So for a little while now I have been meaning to grab a few of the HPC stars and let you all see the people who make HPC happen in EMEA and Worldwide. This is the first of 2 videos initially to show you the stars behind the WCCS show!

Mike Pallot sat down with Travis Hatmaker, Worldwide SI Channel Development Lead and Bjorn Tromsdorf who is the EMEA HPC Product and Solution Manager to talk about what High Performance Computing is and why our partners should be interested in Compute Cluster Server.

Partner TV: Microsoft's High Performance Computing

Watch out for more to follow - there is another great one with Ryan Waite and Jeff Wierer to follow!

So having written this blog for a few months you try out all types of blogging tools to help make writing posts easier. So far I have used all the following:

• Blog r'Mail
• Community Server directly
• Live Writer all betas

The one I keep coming back to is Livewriter - not because it is ours but merely because it is the one that allows me to do the following simple and easily:

• Insert photos
• Tag posts
• Save drafts of posts
• Quickly add hyperlinks
• Quickly insert video (watch out for those posts to come!)

Now most of the blogging tools out there do all of the above - but the way in which LiveWriter allows you to 'just get on with what you need to' makes it the one for me to use. If you haven't tried it, there is a new beta 2.0 out today - click on the download link below to check it out:

 Enjoy!

Useful stuff for setting up stand alone environments as well as Platform LSF integration with WCCS:

· HPC Grid-Computing White Paper:  Integration between Platform LSF and Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003: This paper explains the benefits of integrating Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 with Platform Computing’s LSF™ grid-enabled solution, and describes the architecture and configuration of this integrated high-performance computing solution. The LSF-CCS Bridge was developed in partnership between Microsoft and Platform Computing, to provide a more flexible and integrated solution incorporating both technologies. The integrated LSF-CCS solution offers customers extended high-performance computing capabilities and allows IT professionals to allocate resources and schedule jobs in real time through a single management console, leveraging the performance and capacity of both cluster and data center environments. Read white paper

· Deploying a Stand-alone Windows Compute Cluster Server environment:  This white paper explains how to set up Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003 as an isolated cluster outside the corporate Active Directory® infrastructure along with scenarios where this set-up might be required.   Read here.

Enjoy!

Click on the picture above and enjoy....least said the better....seriously cool technology with amazing potential....think I need a new dining able... :)

A very cool Webcast for anyone wanting to know how Microsoft IT does Search:

Well worth an hour of my time, thanks to Steve for the hat tip :-)

Was trawling around a few blogs and came across this interesting article on Over-Time Pay For Reading E-mail on Your Blackberry at Home now it does strike me as amusing for the following reasons:

1. Surely if this is legal advice from am esteemed law professor, then I should be charged for each 6 minute increment I check out the blog? Don't tell me the world is going soft and we are now getting benevolent lawyers - I will see parking attendants in central London hugging babies next!
2. A very interesting view that an employer providing the ability to work flexibly and remotely should then be charged for that benefit contribution by the very employee they are trying to help...?

Please tell me someone hasn't forgotten the best button on these devices:

Hmmm seems someone forgot to tell the plaintiff in the above case that a little two way flexibility was a good thing?

Enjoy!

 and

Every now and then you come across a case study that simply blows your mind. One of these is the amazing work at Shireland's Language College by Teksys where Tony Blair said this was:

'One of the most remarkable ICT systems in the country'

Tony Blair, British Prime Minister, November 2006

There were a whole host of technologies used just one of which was the MOSS 07 for Search sku. The full story is included in the casestudy, a synopsis of which is below:

Business Situation

Shireland wanted to develop a learning portal capable of supporting personalised learning and improving parental engagement, which could be offered to partner schools on a managed-service basis.

Solution

In 2004, Shireland worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Teksys to deploy the Microsoft Learning Gateway and develop it to meet additional government requirements.

Great work and fantastic to see how MOSS 07 can help communities foster greater schooling and education!

Well okay then maybe just - Excel Services on CCS in the City... 

So you will have seen from previous posts the wealth of support we are seeing for Excel Services on CCS, this is another example of the way partners are reaching out to customers to demonstrate their capability in this space:

All the spaces are full for this now - in fact well over subscribed, but if you also wish to talk to the business users within your customers with similar offerings then please don't hesitate to get in touch. The level of attendee we had for this event were mainly VP of R&D, Vice President of IT Global Derivatives, VP of Development, Trading Floor Director - great work from IBM, Computacenter and the rest of the Microsoft team!

 Just seen a good synopsis of the technical pieces for SharePoint Search snappily entitled: SharePoint Search 2007 technical drill down - will undoubtedly be useful to those of you deploying the new MOSS 07 Search software!

Enjoy!

'The good ship Windows CCS lays awaiting her orders - her tenders feeding her readying for engaging with her customers'

If you feel yourself doing something similar to the above and are in need of some 'resupply' then check out some the articles below which may be of interest!

Whitepapers:

HPC Grid-Computing White Paper:  Integration between Platform LSF and Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003                                                                  This paper explains the benefits of integrating Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 with Platform Computing’s LSF™ grid-enabled solution, and describes the architecture and configuration of this integrated high-performance computing solution. The LSF-CCS Bridge was developed in partnership between Microsoft and Platform Computing, to provide a more flexible and integrated solution incorporating both technologies. The integrated LSF-CCS solution offers customers extended high-performance computing capabilities and allows IT professionals to allocate resources and schedule jobs in real time through a single management console, leveraging the performance and capacity of both cluster and data center environments. Read white paper

HPC Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Solution Brief:  Virtual engineering requires real-world high-performance computing: Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 represents a breakthrough in bringing high-performance computing into the mainstream of CAE. FLUENT 6.3 running on the Windows CCS operating system yields excellent parallel scaling. Providing multiple choices of solver options, combined with outstanding support for highly scalable parallel processing on clusters, FLUENT delivers optimum solution efficiency and accuracy for a wide range of engineering problem solving.  This technology combination offers a cost-effective parallel processing solution for CFD analysis. FLUENT 6.3 users running simulations on Windows can exploit the larger memory address space provided by 64-bit systems to run more detailed FLUENT simulations. Read full brief

HPC Oil & Gas Datasheet:  Improving the Quality of Production Forecasting-Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003 Powers MEPO History-Matching Tools MEPO® (SPT software) is the first commercially available optimization tool that enables simulation engineers to generate a representative range of possible history-matches, and assess these based on quantitative measures of the match quality. MEPO® is optimized for HPC, and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 provides an easy to use, powerful, and low cost HPC solution for history match processing.  MEPO® running on Windows CCS enables you to achieve the processing power of a supercomputer, at a fraction of the cost, right from your desktop. Together, MEPO® and CCS create an easy to use, powerful, low cost HPC solution for HM processing and analysis. Read full datasheet

HPC Oil & Gas Datasheet:  Reservoir Simulation Reaches New Heights: Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003 enhances reservoir simulation. The combination of Windows Compute Cluster Server with ECLIPSE reservoir simulation software enables the enhanced detail of 3D modeling jobs, with high-performance computing speed. Such jobs no longer take days to process. Enabling this level of detail increases the accuracy of oil and gas production rate estimates giving you realistic simulation of the geology and the flow of fluids through the rock, the security of Active Directory integration, complete scalability of the cluster, and

high availability. Windows CCS and ECLIPSE software have the power to help you be more successful, faster, using HPC. Read full datasheet

WebCast:

Live HPC Webcast:  Reducing the Complexity of HPC for Simulations - Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003 Powers Multi-Field Product Simulation with LSTC’s LS-DYNA   -   May 30, 2007 * 11:00am PDT Calculating computationally intensive problems on a single CPU can take hours, days, or even weeks. Performing the same calculations in parallel by using cluster technology increases processing speed dramatically, and can save a project valuable turnaround time.  Join us for an informative discussion on how the LS-DYNA® suite and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 accelerate calculation speed and reduce time to insight for a wide range of industries and applications. Learn how CCS provides a powerful platform for HPC, while LS-DYNA® provides a flexible simulation solution for finite element analysis. Find out how to receive a simple to use, cost-effective, and robust parallel processing solution for the simulation of product testing and design that would otherwise require large system and IT resources. Register today!

I am often asked how Microsoft help a business and usually the conversation goes something like this:

- How much marketing money can you give us?

- How many leads can you give us? 

The savvy partners get involved with us in a multi layered approach. A good example of this would be Tyan who came to me the other day around having their hardware and our software evaluated by PC Pro magazine (so watch out for that soon!) So what have we done:

1. Put them in touch with an ISV partner so that PC Pro get the best experience with evaluating the Tyan hardware - in this case we chose MathConsult
2. Arranged for our PR agency to get involved to help PC Pro get what they need from the article (after all journalists are just trying to do their job so let's help them!)

You may have read a post from me last week around the FSGi initiative ran by Corporate Modelling (Financial Services Grid Initiative - Launched!) - again I helped to simply highlight the work the partners (in that case Dell and Corporate Modelling) have done in that space but it's another example of little ways Microsoft can help your business.

I would encourage all partners to think creatively about how they would like to work with their partners and you may well be surprised! As one partner said to me last week:

'We got hundreds of hits as a result of you highlighting our work on your blog - you should charge us for the PR'

Well I wont be charging...but do look forward to you helping me in my work too :-)

Enjoy!

Nice little bit of news from Redmond this morning:

Well that was the title of a recent ZDNet article - and there was one question in particular that Donna asked which caught my eye:

How Google will specifically be able to significantly grow Google Enterprise revenues, given the core products have 1) low price points and 2) no services income stream?

The reason this caught my eye is the manner in which they, Google, will foster an ecosystem? So what does that mean - well - how are they helping partners to grow businesses from their software and add value to customers on top of this software? The easiest place to start here is to ask the question of ourselves. How would you do this with MOSS 07 and where would partners go to generate there own wealth? Just selling another company's software is one thing but adding value on top of the platform is quite another. By innovating on top of the platform you generate value for customers and the vendor themselves - the outcome of that is complete synchrony between customer opportunities and application of resources to deliver solutions focusing on the customer. Without this opportunity for the partners and broad channel you simply wont be able to generate the value for partners to take your products into the market and deliver the value and solutions to the customers. In other words your channel strategy will fail.

For me that is why Google Enterprise Search could well be perceived as a joke - not because of the software per se but the manner in which one size has to fit all and the lack of attention paid to taking the products to market and the tremendous value the channel provides. In the Microsoft world the Microsoft Enterprise Search platform delivers a rich set of opportunities for partners. The key is to remember that not all customers want exactly the same experience and whilst this makes the role of the software manufacturer very tough - this makes the role of the channel key. Success lies with the organisation that not only makes the best software platform but also the best manner in which to engage and interact with partners to allow them to be an extension of the software vendors sales force - not only technically but also commercially.

In essence you cannot do it alone and to think so is misguided, this is why Microsoft place so much emphasis on our channel initiatives and programmes.

Enjoy!

Nice to see further momentum in the HPC channel space with the recruitment of Paul Gwyther to OCF - check out the full article here and here

Paul welcome to the team!

Partner Search Deployment Subsidy - free cash from Microsoft - thought that would get your attention! :)

So first off how do you get your hands on the cash:

1. Member of Quickstart Programme
2. Reserve the subsidy for a customer in Quickstart
3. When sale completed request the subsidy in Quickstart
4. We validate the sale in our internal systems
5. Cheque is mailed in the partners name to the customer  - customer gives it to the partner

The amount is $2000 per customer win - make sure you join Quickstart now and get claiming your subsidies!!

Just seen this great webcast on the Platform Symphony of Windows Compute Cluster Server with Excel:

Live HPC Webcast: HPC in Financial Services – The power of Platform Symphony, Windows Compute Cluster Server and Excel 2007 trio

June 14, 2007, 11:00 AM PDT

As business velocity increases, low latency is becoming a major competitive advantage. This is particularly true in algorithmic trading, options pricing, and risk calculations where staying a tick ahead of your competition can make the difference between a winning or a losing trade. This live webcast will demonstrate how Platform Symphony, one of the leading performing grid technologies in the market, can provide real time performance in options calculations working in conjunction with Windows Server Compute Cluster Edition and Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Do not miss the discussion on the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 Excel Services, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Windows Compute Cluster Server and Platform Symphony integration. Register Today!

Enjoy!

Some of you may have seen this but kind of cool to share again anyway!

Here

Enjoy!

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!

Well certainly on a grand scale anyway! If you are planning on heading over to Denver for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference then check out the session called: 'Your next big bet: Enterprise Search', Tim from Content and Code, and a few colleagues will be showing all the assembled partners from around the world what we have on offer and how they can engage with Microsoft to have a greater impact on their customers. The session details are as follows:

July 10

3:00PM - 4:00PM

IW004-Your Next Big Bet: Enterprise Search

Catherine Walton (Speaker Assistant)
Jared Spataro (Primary Speaker)
Mike Pallot (Speaker Assistant)
Tim Wallis (Primary Speaker)

Learn about the new product line-up from Microsoft and how we differentiate from other Enterprise Search solutions. Find out how these new programs and investments will make you a success!

Enterprise Search is the fastest growing IT spending category within Information Management and represents a more than $2B partner services opportunity. In this session, learn about our vision and the new product line-up from Microsoft. Learn how we differentiate from other solutions in the marketplace, and how you can capitalize on this opportunity as a strategic entry point into delivering comprehensive information management  solutions for your customers. Listen to how one partner has achieved success with Microsoft in Enterprise Search, and learn about the exciting new programs and investments that will make you successful too.

See you there...now where are my slides... lol

Great webcast here on Scaling SOA in Financial Services with Grid Computing for .NET:

Event Overview

Enterprise architects in financial services are looking to service-oriented architectures (SOA) to address many real-world problems – brittle systems with tight interdependencies, data stuck in single-purpose silos, and applications that don’t scale to meet growing demand, to name a few.  But implementing an SOA can also expose new scalability issues.  New high-performance computing (HPC) offerings from Microsoft and its partners are ideally suited for scaling out compute-intensive components of an SOA.  
Using real-world examples from financial services companies, this presentation will describe how to grid-enable compute-intensive analytic services for use in an SOA.  

Well worth a look if you are targeting the FS Sector - enjoy!

We have been working with these guys to include MOSS migration tools in addition to their existing offerings. Vamosa have a free version, and a charged for version which is a one-off cost rather than an annual license.

www.vamosa.com

Here is an excerpt from their latest press release:

Vamosa, market leaders in content processing, analysis and migration have announced the release of free analysis and migration software for Microsoft SharePoint 2007.

Cambridge, MA – 30^th April 2007

Vamosa, the world leader in content processing, analysis and migration, has launched free content analysis and migration software for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The free software combines Vamosa Community Edition and Vamosa developed SharePoint 2007 connector technology.

Vamosa Community Edition was originally released in November 2006 as generic content analysis and migration software downloadable for free from www.vamosa.com. It combines the full functionality of Vamosa’s market leading software – Vamosa Content Analyser and Vamosa Content Migrator – into a single product. Since launching last year the product has been used by hundreds of individuals to successfully analyze and migrate up to 1000 pages of content.

The extension of Vamosa Community Edition to include the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 connector allows the SharePoint community to capitalise on the benefits an automated approach to analysis and migration has to offer. Although the software will continue with the limitation of 1000 pages users will be able to:

• Gain a detailed understanding of up to 1000 pages of content in the fastest manner possible
• Improve content quality through the removal of duplicate and out-dated content
• Enhance content via the application of relevant metadata
• Reduce the pain involved in migrating content to SharePoint

Enjoy!

It's all just about doing things easier isn't it?

In many of my external meetings I meet partners and customers who say things like the following:

1. I want to focus on our business more
2. I want it to just work
3. Why does it not recognise this widget?
4. We have to make this more simple for people to understand in order to grow the market!

It all reminds me of the comments from Dr Simon Cox in his whitepaper on High Productivity Computing. All great stuff - then I saw this post from Chris Parkes writing about the differences in UI and simplicity between Open Office and Microsoft Office 2007. Hmmm now who is the greater target audience the technically astute or the gang of people who just want to get their job done?

Just a few thoughts...

Seen some press reports about Microsoft potentially buying Yahoo..

BBC

Yahoo shares up on Microsoft talk

Associated Press:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20070504&ID=6846679&Symbol=YHOO

Reuters article:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=OBR&Date=20070504&ID=6846019&Symbol=YHOO

Scoble has seen it and posted here: MSFT to YHOO? , as he says loads starting to get blogged out there.... now I wonder...!

Curiouser and curiouser..... :-)

Just a couple of quick shots of the Windows Compute Cluster user group held at Microsoft Reading last Friday:

We had some amazing attendance for the 1st Microsoft User group meeting for Windows HPC Worldwide - :-) The slides will be made available online, huge thanks to the Chairman Professor Simon Cox  from Southampton University for eloquently running the show!

If you ever doubted if there was either an opportunity for your business in HPC or a reason for you to target this market here's a piece of the evidence! Be great to engage with you directly should you wish to understand how you can benefit from the opportunities around HPC!

Saw this at the end of a long day and thought 'you know what, that driver must have been having a really bad day!':

"Saturday night I shut shop and go home and everything is fine," he told the BBC news website.

"Sunday morning when I get here, this aircraft is here near my restaurant!"

Hmmm guess he needed some search help - Marvellous :-)