James Akrigg .:. Out of Office : Search

Microsoft Technologies - Today > Tomorrow > Futures Pt.4

James Akrigg — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:59:41 GMT

.: Presentation notes :.

SharePoint, SharePoint, SharePoint... That's all you would hear me talk about during my first six years at Microsoft. Now in it's third version it has become the fastest growth product in Microsoft's product history reaching $1bn faster than any other product. I put this down to several key attributes. First the capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) are now vast spanning collaboration, content management, portal, search, business intelligence and business process management and this makes SharePoint the ideal 'information platform' for business. Secondly I would say that the extensibility of this platform has enabled the solutions our partners have been creating to address a wide and varied set of business problems across business functions and company boundaries. Having a technology that can be used for Intranet, Extranet and Internet solutions is of great strategic value when considering skills needed to support and drive your information platform.

The slide is hard to see in the scaled down image, but it basically puts SharePoint in the centre and illustrates that it requires Windows Server 2008 (or Windows Server 2003) and stores data in SQL Server. To the right (as you look at the slide) it shows how you may protect your information platform using ForeFront for SharePoint and Data Protection Manager (part of System Centre) to help with disaster recovery. To the left we have SharePoint Designer. This is a design tool to make it easier to customize the look and feel of SharePoint sites and more easily create solutions based on SharePoint. Finally at the top of the slide we have 'user experience'. Tight integration with Office 2007 and Office Communication Server really brings the solution to life as users can use familiar tools to interact with SharePoint. (slide 1)

We have been using Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) at Microsoft for sometime now and it is transforming the way we do business. Using Office Communicator 2007 client application to see presence information for anybody in the organization I may wish to contact is fantastic but it becomes amazing when I add contacts in partners that I work with so that we can communicate and collaborate more effectively. Applications that contain contact information (e.g. Outlook, SharePoint etc) light up with presence information when signed into Office Communicator so that I can communicate in context. So that's my business strength presence and instant messaging taken care of and you would think that was good. Well in the tradition of going from good to great let's throw in PBX integration to voice enable Office Communications Server. In a recent trip to Los Angeles I was able to make calls from my Vista Laptop via the Wireless Internet connection in the hotel and conference centre and significantly reduce my mobile roaming charges. More recently I have been testing using a Netbook with a small bluetooth headset to make calls. Those that attended the event should remember the demo :)

Piloting unified communications using Office Communications Server 2007 and perhaps collaboration with SharePoint is a great way to see the immediate benefits you can get in using these technologies. Many partners are doing this today and sharing their real world experiences with customers looking at ways to reduce costs and improve communication and collaboration capabilities. If you are not seriously looking at SharePoint and Office Communications Server you should and with the release of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in the first half of next year there will be even more solution possibilities. (slide 2)

.: Resources :.

SharePoint Server 2007 Homepage

Windows Server 2008

SharePoint Solution Templates

Office Communications Server 2007

Technical Resources for SharePoint Server 2007

Using the latest SQL Server 2008 features with SharePoint Server 2007

Using SharePoint Products and Technologies with Hyper-V

SharePoint Server 2007 Evaluation resources

Early information on Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Launch Event Registration Link

Step out from the cold and into Microsoft Enterprise Search

James Akrigg — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:16:00 GMT

I have had a technical focus for sometime on Microsoft Search technologies going back in time starting with Index Server, then onto Site Server and now working with the 3rd release of our SharePoint Search technologies.

The basic principle of being able to find information and not be 'left out in the cold' of what's going on in your business has been of great interest to me and with the impact the Internet Search Engines have had on people I can only see this area of technology increase in importance.

Consider the next wave of company employees who have grown up knowing only that the Internet exists. It is an everyday thing for these people to first go to their favorite Internet Search Engine (mine is Live Search, but you probably guessed that) when ever they want to find some information. Now these people enter the workplace and expect the same type of tools to be available for business information. Well in most companies they just don't exist. This can all change with Microsoft partners providing solutions to deliver 'Enterprise Search'.

Later today I will be presenting at the UK Search Partner Community Event in London. It's great to see so many partners already committed to delivering search solutions using Microsoft technology today and this can only grow as Search becomes even more high profile in business.

The key topic for my presentation is about 'Technical Resources for Search' so instead of boring everyone to death with 400 PowerPoint slides I have listed my Favorite Resources here:

Search Information

Evaluation Guide for SharePoint for Search

Mike Pallot blog

Technet Virtual Labs

Search Planning

Indexing Different Types of Content

iFilter Resources

Business Data Catalog Resources

Get the Software

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 trial download

Microsoft Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 (Not for Vista)

Live Search

Well I hope this helps...

James Akrigg

Microsoft : Serious about Search

James Akrigg — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:37:53 GMT

Today Microsoft announced that it has agreed to acquire Medstory who provides search services for health information. The first thing to note about this approach to search is that it has a very clear context (health information) which aids in much greater relevance to search results.

I can see this being a trend going forward as the volume of information continues to grow and throwing a couple of random words to the worlds Internet becomes too challenging even for the best search engines.

There is a lot you can do to try and increase the probability of search results having relevance, but nothing beats having a context from which to build a conceptual information model that can infer related content.

Medstory looks to have come up with a great way to visually display related content based from an initial search. In the example below I searched for the word 'stress' and this is how the related content is displayed which creates an easy way to navigate to more specific content without having prior domain knowledge. When you select any of these suggested topics I'm provided with options to search just on the topic or to combine my original search with the selected topic. It's just so simple to use.

I think this is so obvious now that I have seen it and I can't wait to see it being used in more areas. I can only hope that this capability makes it into future versions of our desktop and server search technologies and is implemented for other industries.

James Akrigg

Live Search from Microsoft is on the Move

James Akrigg — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:41:00 GMT

More people will now be able to make use of Microsoft Live Search while on the move following the press release from Nokia yesterday. Advanced search capabilities are going to be available to Nokia customers powered by our Live Search for mobile that will include 'Encarta Answers'. If you have not used this capability I suggest you head over to www.live.com and give it ago. This service enables you to find answers to questions quickly and easily. For example:

For Statistic fans try - What is the population of London?

For Austin Powers fans try – What is a Laser?

For Quiz fans try – What is the capital of China?

The Mobile Search application is expected to be available with the Nokia N80 Internet Edition, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, and Nokia 6681, it is also offered as a free download for select Nokia S60 devices from www.nokia.com/mobilesearch.

James Akrigg