the user interfaces.

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Module 6 - Relevance Ranking

If relevance ranking is perceived to be inaccurate by your users, they will simply stop using your solutions. This module explains in detail how you can tune the relevance ranking subsystem.

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Module 7 - Customizing the End-User Experience

This module shows you ALL that can be achieved by customizing Search Center in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, without requiring additional development effort. It is the definitive guide to customizing Search Center.

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Module 8 - Developing Search Solutions

Where Search Center cannot be customized sufficiently to suit your needs, you might need to develop your own solutions. This module shows you how! Developer topics include the KeywordQuery syntax, the FullTextSQLQuery syntax, the Search object model, the Search Web service, and the Search Administration object module.

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Module 9 - Business Data Catalog Search

This module shows you how to set up BDC search from scratch. It also highlights some common pitfalls.

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Module 10 - Extensibility and Integration for Search

This module provides more information about the crawl and indexing process by focusing on iFilters and Protocol Handlers. It also discusses full and incremental crawls, as well as providing guidance around 32-bit/64-bit architecture.

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Module 11 - Search Administration

This module provides a comprehensive discussion of search administration.

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Module 12 - Security for Search

This module covers a variety of topics from search accounts, through Information Rights Management, to crawling Forms-based authenticated sites.

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Module 13 - Performance, Scalability, and Capacity Planning

This module provides invaluable discussions of indexer requirements, query server requirements, and other scalability approaches. Most importantly, it discusses how you can plan disk space requirements for indexing large corpuses.

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Module 14 - Search Operations

This module concludes the class by discussing operations and management tasks for enterprise search solutions.

» Streaming @ 300K

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Enjoy!

24,000 of our 34,000 Registered Partners currently subscribe to Action Pack, our quarterly toolkits of software and sales and marketing materials. These are created to help our partners stay competitive, meet their sales goals and grow their business. So what is in the new action pack?

New Rules and how you get it:

To enhance the value of Action Pack, from March 1^st, all of those renewing their subscription must take a course and pass an assessment to renew. Partners must take one specific Microsoft online course from the required Partner Learning Centre course list and complete its associated assessment with a minimum score of 70 per cent. To continue receiving Action Pack, partners must pass an assessment every two years. Courses are all 100% subsidised and take no more than 60 minutes. The assessments will take no more than 30 minutes to complete.

If this might be of interest to your readers, in your blog posting would it be possible to highlight the following:

1. All information regarding the Microsoft Action Pack resides at: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/actionpack

2. We have made available to partners a enrolment and re-enrolment guide from: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/actionpack

3. If partners have a query regarding their Action Pack subscription, they should call: 0870 60 70 700 (press option 1)

So those not accustomed to how Microsoft do acquisitions it kind of goes like this:

1. Offer made

2. Accounts and business reviewed in detail, final price agreed and purchase completed - regulatory approvals etc

3. Business is run as a subsidiary of Microsoft

4. Products go through the security development lifecycle so it is ensured they meet the standard Microsoft security policies and procedures

5. The Microsoft brand is then given to the business and the product appears on our price lists so our usual channels can access the tools and sell the product in the usual fashion

We are at step 3 with FAST. The customer FAQ is here, and there is a handy email address if you have any questions: fastq@microsoft.com

Enjoy!

Nice new site showcasing Microsoft's work around the Environment, lots to look at and the following article caught my eye immediately: High-Performance Computing: Enabling Climate Change Analysis, as did the following:

Energy Efficiency Best Practices in Microsoft Data Center Operations 

The article on the polemic facing the IT industry as a whole was really worth a read - not too long but faces up to the challenges ahead and how industry as a whole can deal with it: How Can Technology Sustain the Environment in the 21st Century?

I also liked the business solution area of how real customers are using our technologies to lower their carbon footprints.

Enjoy!

Righty ho so many of you will know that we arent often happy with ourselves in Microsoft and are fairly remorseless at trying to improve what we do. Well check out this very cool addition to the suport we give our partners a Partner bot!

Now bear with me 'cos I was healthily sceptical but check out how good it is. Below an example of a simple request for 'What is HPC?' - immediately it gives me the relevant page to go to to get more info around hpc - cool!

Want to get this help from wherever you are in the world at any time - then add Partner Bot to your IM list - partnerbot@hotmail.com 

This is very early in development but it does help hence the post today - if you see some of the things we are missing then just ping me a mail and I will ask Madeleine to add them to the information stores!

Enjoy!