Just off the plane having spent the week in San Francisco. Microsoft invited The Wise Group along with three other customers to help them launch their new cloud computing initative - www.office365.com. Here's some notes I kept during the week:
Monday afternoon and evening here in SF was when we I got to socialise with Microsoft’s senior people as well as 6 partners and 3 customers.
Tuesday was the actual launch event for what’ they’re calling ‘Office 365’ or as they call it ‘Office three-hundred sixty five’ (more details at: www.office365.com)
Monday – Meet and Greet Microsoft Senior Executives
Spent some great time with Kurt DelBene (President of Microsoft Office Division and second to CEO Steve Ballmer); Chris Capossela (formerly Bill Gates Speech Advisor and now Senior Vice President of Information Worker Group in Microsoft Corporate) and Betsy Frost Webb (General Manager – Unified Communications).
They had asked 3 customers to the event – including the Wise Group
1. Susan Erickson and James D Smith - both Senior Directors of Intranet Services of Starwood Hotel’s and Resorts (Starwood own Meridien, Westin, Sheraton, St Regis etc etc) with around 20,000 users of Microsoft Cloud Services
2. Robert Franch (Global Product Manager Messaging and Collaboration at AON with around 40,000 users of Microsoft’s cloud ( a totally mad Italian American from New Jersey with the best New Jersey accent I’ve ever heard)
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| Kurt DelBene - President Microsfot Office Division |
We spent a long time at the table and later at various bars talking about Microsoft’s cloud offering.
It turns out it was very difficult to get on to the beta test programme but now that we are we get to test out ‘office 365’ - its got e-mail as before but also SharePoint which we currently have installed locally in the server room. This new cloud version of SharePoint though looks like it has functionality that we can deploy our full Intranet site on – something that wasn’t clear before the launch. I will make sure we do that during our pilot.
There’s also the MS Office product set. Basically we can use office products from the cloud without having them locally installed. Interestingly the lessons from Starwood and AON seem to be that they plan to use this in a tiered way. In other words some staff will still have full Office product installs while some will have access just to the on-line version. Typical way of cutting it seems to be ‘executives’ with full installs ‘back-office’ staff with on-line access only. We need to look at that however Starwood and AON use it that way.
Something I hadn’t been aware of is for users with full Office installs – instead of ICT doing the install Microsoft will do it automatically – its called ‘Office as a service’ and works a bit like when Windows does it own updates automatically. Again, this could remove a large update burden from ICT. Starwood and AON haven’t rolled this out yet since it hasn’t been available, however I’ll keep in touch with them on it and we can test this out in our pilot.
Microsoft have now re-named their ‘Office Communicator’ product ‘Link’ . We have it but don’t use it much. I had long conversations with Starwood and AON and Kurt DelBene about how to get it adopted and the benefits. I think we need a small campaign to get it going properly because both Starwood and AON talked about how much the users liked it for quick communications. (Basically it’s a company instant messenger with ‘presence’ notifications).
We also discussed using what they call Exchange 2010 – among other things this gives us ‘soft telephony’ – I am currently liasing with Betsy Frost Webb on this because I would like to plan to have it tested and maybe installed by the end of 2011 for the Wise Group potentially replacing our aging telephony systems.
Though not part of this event I had tangentially found out about a test programme Microsoft are doing here in the USA to put Dynamics CRM in the cloud. When I got here I knobbled Kurt DelBene and as a result of that just last night we got an invitation to participate in the programme (he works fast does Kurt!). This is exciting because as you know I recently put a cloud outsourcing proposal to SMT (as was) which we accepted. However depending on the results of the CRM test I may have to revise that proposal (hopefully downwards) to take account of the fact that CRM could be outsourced. Its too early to be definitive about this however it’s a good start.
Later on Monday things degenerated slightly as we wandered around downtown San Francisco going from bar to bar. I remember the mad New Jersey Robert Franch and I wandering along some seedy back-street carrying between us a very senior Microsoft executive because he had temporarily lost the ability to walk. We were heading for an upmarket bar called the ‘Sir Francis Drake’ however someone had Googled it incorrectly and we found ourselves at the front door of a hotel called the ‘Drake’ which seemed to rent rooms by the hour. We beat a hasty retreat and finally found the Sir Francis.
Tuesday – the Launch Event of ‘Office 365’
Tuesday at 8am was the global launch of the until-then top secret brand for the new version of BPOS – Its when the press turned up (including the BBC) and its when they announced ‘Office three-hundred sixty five’)
Although due to the effects of alcohol the night before the name hadn’t been embargoed quite as well as they’d hoped
Betsy Frost Webb introduced the new product then Kurt DelBene went through Microsoft’s cloud philosophy. Then Chris Capossela went into the detail.
There was TV there and this event seemed to be broadcast globally.
What was good about it was the had the Wise Group logo up there as one of the early adopters and much of the speeches were done with that logo in the background.
Note: I videoed all speeches and there’s some excellent nuggets in there. I’ve also sourced the video from the Steve Ballmer Cloud event in London where he mentioned us and where I presented and Diane and I were interviewed. I’ve asked Ian Maclean if he could cut a 5 minute video pod-cast for us to capture the essence of these recent activities.
After the launch they did ‘talking head’ interviews with myself, AON and Starwood (as they did in London with Diane and I) which Microsoft will use as case studies for these senior executives as they take the story round the world.
Overall Impressions
Ultimately a very worth-while event and great to see the Wise Group punching above our weight with some pretty hefty global players and being used as an example of best practice 6000 miles from home.
Also great to be able to keep in touch with AON and Starwood and learn best practice from them which we can use at the Wise Group.
Also great to be able to contact people like Kurt, Besty and Chris (first name terms now) directly.
I’ve got some more thoughts but will sign off now as being kicked out of my hotel room shortly.
Have attached a couple of SF pictures – great city
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| Powell & California |
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| Telegraph Hill and TransAmerica from Pier 19 |
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