Stuart's Retail Blog

Boeing Silverlight/Kinect Demonstrator

Stuart Handley — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:31:00 GMT

http://techflash.com/seattle/2011/08/boeing-taps-microsoft-kinect-to-sell-737.html

This is a pretty cool demonstration of what can be done with MS development tools in the retail space. OK, we might be talking clothes, rather than huge airliners, but the principle is the same. The link in the story shows the silverlight part of the demo, but it's fully kinect enabled....

Microsoft Management Summit 2011

Stuart Handley — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:34:26 GMT

The Microsoft Management Summit has, over the last couple of years, been possibly the single best source of advanced information on upcoming MS technology - more focused and more detailed than Teched. It does add the hardship factor by being located in Las Vegas.

If you are interested in management, operations, virtualisation or security it's well worth a look at the tracklist, and until Feb 14th there's a early bird discount.

http://www.mms-2011.com/default.aspx

38 free upcoming uk licensing and roadmap sessions

Stuart Handley — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:35:23 GMT

Microsoft UK are running 38 separate events all over the country, between now and april. If you want a better grip on licensing or a discussion around the current roadmap, feel free to sign up. Let me know you are going and I'll tee up the presenters.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/events/enterprise/

If you use SAP and Sharepoint in your organisation....

Stuart Handley — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:20:00 GMT

It's worth being aware SAP and Microsoft have been jointly working on Duet. There's a free virtual summit to bring you up to speed on the possibilities:

Don’t Miss the Duet Enterprise Virtual Launch Summit

Duet Enterprise is a highly anticipated product that blends SAP applications with Microsoft SharePoint to empower information workers with unified and simplified access to data. Invite your customers and partners to join Microsoft and SAP as we introduce this new product through a one-day, worldwide virtual summit on February 1, 2011

This highly focused, online-only event is designed to provide an overview of the technical and business capabilities of Duet Enterprise, give you an opportunity to connect directly with Microsoft and SAP executives and the teams behind the product, and help you locate solution partners in your region.

Business and technology focused sessions will be supplemented by exhibits from our top partners offering virtual opportunities to discuss solutions and collaborations.

Join us for the only virtual conference dedicated exclusively to Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP!

Next Steps:

Registration is now open! Be sure that you and your team visit the site and check out the agenda of launch day events and on demand resources.

http://www.duetenterprisesummit.com/SitePages/MicrositeHome.aspx

Catch up on Microsoft CRM

Stuart Handley — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:18:42 GMT

We've just held the launch event for the latest release of MS Dynamic's CRM product - it's really matured quickly and is now a powerful xRM solution, with full cloud enablement. If you need to know more, take a quick look at:

http://crm.dynamics.com/2011launch/default.aspx

Windows support for ARM 'System on a chip'

Stuart Handley — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:43:06 GMT

It's been a while since my last post - I've been out on Jury service, then everything went quiet over christmas. Things are starting to warm up again though. For those who missed it we announced today support for 'Systems on a chip' coming in thenext release of Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2011/jan11/01-05SinofskySOC.mspx

This is a reallly significant announcement - it's shifting the Windows OS to a completely new architecture (that has lower power draw requirements) - in it's entire history Windows has only run on a handful of architectures. I suspect this is a further demonstration of the positive impact Mark Russinovich (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/techfellow/Russinovich/default.mspx) is having on Microsoft's ability to safely make big changes to Windows, but I also believe that this is a critical step to allow us to squarely deliver solutions across a much wider range of platforms than the traditional Laptop/Desktop - the slate category is the most obvious example of where this could be most beneficial, but there are plenty of retail industry specific areas where this could prove useful....

The Future of Technology -- Windows 7 + Windows Live

Stuart Handley — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:58:17 GMT

As someone who is passionate about Microsoft and Microsoft technologies, this is a deeply resonant and clever advert. If you are thinking about (or in the middle of) a desktop refresh this could be a really nice way to introduce some buzz into the organisation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhJTxC1C8w&feature=player_embedded

HTML 5.0

Stuart Handley — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:08:57 GMT

Bob Muglia inadvertently caused a flurry of discussion with his focus on HTML5 at PDC. Now the dust has settled, I think everyone understands that we are still focused on silverlight as a first class target for app development, but that the increasing pace and scale of consumerisation in the enterprise (and variety of devices in the consumer space) means Microsoft (or Adobe, or Apple) can no longer guarantee that they will be able to place an agent on every end client accessing a web resource. In these cases, HTML 5 is the answer, even if pervasive adoption is still several years away.

There's a really informative history of HTML 5 on the Massachussets Technology Review, that also lays out why it is so important:

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/26565/

It actually shows the browser manufacturers (all of them, not just MS) recognising that problems with the web were not going to be resolved by XHTML and striking out collectively to do the right thing,

Customer Centricity - the CRM/xRM story

Stuart Handley — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:55:46 GMT

There's an interesting story on the MS enterprise site around Customer Centricity'

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/industry/retail-hospitality/solutions/customer-centricity.aspx

It's a series of customer stories about using our CRM tools to develop a consistent 360 degree view of your customer across multiple channels. There's a lot of focus on this with the economic downturn shifting purchasing loyalties dramatically, and new channels opening up all the time - the dynamics xRM toolset is actually maturing into an incredibly powerful toolset to build applications (hence the xRM, rather than plain CRM). If this is an issue (or will be an issue) for you, it's well worth taking a look - come back to me if you want more.

I have a suspicion that dynamics (if we ignore the cloud juggernaut) may well be the next massive success for MS - it's gathering momentum at the moment.

Kinect follow up

Stuart Handley — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:41:05 GMT

Interesting story on cnet about possible wider ramifications of Kinect for advertising

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20022892-75.html

If any of my customers would like to discuss possibilities like these, let me know and I'll find someone in the product group to talk to.

New MS Enterprise site

Stuart Handley — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:14:30 GMT

There's a brand new website for Microsoft focusing on Enterprise customers - http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/enterprise/

Links up there right now include the 2011 MS Enterprise resource guide, a really comprehensive guide to the big ticket stuff we've worked on this year, an interesting research portal, and Forrester reports on how modern Productivity tools can free up two weeks per worker per year.

This is going to be worth keeping an eye on.

Innovation update

Stuart Handley — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:26:45 GMT

Innovation is a big topic for Microsoft, and for me in my role as an ATS. I spend a significant chunk of my time making sure I'm keeping customers as up to date as possible. The video in the link below shows Microsoft's current thinking in the 'Connected Customer Experience' area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C32n6naRBA

It's cheesy, but there's some interesting ideas in terms of possibilities for retailers in there. Let me know if you want to talk about these.

Kinect - a wider view.

Stuart Handley — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:17:00 GMT

This week, Microsoft will be launching the Kinect add on for the Xbox - I won't go into detail on how it works as I suspect we will be bombarding everyone with adverts over the next couple of weeks. Suffice to say it's a really cool piece of hardware that allows you to interact with your xbox without any use of a controller. A lot of people, on seeing it for the first time, like the idea of voice and gesture control of what is a complex piece of multimedia hardware as much as the games themselves. A measure of how smart the hardware actually is indicated by the fact the first one cost $30,000 to build - it is not just a big webcam! The thing for me though is it is as much a statement of general intent as a clever piece of kit. If there's one thing that's becoming increasingly clear, it's that the Mouse and Keyboard can no longer be relied upon as the primary UI for consumer applications - this is a demonstration of a '10 foot UI' (something you are controlling from a short distance away) and at the other end of the spectrum, the current wave of smartphones are demonstrating different approaches to 'micro UIs'. As the hardware we use in the workplace (tablets, phones, tills, laptops) is increasingly affected by consumerisation, these alternative UIs are rapidly becoming more important, and may soon be pervasive. Microsoft is absolutely moving forward on the assumption that we need to support all of these methods of interaction in whatever winds up being the 'presentation device'; Windows 7 already has native support for Multitouch, and the Office 2019 Vision video (http://www.officelabs.com/projects/productivityfuturevision/Pages/default.aspx) clearly shows there's a good chance Kinect technology is going to wind up in the enterprise sooner rather than later. I'd expect an explosion of applications for this new way of delivering apps over the next 24 months, and Microsoft is absolutely in prime position to support whatever winds up 'winning'. An example of how this may play out in the retail space is interactive signage - a shop window display that actually interacts with the consumers, and knows when someone has stopped to look at it could be a very valuable tool - imagine customers watching demos, looking up specifications and checking stock while walking past a closed store. Kinect is a smart new tool - but it's only the tip of the iceberg...

Service Manager Overview Live Meetings

Stuart Handley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:34:16 GMT

Paul Rousell is the UK Datacenter Management & Virtualisation Lead. He's passed on an invite for you to attend a “System Center Service Manager” overview Live Meeting with Cased Dimensions (a Microsoft Alliance Partner). System Center Service Manager delivers an integrated platform for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices to your organization's requirements and is a pretty new and exciting capability for System Center

Two short Live Meetings have been setup to outline the business benefits of System Center Service Manager. We will also demonstrate Service Manager during each meeting. Dates and times for the LiveMeeting are:<:o:p>

23^rd November 11.30 - 12.00<:o:p>
29^th November 4.30 - 5pm<:o:p>

If you would like to attend either meeting, please email register@caseddimensions.com and confirm which meeting you would like to attend. Each session will present the same content. Let me know if you plan to attend.<:o:p>

Stuart's Retail Blog

Stuart Handley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:14:00 GMT

Hi!

My name is Stuart Handley. I am an Account Technology Strategist (It's my job to deliver Technical Presales on Microsoft technologies) working with seven retailers mostly based in the Midlands and north of England. I've worked for Microsoft for fifteen years, starting with Windows 3.1, MSMail and the like. The purpose of this blog is to provide my customers with a ready source of information about Microsoft products, events and technology that will directly help them keep themselves up to speed.

Feel free to reach out to me if I can help directly in anyway.

Stu

Office 365, Union and BPOS

Stuart Handley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:07:00 GMT

I've been seeing, and helping to drive lots of conversations around 'the cloud' in my seven retail accounts. BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services, or the 2007 versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, Live Meeting and OCS running in someone elses datacenter has seen intense interest for a number of reasons - driving down the cost of providing systems, shifting capex to opex, and even enabling upgrades to the latest versions of these tools without incremental cost to the business has resulted in pilots or deployments in over half of those accounts in 12 short months. While all this has been happening we've been aware that the current on premise version of these tools is the 2010 release, and the BPOS equivalent which was code named 'Union' has been in the pipe for what feels like quite a long time.

On Oct 19th Microsoft announced the 'Wave 14' version of BPOS will officially be known as Office 365 and introduced some significant changes as well as the upgrades to the 2010 capabilities. First off, Office 365 now includes the option of purchasing Office - both full blown Professional plus and web apps, depending on the user requirements. To deliver the flexibility required to make this work, there are 7 different options which is a big increase on the 3 previous possibilities.

We also have amended the Enterprise Agreement (EA) so a single EA covers an organisation for both on-premises & online, allowing mix & match licensing of users and devices. It's a really powerful tool especially if an organisation is still in the process of deciding what it's response to the cloud is likely to be.

It's worth flagging that there are new requirements to be able to consume Office 365 - you need to have provided IE8, ADFS, and there is no longer support for Office 2003 clients.

Back in March Steve Ballmer stated that 70% of MS developers were working on cloud related technology, growing to 90% within 12 months, which may have raised eyebrows at the time, but this is a great example of just how seriously we are taking enabling agility.

Check out the link below or reach out to me if you want to know more.

http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/online-services.aspx