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The last 12 months for Microsoft have been defined by the launches of the new versions of its flagship technologies, Windows Vista and Office System 2007. The launch of these two products at the same time was a great achievement, noted Adam Anger, senior director, Business & Marketing Organization, Microsoft Hong Kong.
The launch occurred in two phases, a business targeted launch in December 2006 and then a consumer launch in February this year.
There were business customers who took the opportunity to showcase their experiences of previewing Vista. On the consumer side there were over 40 partners involved from hardware vendors, to content providers, to applications and networking providers.
Anger pointed to some new partnerships that Vista has enabled through some innovations around content delivery. "New partners such as Asian Wall Street Journal and online music site EOL Asia typified the huge industry support for the Vista and Office 2007," he said. |
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Content partners have helped deliver Vista Gadgets, which are small software applications accessible via Windows Vista Sidebar, a feature of Microsoft's new OS, they allow users to find and track Internet information without the need to open a browser.
The consumer launch of Vista proved to be Microsoft's biggest product launch ever and the adoption since the launch has seen an upswing of ten times the normal sales rates, according to Anger. The initial buyers have been small office and home users who are typically the early adopters of new technologies.
Communications shift
In conjunction with the business launch of Vista, Microsoft also released its latest version of Exchange Server. Anger observed the last year has seen a surge in demand for mobile access to corporate Exchange e-mail systems. In the Windows Mobile space the growth has been significant and new features on Exchange Server 2007 will bring added value to mobile users.
"Over 50% of customers buying Exchange are doing it with a conscious objective to get mobile access to Exchange e-mail to their employees," Anger said. The trend has been significant and interesting to note it's not just a few individuals demanding this but whole departments and groups of users. "Organizations are finally thinking in terms of wider strategic adoption of mobile e-mail," Anger said.
Another key ongoing trend has been the continued growth in SME adoption of technology. Large enterprises have sustained healthy growth across Microsoft' various product lines but the SME growth has been dramatic, particularly in the 10 to 50 user-size companies. According to Anger this is proof that smaller businesses are putting much more effort into growing and becoming more mature businesses.
Small businesses are buying more PCs, small workstations and servers with software like Small Business Server, a package of Windows Server OS and applications suited to small growing businesses.
"There's also growing interest in enterprise-class e-mail like Exchange with many SMEs switching from traditional POP3 and web mail accounts to Exchange via hosted services from providers like New World Telecom or JOS," said Anger.
Business upgrades
The large enterprise market has been driven by upgrades in key business applications and server consolidation allied with migration away from legacy systems like mainframes.
Migrations to consolidate server environments have enabled companies to look at upgrading ERP and CRM and also the databases supporting these applications.
Anger spies an opportunity here for Windows SQL Server 2005 to gain market share against established players like Oracle. Having launched two years ago, Microsoft's database offering has seen a slight lag in adoption which is typical for a database release as it often is driven by applications adoption, noted Anger.
"But the momentum had built up further last year and growth has been significant," he said. "Plus the ongoing consolidation efforts and heavy-duty migrations present us with opportunities to come and help ease the burden of transition."
Anger pointed to virtualization features in Windows Server 2003 that have helped customers with migrations and consolidation efforts. While ERP upgrades puts customers in a position to re-evaluate their database.
Adding intelligence
Microsoft has also looked to improve the experience for users of ERP and other business applications by enabling executives to access these systems via the familiar interface of Office. Technologies like Duet, a collaboration between Microsoft and SAP, have enabled users of SAP to access and view real-time data from SAP systems directly in an Office application.
This has been driven by the increasing need for faster information access and the ability to make better more informed decisions. "The whole business intelligence strategy has shifted from basic reporting and query tools to improved scorecarding, performance management and improved data for decision makers," said Anger. "BI is an area that many firms are now taking very seriously."
Microsoft has also focused on adding great functionality to its tools for developers. Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite has introduced new collaborative features that change the whole developer experience and workflow.
Developers today use multiple tools to develop a program from basic coding to project management and testing as well as portals and management tools to help coordinate individual developers on the same project.
Anger noted that Visual Studio Team Suite attempts to unify those processes and enable faster and more effective collaboration across development teams.
"This is an area that we have much more work to do in helping customers rework the way they do things," said Anger. "Historically we and others don't do as good a job at change management as we could," he added. Microsoft intends to spend more time during beta testing and early adoption programs to work with customers to identify potential issues and problems that help develop prescriptive guidance for future users.
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Software provider ups productivity with VS Team System
Integrated Solutions Limited (ISL) is a world-class software developer with local roots. Its market-leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, e-M-POWER, is designed to help small- and mid-sized firms improve quality and cost-competitiveness in dynamic and demanding manufacturing environments.
A few years ago ISL selected Microsoft Visual Studio to develop e-M-POWER within the .NET Framework, delivering an ERP system with a rich user interface, support for high-volume transaction processing, and tight integration with database and e-business systems.
"Our developers are some of the best in the business and it is vital that we give them the tools and resources to excel," explained Eable Chung, ISL's R&D Manager. "As development projects become more complex, however, the need for a comprehensive project management tool has become acute. Project teams today typically include project managers, business analysts, application architects, developers, and testers, so coordinating their efforts throughout the software development lifecycle has become correspondingly complex too."
To address this problem, ISL enhanced its development platform by adding a powerful project management platform on its Visual Studio infrastructure, Visual Studio 2005 Team System.
ISL built its mission-critical development platform on Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developer, with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as the database. ISL is also is in the process of adopting Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server for source code control and project management.
"The powerful new tools and processes in VSTS have cut our development cycle by 30 % while delivering higher quality software through more efficient testing, increased individual productivity, and easier collaboration," said Chung. "We now have better control over quality, dramatically improving the robustness of our code."
ISL is also expediting time-to-market because:
• Programmer efficiency is up 15-20 %
• System administration and maintenance is down 10-25 %
• New programmers adapt to the development process 50 % faster.
"Speed and quality are the hallmarks of applications developed with Visual Studio Team System. We have enhanced the timeliness, functionality, performance, reliability, and user friendliness of our ERP solution," concluded Chung.
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IDT steps up collaboration with integrated communications
In the first global deployment of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 by a Hong Kong company, lifestyle consumer electronics leader IDT International Limited (IDT) has achieved secure, efficient, and scalable real-time collaboration around the world.
IDT staff members were proactive in adopting IM as a collaboration tool. While this increased productivity by providing immediate access to colleagues, it also carried a risk; exposing the company to IM viruses and other security threats.
IDT wanted to capitalize on IM but needed a more secure and reliable solution than public IM could provide.
With Live Communications Server 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, IDT is providing 200 staff members in 16 international offices with integrated instant messaging (IM), voice, and video communications. A further 200 staff members and 200 external users will be brought into the new system in coming months.
IDT is using Live Communications Server 2005 to improve communications and collaboration within the organization, enhance productivity, and enable online training and operational support. It has also achieved enhanced security over IM and deployed a data archiving solution to support regulatory compliance.
Users can immediately see each colleague's availability to increase the efficiency of communications, regardless of the means they choose. They also benefit from a standardized and centrally maintained Contact Directory that is pushed to them directly.
The new high-performance system has proven to be highly scalable and easy to use and maintain. Deployment was fast and easy via email and IDT is benefiting from a low initial investment and ongoing cost savings.
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