Not posting much lately because I’m on vacation with my family in Washington, DC. It’s the kids’ first trip Back East (time to see some REAL American history), and we’ve been having a great (exhausting) time. For me, one of the unexpected highlights was seeing SpaceShipOne in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (where I personally could easily spend the whole five days in DC). I had no idea Burt Rutan’s X-Prize winner was here, but it’s hanging right where it belongs — next to the Spirit of St. Louis (lest you think nobody in the government gets it anymore — somebody does).

And yes, the Natural History Museum is fun, too.

I’ll try to have more insightful stuff in a week, and maybe some more fun stuff in the meantime.

Tags: Burt-Rutan, Smithsonian, SpaceShipOne, Vacation, Washington, Washington-DC

OK, I promise to stop posting about the WWPC soon, but it was a very productive event for us.

In addition to the many sessions I’ve already described, I had a chance to sit down with Darryl Taft of eWeek.  While he was in Boston covering the Microsoft event, he took the time to interview me about our work with Microsoft in grid computing. 

Darryl’s article came out today, and his take on our place in the Microsoft ecosystem is quite insightful.  While I hate to think we’re anybody’s “secret weapon” (part of my job is to make us less of a secret!), I think his article is right on target.

Thanks, Darryl!

Tags: ccs, Darryl-Taft, eWeek, grid, grid-computing, Microsoft, Microsoft-Worldwide-Partner-Conference, partner, wpc2006, wwpc

Apparently, Buzz Bruggeman was at the Microsoft WPC in Boston, blogging away, and I missed him again.  I am in danger of becoming the last person on earth he has not met.  Anyway, he has good posts about the event, including one about the presentation by Andy Lees I attended.

Not surprisingly, he liked the “Structured Networking” part of the show.  This is one of my favorite aspects as well, and one of the key reasons I attended this year — while learning where Microsoft is going is important, making new partner-to-partner connections is gold.  While there are minor kinks in the Structured Networking Web site, the value delivered by providing a convenient way to meet dozens of potential partners in three days is tremendous.

Tags: Boston, Bruggeman, Buzz, WPC, wwpc

Thank you, Margo Day!

Margo is moving on, from VP of US Partners to Western Region VP of Sales.  She’ll be missed by the US Partner community, but as a Western Region partner, we’ll continue to work with her. 

Last night, she (and the Microsoft US Partner team) threw an awesome party.  I hope this tradition of good parties continues after Margo moves on; she understands that this stuff matters.  This is not a night to skimp or hold back; for a year, Microsoft and its partners work together.  For a night, we play together.  Period.  As we arrived at the venue (at the Roxy here in Boston, a converted theatre), a hundred of Microsoft’s marketing / partner staff lined up in two rows to form a path along the sidewalk and cheered and high-fived each of us as we ran through to to the club entrance.  This is such a positive signal to partners, and so much fun, that we thought about sneaking out the back and doing it again.

Now, if I say “the band was the Gogos, and they were great,” there’s a good chance you  will snicker.  But “great” does not begin to convey the level of energy and FUN in the room last night.  Dan Ciruli is not the only one with a long-running crush on Belinda Carlisle. 

Corporate gigs must be a special kind of hell for rock acts.  (On the other hand, I think it’s a lucrative hell.)  I’ve seen rock bands try to excite crowds of IT geeks at 8:30 in the morning (nearly impossible), or in outdoor venues better suited for a game of ultimate frisbee (where crowds wander away), or where they were competing with multiple stations of video games (good luck).  But the Gogos came out and rocked hard, and the crowd got into it quickly and stayed into it.

Add decent food and free beer, and the party was on.  So — thanks, Margo! 

Tags: ISV, Microsoft, Microsoft-Worldwide-Partner-Conference, partner, party

I attended the keynote sessions again this morning at the Microsoft WWPC.  The highlight of the morning, for me, was Andy Lees, who talked extensively about the progress Microsoft had made in the server market.  He was quite clear about how he sees the high-performance computing (HPC) market, and the opportunity for Microsoft and its partners in this market.

Andy noted that the HPC market was growing faster than the x86 server market as a whole, and that Linux dominates unit sales in this market today; I’ve seen plenty of other research that confirms these facts.  The news to me was that, according to him, 40% of Linux servers sold today are sold in compute clusters – 40%!  With HPC representing 10% of the total server market (and growing), this is a significant part of the total growth of Linux in the server market.

Microsoft has not contested this market to date.  He estimated that Microsoft had no more than 6% of the HPC market today.  He declared that Microsoft would change that share dramatically with the new CCS offering.  He indicated that CCS provided a huge opportunity for partners, and we could not agree more.

Microsoft partners – listen to Andy!  HPC is a huge opportunity for Microsoft partners, and Digipede is ready to help you capitalize on that opportunity today.  Digipede is the only Microsoft Gold Certified Partner delivering a true grid computing solution built on .NET.  Tested and publicly demonstrated with Microsoft on CCS, the Digipede Network adds value to CCS in many customer scenarios.  When deploying .NET applications on CCS, Digipede is the natural choice.  When integrating CCS into a larger HPC grid environment on the Windows platform, Digipede is the natural choice.  For any Microsoft partners out there getting ready to take the new CCS into the market – call me.  Seriously.  We’ve done a lot of work on this, directly with customers and Microsoft sales teams, and we can help you:
 - Win new business against Linux competitors;
 - Shorten your sales cycle; and
 - Raise your margins.

What should you do?
 - Educate yourself about CCS.  (Microsoft Partners can get the RTM software here.)
 - Educate yourself about the Digipede Network.  Get the free Digipede Network Developer Edition here.
 - Become a Digipede partner.  Tell us how you want to go to market, and let’s make it happen.

Tags: Andy-Lees, ccs, Compute Cluster Server, Digipede, Digipede-Network, high-performance-computing, HPC, Lees, Microsoft, partner

(Composed Tuesday, 7/11/2006 at Microsoft WWPC)

I always enjoy Steve Ballmer’s presentations – he’s enthusiastic and loud, insightful and funny, and that works well with a big, supportive crowd.  He did well today, but I’ve seen him before, and I have to say he was not fully on his game today. 

He hit on the expected themes around all the new releases, and also did quite a good job going over the trends in the industry.  As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, I was happy to hear him acknowledge in the first minute or two that partnering with Microsoft was a “bet the business” decision for us.  I was here, in part, to hear how Microsoft was addressing the big opportunities in the market today.  I liked what I heard, mostly.

I was not impressed, however, with how he addressed the delays in Vista and Office 2007.  There was no mention of dates (“around the turn of the year”), and no mention of the pain these delays have caused partners.  Steve made a lame joke about the releases being “a long time coming,” and then claimed “there will never be a gap between Windows releases as long as the gap between XP and Vista – count on it.” 

Count on it?  Really?  Why?  How?  When partners “counted on” Vista and Office being out already, and yet they’re not, what’s the answer?  A joke and oh well? This audience has long memories.  I’ve been working with Microsoft for more than 18 years, making choices to support Windows since version 2.0, and there are plenty in this room with longer histories still.  Delays matter, and the CEO needs to stand up and acknowledge them, and to be definitive about the release dates for these upcoming products.  There is still noise in the market about exactly when the products will be released, and he passed up a good chance to put that to rest.  Instead, it was all “rah rah” about the capabilities of these new offerings.  Enough – bring them out.

In addition to Vista and Office, he talked about new markets:  Business Intelligence, collaboration, search, unified communications, security, and Live.

He called Business Intelligence a “nascent” market for Microsoft, but hit on a number of products just released or coming in the next year that will make Microsoft a major player here; I agree, and we’re excited to be working with some of those teams.

His discussion of “People Ready Software” was well done.  Dan has posted about this here. 

Microsoft’s continuing increased emphasis on search was signaled by Ballmer’s choice of demonstrations.  He chose to carve out 10 minutes for a demo of SharePoint Search by Kirk Koenigsbauer, General Manager of Office Servers.  He was able to search a local machine (from the OS and from Outlook), and then search an enterprise via SharePoint 2007.  He showed a nice RSS feature built in, so you can subscribe to searches to be notified when new results appear.  The “search people” functionality was extremely interesting; the IDEA is that you enter a search term, and Sharepoint returns a list of people who have some knowledge or capability in that area, sorted by your “social distance” from that person.  There was no discussion of how the information about the “people” got populated, so exactly how SharePoint would learn that I’m a grid computing CEO / entrepreneur / father-of-three / Atlanta Braves fan who likes beer was not explained. 

Kirk’s demo of Windows Live Search, which goes to beta in July, showed a nice rich UI.  This looks to me like Microsoft’s latest attempt to be the UnGoogle – to present a rich UI (e.g., easily sorting of results) where Google is spare, and to integrate tightly with the desktop where Google remains desktop-neutral.  There was some very cool stuff here, but I was underwhelmed by Kirk’s presentation.  I will dig in deeper in the Microsoft area of the Expo today or tomorrow, because Kirk’s few minutes on stage were both dull and disjointed.  You could see Steve’s discomfort, trying to interject enthusiasm from time to time. 

Ballmer stressed this as a big partner opportunity – he wants to see zillions of SharePoint sales, right now, with Vista and Office 2007.  He announced 35 search partners who will be joining Microsoft to pursue what he claimed is a $13 billion opportunity.  I don’t doubt it.

He also carved out 10 minutes for Paul Duffy, Senior Product Manager of Real Time Collaboration, to show what Microsoft is doing in “Unified Communications.”  Paul started by handing a Windows Mobile phone to Steve.  Using a PocketPC, Paul sent an IM to “Kyle,” offstage, and received a reply.  It looked just like desktop IM.  He then switched to Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007, showing unified email, fax, and phone messaging.  He showed that you can now phone, IM, or email a contact straight out of Outlook.  And then he replied to an email with an IM, and started a video session with “Mike,” and brought in “Kyle” into a three-way video conference, with “active speaker detection,” so only the person speaking appeared on screen. 

This session was pretty slick, until Steve got a bit carried away and decided to hold his part of the conversation with Paul entirely through the phone – which resulted in a one-second delay between what he was saying and when the AV system picked up the signal from the phone call, and you couldn’t understand half of what he was saying.  But it was an impressive demo, nevertheless.

Steve claimed that Live was “coming on strong,” with 20 new Windows Live services, 1,000 new users daily on Windows Live OneCare, and 100,000 Office Live subscribers.  How do partners play in the Live strategy?  Steve says there will be “services we host, and services you host.”  And there will be commission sales opportunities, and apdev opportunities, and so on.  He’s put together a partner advisory council around Live.  We’ll see how that works out.

He announced Dynamics CRM Live, calling this “perhaps the single most inevitable announcement in the history of Microsoft.”  He had Brad Wilson from the CRM team come out and do a demonstration of this offering, which is scheduled for Q2 2007 availability.  Just as Outlook can talk to Hotmail for email, now Outlook can talk to CRM Live for CRM.  Brad’s demo included some integration with other Live services, like a Windows Live local map, and further integration with RSS feeds of home prices.  This has some potential, but he was clear that his demo required significant customization and coding (he pitched this as a “partner opportunity”).  Brad also had some gadgets on the desktop that picked up key indicators from CRM Live – a simple idea, but nicely implemented and quite cool. 

Overall, Steve did well, but not great.  I was at the Microsoft WWPC in Minneapolis last year, and the energy during Steve’s keynote there was definitely higher than here.  Nevertheless, I look forward to a worthwhile event.

Tags: Ballmer, CRM, Live, Microsoft, Microsoft-Worldwide-Partner-Conference, Office, partner, Steve-Ballmer, Vista, wpc2006, wwpc

(Composed Monday 7/10/2006 en route to Boston for Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.) 

I’ve mentioned my happy relationship with my Dell Latitude 610 laptop, and that relationship continues today on the plane to Boston.  If I choose my tasks appropriately, I’m just as productive in an aisle seat on JetBlue as I am in the office (maybe more — no phone interruptions up here!).  This machine’s got awesome battery life, so it’s coast-to-coast work, which I need today. 

Except…

OK, I’m listening to music, and I’ve got more crap open than I “should,” but it’s nothing that should eat battery life.  I’ve disabled wireless, dimmed the screen a bit, and I’m pounding away at a presentation when I look down and my battery icon says 33%!  Where did 67% of my battery power (two fully-charged batteries, nice ones) go??

But I already know, it’s happened again, something has run amok, and I know with near certainty what it is.  OK, Task Manager, what’s up?  Yes, indeed — OUTLOOK.EXE, 90+% of the CPU, so my CPU has been running at 100% nonstop for the last 40 minutes, making the bottom of my laptop hot enough to use as a welding torch.

Earth to Microsoft…  this is intolerable.  This is not Dell.  This is not third-party software.  This is not spyware, viruses, or other malware.  This is Microsoft Outlook (fully patched) talking to Microsoft XP Pro (fully patched).  Outlook has had this problem for (at least) this entire century.  How is it possible that this is still going on?

Have I seen this with other programs?  Yes — second most common is IE6, followed by Word, and once in a while even Firefox will go nuts and peg the CPU indefinitely.  But Outlook leads the league by a wide margin, and it’s unbelievably frustrating — I (and a few hundred million others) leave Outlook open nearly all the time, and it mostly works.  So I get lulled into believing I can work without paying attention to Outlook’s occassional tantrums, and then WHAM, my batteries are gone and half my trip is spent watching Cartoon Network. 

This matters.  Hey Office 2007 Team — this matters.  Hey Vista Team — this matters.  You can Google [Outlook CPU 100%] and related permutations as well as I can — this is not my imagination.  You can look in your own huge incident database about this.  Please get this fixed, OK?

Tags: CPU, Office, Outlook, Vista, Windows, XP

Don Canning describes “how a startup becomes an industry success,” providing his own take on our recent demonstration of the Digipede Network running on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS) at the Securities Industry Association (SIA) Technology Management Conference. 

When Don says:

Microsoft as a team is working closely with Digipede Technologies to enable seamless programmatic integration between .NET applications and cluster resources,

He’s not kidding — many, many thanks to the Microsoft Financial Services Group, the CCS team, the Office 2007 team, and the .NET team for their enthusiastic support! 

(Dan Ciruli also has some additional information on additional integration we’ve demonstrated since that event, in his post on “Putting a grid behind Excel 2007.”)

Don is also correct in pointing out the numerous compelling advantages this Microsoft / Digipede solution has over Linux grid solutions; I’ll have more on that in subsequent posts.

Thanks to Don and the whole Emerging Business Team for continuing to open doors, at Microsoft and beyond, to help this startup become an industry success.

Tags: .NET, ccs, Compute Cluster Server, dotnet, EBT, Emerging-Business-Team, Entrepreneurship, finance, grid, grid-computing, ISV, Microsoft, startup