This week Forrester Research analyst Thomas Mendel published a report that claims that Windows Vista has been "rejected" in the enterprise and suggests to his customers that they should re-evaluate their Windows Vista deployments and consider waiting for Windows 7. Not surprisingly, this is something that we, our millions of enterprise customers, and a bunch of pesky statistics don't agree with. Heck, even Forrester doesn't agree with Forrester! Let me explain:
First, this report doesn't reflect the normal enterprise OS adoption cycle. Enterprise adoption of OSes has always been much slower than consumer adoption. After all, upgrading the PC in your living room is easy, but upgrading an entire front and back end infrastructure to thousands of users without downtime is much more complex, and that takes time. Computerworld contributing author (and Microsoft partner) David Feng just wrote an article about this, too. Mendel's report, however, simply skims over this common knowledge.
What is even more puzzling is that Mr. Mendel's report directly contradicts another Forrester report titled, "Building the Business Case for Windows Vista," which was written by fellow analyst Ben Gray. This report outlines the five main reasons why enterprises should start their company's migration to Windows Vista now. You can read it for yourself here. Mendel's report also goes against other industry analyst reports that show that Windows Vista adoption is progressing faster, or at the very least, just as fast, as Windows XP adoption did when it first launched.
It's also important to note that we've sold 180 million copies of Windows Vista so far, 40 million of which were in the last quarter alone, and that there are thousands of enterprise customers deploying Windows Vista by the thousands of seats on a weekly basis, including heavy hitters like The United States Air Force, PPG Industries, and Cerner.
Given that there's a mountain of evidence to refute this report - including multiple reports from Forrester and other top-tier analysts - this appears to be more focused on making sensationalist statements, rather than offering a thoughtful industry perspective, based on conversations with IT operations professionals or deep knowledge of enterprise deployment cycles. How is this useful guidance to customers? It's disappointing to see such a respected organization like Forrester take this approach.
- Chris
Written by Chris Flores on July 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.
Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research.
More importantly, Powerset brings to Live Search a set of talented engineers and computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This is a great team with a wide range of experience from other search engines and research organizations like PARC (formerly Xerox PARC).
We're buying Powerset first and foremost because we're impressed with the people there. Powerset CTO and cofounder Barney Pell is a visionary and incredible evangelist. When he introduced our senior engineers to some of the most senior people at Powerset — Search engineers and computational linguists like Tim Converse, Chad Walters, Scott Prevost, Lorenzo Thione, and Ron Kaplan — we came away impressed by their smarts, their experience, their passion for search, and a shared vision.
That shared vision is to take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.
We know today that roughly a third of searches don't get answered on the first search and first click. Usually searchers find the information they want eventually, but that often requires multiple searches or clicks on multiple search results. Two specific problems are the most common reasons for this:
- Differences in phrasing or context between a user's search and the way the same information is expressed on webpages. Search engines don't understand today that "shrub" and "tree" are similar concepts. We don't understand that "cancer" sometimes refers to a disease and sometimes refers to a horoscope and when a query or a webpage refers to which.
- Lack of clarity in the descriptions for each webpage in the search results. Sometimes a result looks relevant from its short description on the results page but turns out to be not so relevant when you visit the actual page. As a result, searchers frequently click results and then rapidly click back when they realize they aren't what they're looking for.
These problems exist because search engines today primarily match words in a search to words on a webpage. We can solve these problems by working to understand the intent behind each search and the concepts and meaning embedded in a webpage. Doing so, we can innovate in the quality of the search results, in the flexibility with which searchers can phrase their queries, and in the search user experience. We will use knowledge extracted from webpages to improve the result descriptions and provide new tools to help customers search better.
Working with our existing Search team and other Microsoft teams that focus on natural language, Powerset will help us address all of those problems and opportunities.
We're looking to add even more talented engineers to the San Francisco team to accelerate our shared progress. If you're interested in joining the team, drop us a line.
We'll have more to say about the things we're doing in understanding searches and webpages through natural language technology in the coming months. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Powerset to Microsoft!
Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Search, Portal, and Advertising
See also: Microsoft to acquire Powerset
Written by livesearch on July 1st, 2008 with no comments.
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RTM Announcement - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1
Hello,
It's been a few months since I last blogged about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 - formerly known as WVHA or Windows Vista Hardware Assessment. Today, I'd like to announce the RTM release of this tool with new capabilities including desktop security assessment, Hyper-V virtualization assessment, and more.
As you know, many of the IT pros out there like you are now spending a lot of time planning for Windows Vista deployments. But many question and challenges remain:
- Are my existing PCs compatible to Windows Vista when it comes to Hardware and Device Compatibility?
- Will my PCs have BIOS issues after the upgrade to Windows Vista?
- Which of my PCs are ripe for an upgrade to Windows Vista? (e.g. CPU too old so it's time to replace them; or just add 512MB system memory and the PCs would be Windows Vista capable!)
- What kind of software has been installed?
- Are all of my PCs secure? Is Windows Security Center installed? Do they have Anti-Virus or Anti-Malware software installed? How about Windows Firewall settings?
- What about application virtualization readiness?
The MAP Toolkit 3.1 is designed to address all of these desktop-side issues from a single tool! The MAP Toolkit is a platform of tools that combines the strength of agentless discovery and report generation capabilities from the previous generation (Windows Vista Hardware Assessment). The pie-chart below is part of an auto-generated readiness report from the MAP Toolkit and it illustrates the level of hardware readiness for Windows Vista upgrades across the desktop infrastructure.
As a matter of fact, if you view the latest MAP Team RTM blog post from yesterday, you will find that the MAP Toolkit 3.1 also havs many server-side and virtualization features including a Hyper-V virtualization candidates assessment and SQL Server discovery!!
Cheers!
Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators - Virtualization Lead)
Written by Baldwin Ng on June 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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I'm posting this on behalf of my colleague Steve Ball.
Hi, my name is Steve Ball and I'm a Principal Program Manager Lead on the Windows Sound Team. I'd like to take a moment and give some background on sound schemes in Windows as well as the new sound schemes released as Ultimate Extras and their relationship with the default Windows Vista scheme.
Default Windows Vista Sound Scheme
The default Windows Vista sound scheme was designed with the same principles that were used in designing the Windows Vista visual elements and desktop experience. In contrast, the Windows XP sounds, while appropriate at the time and for that product design, were very ‘Western' and literal, using pianos and western orchestral instruments. The XP sounds were designed to complement the ‘photo-realistic' Bliss desktop (blue sky, green grass photo.) The Windows XP sounds can also be rather percussive and jarring in the context of day to day PC use, so it was an explicit goal to re-orchestrate the default Windows Vista sounds to complement the softer, cleaner theme and user interface elements in Windows Vista.
For Windows Vista, it was an intentional design goal to avoid ‘reinventing' the User Interface language for sound. For example, the "new mail" sound in Windows XP and in Windows Vista consist of the same pitches, interval, and timing.
New Mail (Notify)
The Windows Vista ‘new mail' sound has simply been re-orchestrated to match the softer, more -rounded Windows Vista Startup Sound whose ‘sonic palette' was derived from the gentle and flowing Robert Fripp Soundscapes sessions that were recorded at Microsoft Studios in 2005 and 2006.
Session 1: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=151853
Session 2: http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=287615
Fan Fact: The shutdown sounds for both of the new UE Sound Schemes are pulled directly from these Fripp sessions. There are in fact two shutdown sounds included with each of these UE schemes - for each scheme, there is also longer shutdown sound in the %windir%/media/%scheme_name% folder that is actually too long to use as a Windows Vista shutdown sound -- but we included it anyway so Fripp fans could get a greater sense of context about where this shorter sound came from - or map it manually to a different sound event if they wish.
Here is some additional background about each of the new schemes:
Ultimate Extras Glass Sound Scheme
The "Ultimate Extras Glass" sound scheme utilizes the same design language and principles as the default Windows Vista sound scheme, however, this set has an additional glassy ‘edge' that can be heard as a more percussive envelope applied to each of the sounds. From one point of view, the sounds in this set feel like they are made with ‘glass' instruments. The sounds in this set have a sort of clinking glass root with a polished or ‘frosted' haze effect applied to their outer surface - this is intended to be directly analogous to the transparent ‘glassy' window effects that are built-in to the Windows Vista chrome.
Ultimate Extras Pearl Sound Scheme
The Pearl sound scheme further extends the intentionally-subtle design attributes of both the Windows Vista default sound scheme and the Ultimate Extras Glass scheme, with less focus on reverberant, sometimes clinking ‘glassy' sounds in exchange for a richer, milky, more percussive sonic palate. The Pearl sounds are harder and less reflective and reverberant, more like the rich and rounded surface of a pearl in contrast to the fragile resonance of a wine glass. More concretely, the Pearl sounds are cleaner, clearer, and brighter than the ‘Glass' sound scheme.
Both of the new Ultimate Extras sound schemes embody more percussive elements in contrast to the soft edges of default Windows Vista sound scheme and they extend of the existing sound design language established by XP and Windows Vista. Functionally, the percussive elements of these sound schemes may also help users hear Windows events from a greater distance, if that is desired. They are intended to provide an extended personalization option for users who wish to differentiate their Windows Vista experience from the default experience.
Occasionally, people stop me in coffee shops and cafes and ask: did the Robert Fripp sounds make it into Windows Vista? There is a long answer and a short answer. Here is the short: the Windows Vista Startup Sound is the primary "Fripp" appearance in Windows Vista, although many of the new inbox sounds were orchestrated based upon the sound and feel of the hours of Fripp Soundscapes we recorded at our Windows Vista sessions.
For some additional background on the Windows Vista sounds, click here to check out our Windows Vista Sounds Q&A.
If there is interest, I can go deeper in future posts about any of these areas.
- Steve
Written by Chris Flores on June 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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Now all of eBay's "Buy it Now" offers will be eligible for cashback rewards. With eBay's expansive catalog of products, from jewelry to electronics, you'll start to see more cashback ads appearing in our search results. That means more ways for you to save.
You'll see three primary differences between this user experience and other cashback user experiences:
- There's an eBay ad with a cashback gleam (the cashback icon in the image here).
- Instead of going into the Live Search cashback experience, you now go directly to the advertiser's website, which in this case is eBay.
- The cashback gleam follows you throughout your eBay shopping experience. This is good continuity for the consumer and something we want to do more of, but it takes a bit of work on the advertiser side to enable this.
We want to learn from two experiences in the cashback program. Depending on customer and advertiser feedback, we'll make the necessary changes to deliver the best user experience over time.
Indirect cashback experience This is the experience that went live last month. Consumers research a product category on Live Search and then click a Live Search cashback ad to head over to cashback for the best deal. We've had a lot of feedback that we should do a better job integrating our product research capabilities with our cashback experience. So we'll work hard to do that over the next few releases.
Direct-to-merchant cashback experience The other experience we envisioned for cashback would integrate directly with advertisers from the search results page. In this experience, advertiser's ads will appear with a cashback gleam. When shoppers click the gleam in the ad, they head directly to the advertiser's site. Obviously, this streamlines a bit of the purchasing process but requires some custom development on the partner website to enable it. We took this approach with eBay and are exploring it with other advertisers as well.
We're excited to offer consumers more money-saving cashback rewards with eBay and look forward to hearing from you on how best to implement new features and functionality to the cashback experience.
Paul Dillon, Director, Commercial Search
Written by livesearch on June 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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Last month, Window's Internet Explorer launched Carbon Grove, a green campaign designed to mobilize internet users to pursue reductions in their personal carbon footprints. Today, we are excited to announce that the campaign is expanding to France, and in partnership with
American Forest we are taking steps to make the virtual forest a reality through the planting of up to 250,000 real trees in deforested regions across the globe.
Carbon Grove is a carbon footprint reduction reminder service that empowers users to reduce their impact on the environment, and through the use of Windows Internet Explorer 7 with Dynamic Security Protection, users can also help improve the internet environment. Internet Explorer 7 is architected with security features that help defend against malicious software (also known as malware) and better protect against the theft of personal data by fraudulent websites.
By participating in Carbon Grove's campaign, internet users nurture a virtual tree seedling and after six weeks of continued commitment to carbon reducing efforts, Internet Explorer will then sponsor the planting of a tree in a region of need around the world.
To participate in the campaign, users register at www.carbongrove.com and follow the simple steps to plant a virtual tree. Users can then visit their tree once a week and watch it grow. As part of the campaign, Carbon Grove will send weekly reminders to users with updates on their trees' growth and how it has become shelter for virtual animals. The weekly email reminder will feature a link to the user's tree, as well as "green" tips on ways to help the environment in simple but meaningful steps.
Carbon Grove is built on Windows technology and Silverlight, and works with Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8 Beta. If IE7 or IE8 Beta is not already installed on the user's PC, both are available as free downloads. You can download IE7 here and IE8 Beta here. With a Beta version of Internet Explorer 8, users can also take advantage of IE8's new WebSlice feature to monitor their tree's progress no matter where they are browsing.
Microsoft encourages employees, customers and partners to understand and embrace sustainability and learn how to improve the Earth's environment and foster a safer internet ecosystem. To plant your virtual tree and help our eco-system, visit www.carbongrove.com.
Written by Chris Flores on June 10th, 2008 with no comments.
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Unfortunately I was unable to make TechEd this year. Today marks the start of a highly eventful week at our yearly conference for IT professionals. Roughly 10,000 attendees will gather at Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FLA.
This year at TechEd we are launching the new unified Windows Client TechCenter. The new TechCenter is now the official new home to the Springboard Series of online resources (www.microsoft.com/springboard). This is a critical component of the Windows Vista deployment and management story. With Windows Vista we built a number of capabilities into the product itself, as well as number of tools to prepare for implementation. The piece that's been missing is structured guidance along adoption path that helps IT Professionals learn how new features and capabilities can assist common tasks and also how to pre-empt and address key challenges upfront... We're aiming to deliver this final piece through the new Windows Client TechCenter, which shares candid best practices from real-world experiences. For instance, check out Springboard Series articles such as Five Windows Vista adoption "Gotchas" and how to get beyond them. The new site offers a consolidated repository of resources across the adoption lifecycle, new troubleshooting zones and community components.
Exclusive to readers of this blog, I was lucky enough to catch up with our very own Microsoft Technical Fellow, Mark Russinovich, a widely recognized desktop guru in his own right and a major sponsor of this effort, to understand more.
Chris Flores: Some of us know you from your previous work with Sysinternals and the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) what have you been working on more recently?
Mark Russinovich: I spend a lot of time working with the software engineering team on designs and specifications as we evolve Windows. I also continue to build complementary tools to help IT Pros better manage and troubleshoot Windows environments. We release Sysinternals utilities that aren't necessarily tied to the latest product release or service pack like our recent ShellRunas utility for launching programs under different accounts. Our focus here is to help IT professionals solve arising technical issues and that has led me to work on the Springboard Series which I see as a key element for connecting with the needs of desktop specialists.
Chris Flores: So what is behind recent efforts with the new unified Windows Client TechCenter and the Springboard Series?
Mark Russinovich: Well to set some context, in the past it has been a bit of a tax to be interested in and to adopt our technologies. Not because we did not have a lot of content or tools but because very often when you are adopting something new, you don't know what you don't know and it's hard to find what you need in the context of what you are trying to do or where you are in terms of point-in-time tasks, like planning, deploying and managing an OS.
In the case of implementing a new operating system there are lots of questions and issues along the road to getting broadly deployed into production. The new Windows Client TechCenter and Springboard resources help offer more openness and empathy to these real-world challenges - so that we can more proactively help IT Professionals better understand both what they are up against and what's in it for them personally as they go down the technology adoption path.
Chris Flores: I think you just hit on something that really seems central to this effort - empathy -- can you explain what you mean?
Mark Russinovich: First imagine that you personally are in a position where you have to have the answers, and you have to spend your work day and often your weekend looking for them just to support the needs of your organization. 50% of your time is spent trying to keep the organization up and running another 10% of what you do are fixed tasks (backups and reports) but a good portion of your day goes on random stuff - say 40% on break/fix, helpdesk stuff etc. Well that's what desktop IT Professionals often have to go through and the last thing that you would want is for it to be difficult to get the answers you need or even for your needs not to be acknowledged when you try to search for solutions to your pains.
With that in mind, our goal here was to offer a more straight-forward and practical way of looking at things and give them a managed experience. Whether you are a Windows XP user today deciding whether or not to migrate or already on the path to Windows Vista, we offer one destination where you are able to proactively see recommended Springboard Series resources regardless of what OS your are managing and where you might be on the deployment or management trajectory. The new site also lets you connect with Microsoft and community subject matter experts and get answers and advice more easily on known challenges and the ones that you encounter. In this case, you'll see that we have added new task zones on Application Compatibility - where you can see more dynamic information on the most recent compatible third-party applications as well as tips and tricks and guidance on Performance and Hardware Requirements; Imaging and Security.
Chris Flores: Seems like there are new content assets too, such as the Springboard Virtual Round Table on Windows Vista Adoption where you took on some tough questions. How does that fit in?
Mark Russinovich: It's another way of connecting with the IT Pro community in a real way and to be proactive in addressing their questions and challenges. These are live virtual interactive events, broadcast over the Internet. Think of "Meet the Press for IT Pros". We take live email questions and answer them via an expert panel comprising IT Pro peers in the industry. We try to do these quarterly, the next one we are running is called "Let's talk Windows Vista security" on June 18th.
Chris Flores: Why are you personally so passionate about the community connection?
Mark Russinovich: It's the community feedback, open discussions and connection to the people doing the real work that helps keep me grounded and learn where we can do better in marketing, support, and in the product itself.
Chris Flores: Thanks Mark. Good luck with your sessions at TechEd and thank you for spending the time today.
Mark Russinovich: Thanks, sorry you weren't able to make it to Tech Ed this year. It's going to be a great event.
Written by Chris Flores on June 9th, 2008 with no comments.
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This one is for all you IT professionals out there. A lot of you are probably having discussions inside your company about when to deploy Windows Vista, or you've deployed it and want to know which of the new capabilities can have the biggest impact on your business.
To help in your evaluations we've released a new white paper, The Business Value of Windows Vista: Five Reasons to Deploy Now. (Download the XPS or PDF.) This document summarizes the top enterprise features, latest customer case studies, and research on the capabilities of Windows Vista all in one place.
What are the top 5 reasons? Here's a peek at what's inside the doc:
- 1. Improves the Security of PCs and Confidential Data. Windows Vista Enterprise had 20% fewer security vulnerabilities than Windows XP SP2 did in 2007-and it includes BitLocker Drive Encryption to help protect your confidential data.
- 2. Unlocks the Potential of Today's Mobile PCs. Windows Mobility Center helps users quickly access key mobility settings all in one place and research shows that Windows Vista can help customers save as much as $251 per mobile PC, per year.
- 3. Makes You and Your People More Productive. Find the information you need on your computer and reduce time spent searching for information by up to 42%.
- 4. Speeds ROI with Rapid Deployment and Migration. New imaging technologies and free deployment tools make the process of deploying Windows Vista easier than with any previous version.
- 5. Reduces Support and Management Costs. The costs saving can come from multiple places including reduced help desk calls, less time spent on image maintenance, or a lower energy bill.
This document is designed for you to use and share with others in your organization that may have questions about Windows Vista. You can also find this whitepaper and others on the Windows Vista Enterprise Web site.
Written by Chris Flores on June 4th, 2008 with no comments.
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One of the most exciting developments we've had in the last year was the success of our inaugural Search and Give program where your queries helped to raise more than $250,000 for local schools and non-profits. Over the course of the year the program generated cash donations for more than 20,000 organizations ranging from schools to non-profits such as Doctors Without Borders and ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Today we've launched the latest version of the program that includes a new, easy-to-use design with enhanced features and more flexible donation capabilities.
Here's how it works
By signing up at http://www.searchandgive.com/, consumers can start donating one cent per search to more than 100,000 schools and 900,000 non-profit organizations worldwide every time they use the Live Search to find whatever interests them. People can also convert tickets they've earned playing games on Microsoft's Live Search Club, at http://www.club.live.com/, into donations for those same schools or charities.
What's new
- More money donated You can earn one cent per search for your designated charity by just looking for things online — up to 500 searches per person per month.
- More than 1 million organizations We've grown our list of eligible organizations to more than one million. We've also made it easier to find them with a new UI that allows for faster lookup by name or non-profit ID number.
- Watch your community grow Track your donations, total donations, and total number of contributors for your chosen organization.
- Tell a friend Search and Give brings communities together around causes that are important to them. People can now send instant emails to friends and family from within the tool letting them know how they too can make a difference.
We need your help
This program is powered by people through word-of-mouth or viral distribution. We're asking for your help to make this program an even greater success by sharing this information with your friends and family and recruiting them to start searching at http://www.searchandgive.com. If one person can earn $60 per year for their favorite charity just by searching the Web with Search and Give, imagine the power of 10 people = $600 per year; imagine the power of 25 people = $1,500 per year; imagine the power of 100 people = $6000 per year. Together, we can make every search count.
In the end, we hope this program will grow exponentially so we can redistribute more of the dollars coming into search to the local schools and charities that YOU are passionate about supporting. We hope you enjoy the new features and stay tuned as we start showcasing some of the best "Search and Give" campaigns you all have created!
Christine Andrews, Product Manager, Search and Give
Written by livesearch on June 4th, 2008 with no comments.
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We at Live Search are pleased to announce another collaboration with Yahoo and Google aimed at making webmasters' lives easier. Webmasters have long used the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to control how search engines access and display their content. The REP offers an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines, and is currently used by millions of publishers worldwide.
Over the past few years, we have been working with Yahoo and Google to agree on common ways for webmasters to communicate with search engines. Our previous efforts include support for the Sitemaps protocol (see autodiscovery directive and cross-host sitemap submissions for more info). While most search engines already comply with the REP, this is the first time the three major search engines have come together to detail how we actually implement the protocol. This effort makes it easier for webmasters to know how REP directives will be handled by search providers.
You can view the details of how we implement the REP at Documentation for the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
If you are a publisher with feedback or suggestions for future enhancements to the REP, feel free to contact me at nbuggia@microsoft.com. We value your feedback as we continue to evolve Live Search.
Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster team
Written by livesearch on June 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
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