Vertical Industries

Introducing the Windows Embedded Automotive Team!

2013-05-07T19:00:00Z

This post was written by our friend Pranish Kumar, Group Program Manager, Windows Embedded Automotive. See the original post here.

Hi – I’m Pranish Kumar and as Group Program Manager for the Windows Embedded Automotive team, I lead the group of developers and designers responsible for building, designing, and maintaining our automotive technology. We released this video series today to introduce some of the team working on the technology that will bring about our vision for the intelligent vehicle. I’m proud of this team. Whether at work or at home, this team is so passionate about cars and the opportunity to use technology to improve the car experience. They bring their work and play together, with many members spending their free time on things like re-building hot rods and participating in car clubs. I invite you to watch the videos to meet the team behind our product and learn about what makes us tick.

So why are we so committed to the mission of in-car technology? Our vision is that over time, technology is going to help the car to become more intelligent, delivering a more responsive, intuitive safer experience for drivers and passengers. How will this impact your driving experience?

Keeping cars up-to-date: One of the advances we expect is that cars will become more updateable. We are already doing this today in our work with Ford, but we think that the technology is going to advance so that cars start to behave like any other device, updating automatically and wirelessly. This will make it possible for automakers to continue to add value to their vehicles even after they are manufactured and purchased, so when you get the latest device on the market, your car will know about it too.
Introducing data to the driving experience: We are excited about the opportunity automakers have with vehicle generated data to improve the experience for their customers. There are already so many sensors and electronic systems in cars today that the data already exists, it’s just a matter of finding ways to access and utilize it. Just one small of example of this could be that instead of selecting a number and pressing a button to adjust the driver seat position, your car will be able to automatically recognize who the driver is and do this for you. With Microsoft’s offerings for cloud computing and big data, we are
well positioned to partner with automakers on their data strategy.
Design Matters: Improvements to automotive technology will also come from placing more emphasis on the design of the technology. If you think about the experience in today’s cars, the way you turn on the radio, adjust the heat, and make a phone call are completely different and it puts the burden on users to figure it out. How many of us have spent way too much time in a rental car parking lot trying to figure out how to adjust the radio? We see an opportunity to bring these features together for an easier, more consistent user experience, and this is something we are investing in for the future of our automotive solution.

And we are not just starting to think about this, our vision of the intelligent car is backed by 15 years of partnering with automakers and suppliers to deliver reliable, innovative automotive solutions.

Implementing software for automobiles is complex. There are tight production schedules that need to be met, deep integration that needs to be tested and validated so that the technology works well with all of the other vehicle systems, and hundreds of configurations across different vehicle models and features that need to be addressed. As you can see from the videos, we have a great team and deep experience that will enable Microsoft to partner with the automotive industry and turn our vision for the future into reality. So please, tell us what you think – besides a flying car, what would you like to see in the intelligent car of the future?

Harnessing the Power of Information to Transform Insurance Insights

2013-04-22T13:00:00Z

Editors at Microsoft News Center recently spoke with Mark Tainton, vice president of global business intelligence at Gallagher Bassett, about how Microsoft business intelligence (BI) tools are changing the way the company works internally and with customers.

REDMOND, Wash. – April 22, 2013 – Technology is key to success in today’s uncertain economic climate no matter which industry a company operates in. For insurance brokerages, finding innovative ways to serve clients and retain business often means using technology to uncover data and discover new ways to improve their bottom line.

Gallagher Bassett Services, Inc. (GB) is a prime example. One of the world’s largest property casualty third party administrators, GB’s Mark Tainton wanted the company to be able to quickly gain insight into the vast amount of data his company collects to make highly informed business decisions. He also wanted to empower GB’s clients to make the best decisions by presenting up-to-date information in an accessible and intuitive way.

To accomplish these goals, GB has implemented Microsoft business intelligence (BI) solutions including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Office to create a proprietary, industry-leading tool called the Analysis Workbench. Together, these solutions are transforming the way GB operates and the future of the insurance industry.

MNC: What challenges were you facing that led you to explore business intelligence solutions?

Tainton: There were several challenges. First, we’ve experienced significant growth through acquisitions in the past few years. We wanted to be able to quickly integrate data from each of these companies into our environment so we can accurately analyze performance and make changes as needed.

Second, we were sitting on mounds of data, and wanted to be able to tap into it more effectively. The amount of data we’ve been capturing has been exploding, and we needed a quick way to analyze it in ways that allow us to capture more revenue opportunities, while better serving our clients. In short, we wanted to make a greater number of decisions not on gut, but on cold facts supported by actual numbers.

Third, we wanted to better serve our customers by making the data we provide to them easily accessible, visually appealing, and intuitive to use. We also wanted to make it easy for our clients to view the data we present alongside their own data and data from third-party sources that they might find useful. We also wanted to improve the way we serve the next generation, the people who use tablets, smartphones, and
touch technology to access information. We realized that if we didn’t satisfy this group of customers, we’d start to lose market share very quickly.

MNC: How are SQL Server, SharePoint Server, and Office improving the way GB makes business decisions?

Tainton: Microsoft BI tools have enabled us to make a greater number of financial, management, and operational decisions based on actual numbers. With the touch of a button, for example, we can now better evaluate where new opportunities lie, both by geography and by industry. We’ve never had that capability before. We can also better assess our needs as we make acquisitions. So if we acquire a company in a city in which we already have a presence, for instance, we can make informed decisions as to whether it makes more sense to buy a new building versus consolidate everyone into an existing office.

MNC: How are Microsoft BI tools helping you to improve customer service?

Tainton: Our goal is to really create a window to the world for customers, so to speak, so we’ve used the analytic components of SharePoint Server and the predictive tools within SQL Server to create new tools that improve customers’ access to information. It’s been a real game-changer for us.

For example, we’ve introduced a new tool called the Analysis Workbench (AWB), which is a huge differentiator in the marketplace. The AWB is a series of modules that provide multiple levels of information ranging from high-level aggregated information for executives down to highly detailed information for managers. All of a client’s information is presented in one window using a tile-based user interface with touch technology. Customers don’t need to move through seven or eight clicks to find a specific report. Their favorite reports are all right there on their computer screen in a carousel-type format that’s easy to access and intuitive to use. We’ve also incorporated Power View into the Analytical Workbench, and our data-crunching clients love it because it allows them to interact with their data and examine it in multiple ways.

The AWB also enables us to proactively improve customer service. In the past, we’d print out a stack of reports, and clients were left to figure out what the information meant for their portfolio. But with the AWB, we can now easily highlight areas of concern and improvement so we can continually help our clients build stronger portfolios.

MNC: Are these tools available on mobile devices?

Tainton: Yes, and that’s been a big differentiator for us as well. Many of our clients spend a lot of time on the road. Now, they can get updated information on their claims without having to go to the office once a week and print out a paper-based report. We’ve also added new capabilities to help clients better manage large portfolios. For example, we added a feature called a “claims watch list” that allows managers to follow and analyze claims made by specific people within their community.

MNC: Have Microsoft BI tools helped GB to improve its bottom line?

Tainton: It’s still in the early stages, but we’re starting to see the difference in our financial results. For example, in one of the business units in which we launched the Analytical Workbench, sales rose by an additional 10 to 15 percent from the first to second quarter of 2013. The Microsoft BI platform is really giving us a competitive edge.

MNC: What is the most important information you would like readers to understand?

Tainton: Technology has finally caught up to ongoing BI challenges, so don’t be afraid of the Microsoft stack! It works for us.

NAB Show 2013 – That’s a Wrap!

2013-04-11T23:30:00Z

With NAB Show 2013 wrapping up today, we wanted to pause and reflect on some of the key themes we saw in the Microsoft booth.

As expected, cloud was a hot topic at the show. While in 2012, media companies were busy kicking the tires of cloud technologies to gauge how they might be able to move some of their workflows, this year saw a shift to more actionable discussions with existing & new customers. Tuesday’s announcement with NBC to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms generated a ton of buzz within the booth. As a result, the Windows Azure demo station was standing-room only for four straight days.

Another major theme of the show was measurement and big data. A common pain point we hear from media companies is that the vast amount of data they possess is only accessible by a few “data folks” within the organization. We’re working to democratize data across organizations and give subject matter experts the ability to glean important insights from internal and external data using ubiquitous tools like Microsoft Excel.

This is an incredibly exciting time for the media industry. Technology advancements like Windows Azure Media Services are making it possible for media companies to focus on their most important assets, their content and their customers. At the same time, entire digital workflows can be managed in the cloud with the ability to scale up or down seamlessly and pay only for what’s used.

We’re looking forward to the future and to sharing more exciting announcements with you later this year.

ABB Moves Collaboration to Microsoft’s Cloud

2013-04-10T22:22:00Z

Let's take a quick break from NAB-related posts for an exciting announcement of a different type. Today, we announced that power and automation technology company ABB will deploy Microsoft Office 365 and Yammer to its employees worldwide. ABB operates in over 100 countries and employs over 145,000 people, and they are moving their collaboration and messaging solutions to Office 365 to provide a single platform for productivity, communication, collaboration and enterprise social networking in the cloud.

Office 365 integrates a number of typical functionalities that employees use in their daily work. The email, online meeting, and videoconferencing services work seamlessly together, and in large organizations such as ABB that typically reduce travel costs by 15 to 20 percent. ABB is rapidly embracing enterprise social networking solutions, implementing Yammer as its companywide platform to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization. ABB also plans to take full advantage of the planned integration between Office 365 and Yammer. Read the full press release of the announcement here.

MPS Broadband and Windows Azure Bring Live Video to the (Corporate) Masses

2013-04-10T19:40:40Z

Today’s post was written by Jonathan Discount, Executive Director of Solutions Engineering & Technology Evangelization at MPS Broadband Americas.

We’ve all watched streaming video on the Internet. YouTube, Hulu and other sites have generated enormous amounts of video on demand traffic across public networks for years. And the 2012 Olympics demonstrated the public’s growing appetite for live video as well.

But most of us watch Internet video via consumer high speed Internet connections – DSL, cable or fiber-optic connections now available offer 3Mbps download speeds and can scale as high as 300Mbps. Ironically, businesses – even the largest international corporations – don’t have as much readily available connectivity for video. In some cases, a business may only deploy a single 1.5Mbps link to support dozens of users. Businesses must also manage tremendously complex networks – incorporating dozens or hundreds of routers, firewalls, switches, VPNs, Intranets, Extranets & more!

Yet these same businesses need to deliver a great video experience to all of their users – whether that is a live webcast of the chairman, a training session or even a live news channel.

To date, most solutions for delivering video on a bandwidth-constrained network have leveraged IP Multicast or been built on proprietary, appliance-based technologies.

But Multicast is not an easy technology to set up and maintain. It may require the firmware of dozens of routers to be upgraded and configurations synchronized. Also, next generation Adaptive Bitrate Streaming technologies used to deliver the highest quality video over the Internet have provided only limited support. And Multicast-based delivery is still limited by download link capacity – so it is only suitable for lower bitrate, lower quality video distribution.

Appliance-based solutions have their own challenges: a new “box” must be purchased and physically deployed at dozens of locations across the network. Device configurations must also be constantly monitored, maintained and upgraded. This may be a boon for a networking appliance company – but it’s not a model that can scale financially or operationally for even a moderately sized, distributed enterprise.

In 2011, Internet visionary Marc Andreesen described “Why Software Is Eating The World”: how the unmatched flexibility of software is transforming whole industries. So it will transform live video distribution as well.

MPS Broadband has developed Peer2View, a patented distribution technology powered by Microsoft Windows Azure, for video streaming of live events and linear TV over private networks and beyond. Fully software-based, Peer2View facilitates the delivery of video using secure and dynamically created peer networks. Peer2View keeps traffic local and reduces network load by up to twenty times over the Internet and up to one hundred times in private networks. Peer2View is network friendly, able to dynamically adjust load on network links and can be configured to yield to more important TCP/IP traffic.

Combined with the reach and scalability of Microsoft Windows Azure Media Services, Peer2View can provide a solution for live video streaming unmatched in the industry today.

MPS Broadband is showcasing Peer2View inside the Microsoft Booth at the NAB. Drop in and meet us for a demo!

Big Data’s Big Impact for the Media Industry

2013-04-10T14:30:00Z

If you’ve checked out our blog recently, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been posting about big data... a lot. And that’s because we are committed to helping companies navigate the vast oceans of data available today, and use it to make strategic improvements to their businesses.

Our commitment is on display again this week at the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas. We know that media and cable companies are looking to gather real business value and insights from the loads of data coming from many different sources: their cloud or on-site servers, internal and third party data, and even social media outlets. Media companies who are able to effectively harness all of this big data can provide greater value for their viewers and advertisers alike. A well-planned big data strategy can also directly impact their brand equity which, in turn, can fund additional content.

For years we’ve been empowering customers to take advantage of big data through a holistic set of solutions and services, from our back-end data platform to important end user tools. Layered on top of Microsoft’s data management platform is a familiar suite of business intelligence (BI) tools that enable customers to find insights with Excel including PowerPivot + Power View, and SharePoint. And at NAB this week, we will also be talking about the recent preview of a project codenamed “Data Explorer” for Excel that enhances the self-service BI experience by simplifying data discovery and access.

Also at NAB, we’ll be showcasing how companies can manage data of all types and sizes across Windows and the cloud. Come to our booth, or check out this video, to see how IPG Mediabrands uses Windows 8 and the Push BI app to help their media planners and buyers quickly analyze the $35 billion in media spending they oversee annually.

I Want My Level 3 TV!

2013-04-09T21:07:16Z

This post is by Mark Taylor, VP of Media and IP Services at Level 3. It was originally published on Beyond Bandwidth.

“Not a lot of people know that,” as Michael Caine might say. Not a lot of people know how the television channels they tune in to are put together or how the content gets to their house.

A channel is created in a broadcast facility run and operated by a broadcaster (Fox, NBC, BBC, etc.). They assemble files of pre-recorded programming along with ads. Into that they also insert live feeds from sports events, news locations or live production studios. All of those programming elements are stitched together to become the TV channel. That linear feed, as it is called, is then sent to various broadcast platforms for distribution to your home. The connection from the broadcaster’s facility to the broadcast platform will use satellite in many cases, although it is slowly being replaced by fiber, particularly where the connection points are in different countries.

Now that we know the basics of how TV broadcast works, what are broadcasters, particularly those coming together for NAB next week, looking for to help them make their lives easier? In a word: Simplicity.

The demand for multiplatform availability presents unique challenges for a broadcaster trying to get their content into the hands of their viewership – anytime, anywhere. This demand has, in turn, produced an “Online First” approach for a growing number of content providers, as Dan Myers, our Director of Product Development, discusses in the video clip below. As someone who grew up with the original MTV, this is so cool!

What many people don’t know is that we play a role in nearly every step of the process, whether you’re focusing on traditional, Internet, or mobile TV. Hence the slightly tongue-in-cheek title of this blog post.

We carry pictures from live sporting locations and breaking news locations all over the world across our fiber network to the broadcaster’s facility.
We operate a highly-secure cloud storage system where broadcasters can house and share the pre-recorded program elements. Those can be full programs, ads or short promotional material.
We carry the full linear feeds from many broadcast facilities to their affiliates and pay TV platforms all over the world.
We even replace the broadcast facility and create the linear feed ourselves. This is referred to as program origination.
And, as part of this new “Internet First” approach, we are able to take that entire linear feed and make it available on the Internet. We help make sure it is secure, high quality and available on any device.

If you put all this together, we can provide everything that broadcasters need– end to end. Level 3 TV? Maybe! :-)

If you are interested in finding out more about what we can do for traditional television or Internet television, meet with us at NAB.

Windows Azure Teams Up With NBC Sports Group

2013-04-09T13:23:00Z

Exciting news from the Windows Azure team today! They have teamed up with NBC Sports Group to deliver live and on-demand programming of more than 5,000 hours of sporting events on a range of devices. More information available here.

The Role of Animation in Windows 8

2013-04-08T19:44:00Z

Guest blog post from Johnny Westlake, an Animation Designer at UI Centric

Animation can play a crucial part in turning a good application into a great application. Used properly they can make your application stick out in the users mind, and give them an extra added reason to come back. And without them applications can often incomplete and unfinished, which your users will pick up on. The Windows 8 OS is peppered with big and little animations, and if you’re making a Windows 8 application without paying attention to them, it’s not going to feel right.

This is especially important in a touch-first capable environment like Windows 8, where natural and smooth behaviour is expected - and more so in the case of media applications. Users will already be expecting to be pulled into a highly visual environment, and strong effective animation can really reinforce that experience. Though media experience or not, natural, performant animation plays an important part of the Windows 8 design philosophy in general, and something that’s often unfortunately overlooked during the design and development phases of applications.

1: Make it pretty. 2: Make it feel alive.

Take a look at a couple of the design principles for modern Windows 8 applications:

Delight your users with motion
Smoothly connect to what comes before and after.

Animation should always be a key part of Windows 8 design. And if you’re investing in the platform, it comes as no small basic necessity to make sure that your application is at fully at home on it.

Even simple animation, applied consistently throughout an application, can make it more visually appealing. You should always try to aim for objects on your UI never just “appearing” on screen – they should always arrive from somewhere. [beware, the video takes a moment to steady]

Fortunately, Microsoft has made it very easy to get started by adding some simple but effective animations to any modern style Windows 8 application to give them that extra kick of life. And that’s thanks to the animation library (for HTML applications) or transition animations (for XAML applications), pre-set animations that match up to Windows 8’s own OS animations. It’s helpful to read through the list of default animations and try to visualise where you might use these animation whilst designing your applications (and of course, coding them!). It’s far easier than you might expect to implement them well, and end result can make an application look and feel like it belongs on the users machine.

You can also take it a step further and create custom animations using the easy-to-use Blend for Visual Studio (here’s a good guide for getting started animating in XAML), or coding them by hand. Just remember, they are there to complement your design, not to overpower it.

Windows 8 – On the Big Screen at NAB

2013-04-08T15:00:00Z

By Blake Barrett, Product Marketing Manager, Windows Commercial Marketing

We are excited to be participating at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual show in Las Vegas this week to showcase Windows 8 to the media & entertainment industry. Throughout the week, we’ll be talking about how Windows 8 apps and devices impact the way consumers access video content, and how we can help media companies transform the way they deliver content.

In our NAB booth, you will see me demo immersive Windows 8 app experiences for users that can be experienced across a variety of devices. This includes tablets, convertibles and ultra-books, and many of these will be featured on our device bar. Built in Windows 8 features such as Live Tiles, Snap View, and Share all combine to make using these entertainment apps a better experience for users and developers alike.

Another great aspect of Windows 8 is the ability to leverage the cloud as a delivery platform, enabling media organizations to develop new multi-platform user experiences geared towards finding and consuming content.

Windows app momentum continues to grow and we’re proud of the interest consumers are showing in the Windows Store. As of January, Windows 8 sold over 60 million licenses since launching in October. In the first three months since launch, the number of apps in the Windows Store quadrupled. Just two months after GA, we passed the 100 million app download mark.

Recently, we highlighted just a few of the news apps that have been developed for Windows 8 – including USA Today, CNN, CNET, and the Irish Times. Windows 8 users can also stream TV and movies with entertainment apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Parents can keep their kids entertained with family entertainment apps from Disney, Nickelodeon, Sprout, and ABC Family.

For more information on Microsoft at NAB, visit the Media & Cable Newsroom to learn more about Windows 8and other news and broadcast solutions. And if you are using Windows 8, head to the Windows Store to download these exciting news and entertainment apps.