Ian's Blog

Well it finally happened, Yahoo caved and allowed Microsoft to take over as the number 2 in the world of search engines and online marketing.

It was inevitable. Microsoft had made it clear they wanted to be a player in search engine market and when Microsoft sets their mind to it, not much can hold it back.

They have been trying to join forces with or take over Yahoo for sometime but just recently they came to an agreement with Yahoo to share search engine technology and ad revenue by combining elements of yahoo.com and bing.com (Microsoft’s new/rebranded search engine tool).

For more info check out these articles… 
Yahoo Gives In to Microsoft, Gives Up on Search

Microsoft, Yahoo agree on ad partnership

So day 4 of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference has come and gone and it is time for me to go. Not because it is winding up but because I have gathered the information I was looking for and gained the insight I feel I need to confidently plan for the next year.

There has been a lot of technical sessions covering the broad spectrum of products and services provided by Microsoft, and a lot of sessions discussing the changing landscape of technology, buying patterns and business outlook.

We all know about the challenges faced by businesses and individuals over the last year and that has translated to a renewed focus on gaining value from the products and services we purchase. IT is in the middle of it. People are scrutinizing their IT systems and waiting longer to decide if or when they should proceed with a project.

Our job as IT specialists, is to make sure we effectively articulate the business benefits in the implementation of technology solution we recommend.

Will it save you money?

Will it make you more efficient?

Will it uncover new opportunities?

These are the key points we will start applying more rigorously to the recommendation we make. If it does not address one of those three points then I suggest the project is not worth doing.

So, back to work tomorrow (not that I have stopped working here!) with a renewed and refreshed outline on the year!

Another wonderful day at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Day 3 started with the keynote address and a glimpse of some emerging and intriguing technologies that Microsoft is working on. This video was shown and the interesting thing is every bit of technology shown is being actively worked on by Microsoft. This video is not a pie in the sky idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiqgmAYrd3c

Microsoft Surface was demoed a lot during the keynote and the fun part is there are dozens of them around the conference area available for use to use/try and play with. To see what Surface is check this out... http://www.microsoft.com/surface/.

I spent some time with Ben from TenDigits learning about MobileAccess, a tool allowing people with mobile devices like Windows Mobile phones or Blackberries, to use Dynamics CRM. If you are a Dynamics CRM user imaging having access to any of the data in your CRM system anytime from you phone. Log sales call notes, look up client information, initiate workflows or processes on the road from your phone. Pretty powerful stuff.

I spent some more time exploring the social media side of things again. There is such an opportunity for businesses to communicate and connect with customers and potential customers through social media sites like Twitter or LinkedIn. Watch out for our tweets coming soon.

Day 2 of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. I attended a focus group session in the morning on how businesses are using social media tools to help market their products and brands. Blogging (like this), Twitter and YouTube really are becoming mainstream marketing methods and mediums. You don’t have to use them, but then you don’t have to market too. The questions is do you want to hold onto or grow your market share. If yes then you need to look at the marketing mediums you have at your disposal. You will likely see more from us in the future in this area.

The keynote address was great. Saw some great previews of upcoming technologies. Of note was the demonstration of the new Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and how you can use it as a data analytics tool. Some companies spend a lot of money having dashboards built or one-off reports built by the IT staff. The new Excel (coming out in the new year likely) lets you work with millions of rows of data and save the file to a SharePoint site so it can be used as a dashboard right from the web browser. So users will be able to create their own spreadsheets with data slicing and dicing capabilities and use them and publish them for the whole company to take advantage of. You don’t even need Excel on your computer, you can edit and work with the data right from the browsers. AND two people can edit and update the same file at the same time. Talk about collaboration.

I sat in on a session reviewing the new Windows 7. This should be the version of Windows that breaks the will of people to hold onto Windows XP. Not that you have to upgrade but currently people are making a conscious effort to not use Windows Vista and paying extra for it. Windows 7 and its features, ease of use and support for existing software will hopefully break that barrier.

So it was a long day. Not sure I will have the energy to take a walk along Bourbon Street, but then again maybe I will!

So made it down to New Orleans today for the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Thousands of Microsoft Partners from around the world are here learning about new technologies and sharing ideas on how to help businesses through the effective use of technology.

A couple announcements today... Windows 7 is now officially going to be launched in the middle of October. Also, saw the very early version of the new Office 2010. Looks great.

More information to come

A couple months ago Sarah (Sarah Pavlik – our Marketing Director) and I were discussing some strategies to help people get past their fear and concern in trying and using the latest versions of software. Specifically Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.

There is a new version of Windows coming in a few months (Windows 7) and a new version of Microsoft Office due out quite soon.

So if people are concerned about Windows Vista and Office 2007, how far behind will they get once the new releases come out? Now I know you don’t have to always upgrade. We are the first to say “if it aint broke, don’t fix it.” But the longer you lag behind, the easier it is to become ‘broken’.

This is when we came up with the idea of providing a simple easy way for clients to learn the new software. Provide them training for free. People like free right.

We converted one of our meeting rooms to accommodate 10+ people and came up with a plan to offer free training on Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and Windows Vista.

Well, the radio ads are starting later this week, the website is updated with all our courses and material and the emails will be going out next week.

Let’s see how this goes?

Well, it has been quite a 3 months promoting and managing the application process over. There have been a lot of PR events, press coverage, promoting and reviewing of applications that have poured in over the last 90 day. This afternoon there were a number of applications that came in at the wire.

It will be tough for the Judging panel to review and choose 5 finalists, let alone a winner.

There are a number of worthy applicants and it will be amazing to see the transformation for the winner.

Let the judging begin!

Not many businesses know that in the recent Federal Budget a temporary provision was introduced allowing businesses to write off 100% of the capital cost allowance (CCA) for computer purchases.

What this means is in the first year a business can write off 100% of the cost of the new computer rather than depreciating it over several years. That can result in significant corporate tax savings.

Here is an excerpt from the Federal Government website: Government Capital Cost Allowance for Computers.

Temporary 100-Per-Cent Capital Cost Allowance Rate for Computers

In light of the economic slowdown, Budget 2009 proposes a two-year 100-per-cent CCA rate for computers acquired after January 27, 2009 and before February 1, 2011. This will allow businesses to fully expense their investment in computers in one year. Businesses in all sectors of the economy, including the service sector, will benefit from this initiative, which will contribute to boosting Canada's productivity through the faster adoption of newer technology.

I was forwarded the following Blog post by Hugh MacLeod at Marketo, a B2B Marketing firm.

http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2009/06/true-social-selling.html

What is interesting is how things are changing in the world of sales and that simply using a CRM system is not the answer. It is a combination of how your website is constructed, your marketing structure and processes your sales people use. All of these can be aided with advances in technology, but just implementing one part greatly reduces the value of the change.

Microsoft has release a new flavor of Windows Server 2008 called Foundation Server. It is targeted at businesses who are considering their first server. With hardware cost for entry level servers starting at $1,000 you can now add on Windows Foundation Server 2008 for under $400. That includes the ability for up to 15 users at access the server. There are some minor limitations (it does not support virtualization) to what Foundation Server can do but considering the price, it opens up a lot of opportunity for smaller businesses to gain the advantages of having a server such as security of data, disaster recovery with centralized data being backed up, and file and printer sharing.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/foundation.aspx

I cannot comment on whether Windows 7 is going to be a hit or not, it is just too early, but the folks at Microsoft are starting the PR train and getting Partners ready for the new version of Microsoft Windows due out by the end of this year.

There are a number or early beta release and release candidate articles(release candidate is a version that is after the beta version and before the RTM, release to manufacturing). Some articles are listed below, but once we get closer to the release date and we (pavliks.com) have put it through our tests, I will post what we find. Early on, the good news it is stable and faster. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=106237

http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/windows-7-review-consensus-its-a-faster-vista-msft