Category Archives: cloud computing

amazon, cloud computing

Amazon AWS and the continuing trend towards cloud services. Desktops next?

1 Comment

It was a lightbulb moment. The problem:  how to migrate a document store from one Office 365 (hosted SharePoint) instance to another. Copy it all out and copy it back in, obviously, but that is painful over ADSL (which is all I had at my disposal) since the “asynchronous” part of ADSL means slow uploads; and download from Office 365 was not that fast either.

Solution: use an Azure virtual machine. VM hosted by Microsoft, SharePoint hosted by Microsoft, result – a fast connection between the two. I ran up the VM in a few minutes using Microsoft’s nice Azure portal, used Remote Desktop to connect, and copied the documents out and back in no time.

There is a general point here. If you are contemplating cloud-hosted VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), there is huge advantage in having the server applications and data close to the VDI instances. All you then need is a connection good enough to work on that remote desktop, which is relatively lightweight. If the cloud vendor is doing its job, the internal connections in that cloud should be fast. In addition, from the client’s perspective, most of the data is download, transferring the screen image to the client, rather than upload, transmitting mouse and keyboard interactions, so that is a good use case for ADSL.

The further implication is that the more you use cloud services, the more attractive hosted desktops become. Desktops are expensive to manage, which is why I would expect a service like Amazon Workspaces, hosted Windows desktops as a service, to find a ready market – even at $600 per year for a desktop with Office Professional 2010 preinstalled, or $420 per year if you install and license Office yourself, or use Open Office or some other alternative.

Workspaces are currently in limited preview, which means a closed beta, but there are hints that a public beta is coming soon.

Adopting this kind of setup means a massive dependency on Amazon of course, which is a concern if you worry about that kind of thing (and I think you should); but how much business is now dependent on one of the major cloud providers (I tend to think of Amazon, Microsoft and Google as the top three) already?

Thinking back to my Office 365 example, it also seems to me that Microsoft will make a serious play for cloud VDI in the not too distant future, since it makes so much sense. The problem for Microsoft is further cannibalisation of its on-premise business, and further disruption for Microsoft partners, but if the alternative is giving away business to Amazon, it has little choice.

I was at an Amazon Web Services briefing today and asked whether we might see an Office 365-like package from AWS in future. Unlikely, I was told; but many customers do use AWS for hosting the likes of Exchange and SharePoint.

The really clever thing for Amazon would be a package that looked like Office 365, but using either open source or internally developed applications that removed the need to pay license fees to Microsoft.

What else is new from AWS? I have no exclusives to share, since Amazon has a policy of never pre-announcing new features or services. There were a few statistics, one of which is that Redshift, hosted data warehousing, is Amazon’s fastest-growing product.

Amazon also talked about Kinesis, which lets you analyse streams of data in a 24-hour window. For example, if you wanted to analyse the output from thousands of sensors (say,weather) but do not need to store the data, you can use Kinesis. If you do want to store the data, you can integrate with Redshift or DynamoDb, two of Amazon’s database services.

The company also talked up its Relational Database Service (RDS), where you purchase a managed database service which can currently be MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. Amazon handles all the infrastructure management so you only need worry about your data and applications.

RSD pricing ranges start from $25 a month for MySQL, to $514 a month for SQL Server Standard (which is actually more expensive than Oracle at $223 per month for the same instance size). Higher capacity instances cost more of course. SQL Server Web edition comes down below Oracle at $194 per month, but I was surprised to see how high the SQL Server costs are. Note that these prices include all the CALs (Client Access Licenses). The prices are actually per hour, eg $0.715 for SQL Server Standard, so you could save money if your business can turn off or reduce the service out of working hours, for example.

How much premium does Amazon charge for its managed RDS versus what you would pay for equivalent capacity in a VM that you manage yourself? I asked this question but did not receive a meaningful reply; you need to do your own homework.

My reflection on this is that just as supermarkets make more money from pre-packaged ready meals than from basic groceries, so too the cloud providers can profit by bundling management and applications into their products rather than offering only basic infrastructure services. You still have the choice; but database admin costs money too.

Finally, we took a quick look at AppStream, which is a proprietary protocol, SDK and service for multimedia applications. You write applications such as games that render video on the server and stream it efficiently to the client, which could be a smartphone or low-power tablet. In this case again, you are taking a total dependency on Amazon to enable your application to run.

If you are interested in AWS, look out for a summit near you. There is one in London on 30th April. Or go to the Reinvent conference in Las Vegas in November.

My overall reflection is that the momentum behind AWS and its pace of innovation is impressive; yet it also seems to me that rivals like Microsoft and Google are becoming more effective. The cloud computing market is such that there is room for all to grow.

cloud computing, facebook, google, professional

Privacy and online data sharing is a journey into the unknown: report from QCon London

I’m at QCon London, an annual developer conference which is among my favourites thanks to its vendor-neutral content.

One session which stood out for me was from Robin Wilton, Director for Identity and Privacy at the Internet Society, who spoke on “Understanding and managing your Digital Footprint”. I should report dissatisfaction, in that we only skated the surface of “understanding” and got nowhere close to “managing”. I will give him a pass though, for his eloquent refutation of the common assumption that privacy is unimportant if you are doing nothing wrong. If you have nothing to hide you are not a social being, countered Wilton, explaining that humans interact by choosing what to reveal about themselves. Loss of privacy leads to loss of other rights.

image

In what struck me as a bleak talk, Wilton described the bargain we make in using online services (our data in exchange for utility) and explained our difficulty in assessing the risks of what we share online and even offline (such as via cameras, loyalty cards and so on). Since the risks are remote in time and place, we cannot evaluate them. We have no control over what we share beyond “first disclosure”. The recipients of our data do not necessarily serve our interests, but rather their own. Paying for a service is no guarantee of data protection. We lack the means to separate work and personal data; you set up a LinkedIn account for business, but then your personal friends find it and ask to be contacts.

Lest we underestimate the amount of data held on us by entities such as Facebook and Google, Wilton reminded us of Max Schrems, who made a Subject Access Request to Facebook and received 1200 pages of data.

When it came to managing our digital footprint though, Wilton had little to offer beyond vague encouragement to increase awareness and take care out there.

Speaking to Wilton after the talk, I suggested an analogy with climate change or pollution, on the basis that we know we are not doing it right, but are incapable of correcting it and can only work towards mitigation of whatever known and unknown problems we are creating for ourselves.

Another issue is that our data is held by large commercial entities with strong lobbying teams and there is little chance of effective legislation to control them; instead we get futility like the EU cookie legislation.

There is another side to this, which Wilton did not bring out, concerning the benefit to us of sharing our data both on a micro level (we get Google Now) or aggregated (we may cure diseases). This is arguably the next revolution in personal computing; or put another way, maybe the bargain is to our advantage after all.

That said, I do not believe we have enough evidence to make this judgment and much depends on how trustworthy those big commercial entities prove to be in the long term.

Good to see this discussed at Qcon, despite a relatively small attendance at Wilton’s talk.

.net, azure, cloud computing, microsoft, sharepoint

New features in Windows Azure, including web site backup, .NET mobile services

Microsoft has announced new features in Windows Azure, its cloud platform, described by VP Scott Guthrie on his blog.

Aside: I agree with this comment to his post:

Thank you Scott for update. I wish dozens of MS folks and MS representatives would have a clue about Azure roadmap to help businesses plan their release schedules / migration plans. Till that happens, this blog will remain the main source of updates and a hint of roadmap.

The changes are significant. ExpressRoute offers connectivity to Azure without going through the public internet. Currently you have to use an Equinix datacentre, Level 3 cloud connect, or an AT&T MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) VPN. For enterprises that can meet the requirements and who are wary about data passing through the internet, or who want better connectivity, it is an interesting option.

Next up is backup and restore for Azure web sites. Azure web sites are a way of deploying web applications, ranging from free to multi-instance with automatic scaling. You need at least a Standard site for serious use, as I explained here.

Now you can set up scheduled backup for both the web site and a supporting database. The feature is in preview but you can try it now using the Azure web management portal.

image

I noticed a couple of things. One is that the storage account used must be in the same subscription as the web site. I also spotted this warning:

image

which states that “frequent backups can increase you database costs by up to 100%”. Still, it is a handy feature.

Azure mobile services, designed to supply data to mobile apps, has been extended to support .NET code (previously you had to use Javascript). If you download the code, notes Guthrie, you find that it is  “simply an ASP.NET Web API project with additional Mobile Service NuGet packages included.”

Mobile Services also have new support for notification hubs and for PhoneGap (a way of building mobile apps using HTML and JavaScript).

Another feature that caught my eye is easy linking of third-party apps to Azure Active Directory (which is also used by Office 365). For example, if you are struggling with SharePoint and its poor clients for Windows, iOS and Android, you might consider using Dropbox for business instead. Now you can integrate Dropbox for Business with your Office 365 user directory by selecting  it from the Azure management portal.

image

cloud computing, google, microsoft

Microsoft Office 365 and the battle for simplicity

6 Comments

Last week I reviewed a Google Chromebook. Next, I assisted a small business move from Office 365 to Office 365 – yes, Microsoft’s software as a service (SaaS) offering is divided into plans, such that if you want to move from certain plans to certain other plans you have to start again with a new account and copy your data across as best you can, which seems contrary to the smooth experience the cloud is meant to offer. The experience prompts some reflections.

image

Do not move between Office 365 plans then, you might argue; but this is not the only complication with Office 365. There are two reasons for its complexity:

1. Although it is SaaS, Office 365 uses a hybrid model in that users are expected to run desktop Office as well as having an Office 365 account. This is a strength in that Word, Outlook and especially Excel are mature and capable products which many users (myself included) find more productive than equivalent browser-based apps, though familiarity is a factor in this. It is also a weakness, since you have a traditional desktop installation working alongside cloud services. Further, if your PC is stolen, you cannot just pick up another PC, log in, and carry on where you left off. You need to install Office first.

Contrast this to the Chromebook, which adopts a pure cloud model. Technically, many browser apps do run locally, in that JavaScript, Flash applets or Google’s native client executes on your local machine just like Office. This is hidden from the user though, and any installations are tucked away in temporary internet files. If you sign into Chrome on another computer, your settings,  bookmarks, history, passwords and browser extensions are synched automatically.

Microsoft has made great strides with its Office installer. Office 2013 installs in most cases using application virtualisation, based on Microsoft’s App-V technology, which means it runs in an isolated environment and is not prone to problems like dynamic library version conflicts or registry errors. The application streaming is also smart enough to let you run applications before they are fully downloaded, by downloading the essential features first and finishing off in the background. The speed with which you can get started with desktop Office, when downloaded as part of an Office 365 subscription, is impressive.

Nevertheless, Microsoft has not eliminated all the issues with desktop software. Outlook was tricky to migrate, for example, in the move with which I assisted. You have to go to the Mail applet in Control Panel, delete the Outlook profile, and create a new one. If you are not careful you can get a scenario where Outlook tries to start up, pauses for a while, and finally announces “Cannot open the Outlook window” and quits. Then you need a web search or a Windows expert to help you out. This kind of experience is less likely with a Chromebook or any pure cloud model where you simply log onto your cloud service.

The worst example of desktop complexity spoiling cloud simplicity is the SharePoint client confusingly called SkyDrive Pro. It is meant to synch SharePoint documents with your local computer but does not work reliably, and trying to fix it involves fiddly instructions to clear your cache, and subsequent re-download of lots of data (I recommend that you do not use SkyDrive Pro).

2. Office 365 is based on applications which were originally built to be managed by system administrators. The core of it is Exchange and SharePoint, both of which come with a myriad of dependencies and configuration options. In their Office 365 guise, these complications are somewhat hidden, and Microsoft has wrapped them with a decent web user interface, both for end users and Office 365 administrators. Nevertheless, the complexity remains, and there is not much in on-premise Exchange that is not also available in Office 365, particularly if you are willing to log on with PowerShell.

This is not a bad thing as such. For businesses with sophisticated Exchange setups it is a good thing, since the features they need are available in Office 365, and the tools with which to configure it are familiar.

However, it does mean that administering Office 365 is more demanding than perhaps it would have been if designed from the ground up as a cloud application. There are also odd limitations and overlapping features. Let’s say you want to have contacts shared between multiple users. Do you use a SharePoint list, or an Exchange public folder? If you use a public folder, why is it that a top-level public folder can only contain mail items whereas a sub-folder can contain contacts, tasks or calendar items? And if you use an Exchange public folder, don’t forget to go into Outlook and add it to public folder favorites, which enables magic like offline access, and to check the option to “Show as an Outlook address book” so you can select email addresses from it when sending an email – all knowledge which comes from experience of Exchange and Outlook, and which is not intuitive or obvious.

The battle of simplicity versus productivity and features

Considering how Office 365 was created, and Microsoft’s desktop heritage, the progress Microsoft has made in wrestling it into a comprehensive and relatively low-maintenance cloud platform is impressive; but more needs to be done before it comes close to Google’s offering in terms of ease of use and freedom from the hassles of maintaining PCs. Microsoft’s battle is to achieve Google-like simplicity of use but without losing the productivity and features which users value.

The question on Google’s side is how quickly it can offer enough of the features for which users and administrators value Microsoft’s platform to tempt more businesses to make the transition. That means the ability to work on documents and spreadsheets in Google’s browser apps without missing Word and Excel, as well as archiving, compliance and management features to match Exchange.

Many are already happy to work in Google apps, of course. I would be interested to hear from others what keeps them on Microsoft’s platform, or alternatively, why they have found Google (or another cloud provider) a satisfactory alternative.

cloud computing, microsoft

Notes from the field: manually migrating between Office 365 plans

3 Comments

Microsoft’s Office 365, which provides hosted Exchange, SharePoint and other services, comes in a variety of flavours, some of which include a license to run desktop Office. In some cases it is even possible to mix and match plans. For example, you can have some of your users on Enterprise 1 (E1) (no desktop Office) and some on Enterprise 3 (E3) (includes desktop Office). It gets more awkward though if you want to switch between “families”: the small business family and the Enterprise family. A table here sets out which plans are eligible for switching.

But what if you do want to switch between families, for example to take advantage of the good value Office 365 Midsize Business, which gets you hosted services and desktop office for £9.80 or $15.00 per user/month, compared to E3 which costs £15.00 or $20.00 per user/month? There are some extra features in E3, like Exchange archiving and legal hold, but the cost saving is substantial.

The answer is that you have to switch manually. Microsoft helpfully remarks:

Switching plans manually involves purchasing a new plan, reassigning the licenses, and then cancelling your old plan … If you have a custom domain, you’ll have to remove it from Office 365 and then add it again after you’ve switched plans. This will require some downtime of your services. If you’re switching to a plan in a different service family, you’ll need to back up all of your company’s information before switching plans.

Put another way, you are pretty much on your own. In Active Directory terms (Microsoft’s directory service), it means a new directory and therefore a new cloud identity for all your users. Any other services linked to that directory, such as Intune for PC and device management, will also need replacing.

I helped a small business make this change, so here are a few notes from the field.

The first step is to create the new Office 365 site. You can use a trial and purchase licenses later. It cannot have the name as the old site, for obvious reasons. Every Office 365 is part of the onmicrosoft.com domain. If your old site is mydomain.onmicrosoft.com, you can call the new site mydomain1.onmicrosoft.com.

These onmicrosoft.com subdomains are useful, since they are not affected when you move the custom domain (eg mydomain.com) from one site to the other. You can still use the old onmicrosoft.com domain to access the old site.

Then set up the users. In this case the business is so small it can easily be done manually.

1. Migrating SharePoint

Moving a SharePoint document store from site to another is painful if you cannot do what you would normally do, that is, backup the content database and reattach to a different SharePoint site. Microsoft does not provide any bulk export feature, though you can write your own code. There are third-party migration tools like Sharegate which probably works fine, but for a very small business it is not cheap, starting at $995 for a one-year subscription to the “Lite” version.

I found a quick and dirty solution using an Azure virtual machine. Create an Azure VM running Server 2012 R2, log in using Remote Desktop and install the Desktop Experience. Then navigate to the old SharePoint site, add sites to trusted sites as necessary, and “Open in Explorer” to use WebDAV and view the documents in Windows Explorer. Copy all the documents to a local directory. Then connect to the new site and do the same in reverse.

Why Azure? The idea is to benefit from fast connectivity between Office 365 and Windows Azure. This worked well and the documents copied much more quickly than I could achieve when connecting from my own network.

You do lose document history using this technique. Further, all documents will now be “last modified” on the date the copy is made.

Timing is a problem. In order to minimise downtime, you want users to be able to keep working on the old site for as long as possible. However, during this time they might add or edit documents in SharePoint. I did two passes, once before the cut-off point to get the bulk of them copied, and once after, using Search in Explorer to identify the documents added or changed.

2. Migrating Exchange

Exchange migration is also tricky. Office 365 includes Exchange migration tools but they are designed for moves on-premise to Office 365, not for moving between families. It may be possible to make them work, though this official advice is not promising:

Since they are different service family, and we cannot use such as  Cutover migration to achieve this goal, we just can use export and import pst. Moreover, we cannot parallel 2 user accounts which have the same domain in both 2 tenants, so the service may be impacted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This support person is suggesting using Outlook to move a mailbox by exporting and importing data. It is an ugly procedure, especially if you are trying to do this without involving the users much. You would have to impersonate each user, connect in Outlook, download the entire mailbox, export it, and then connect Outlook to the new mailbox and import.

I used a third-part cloud service, MigrationWiz, instead. This connects to each hosted Exchange using either impersonation (an Exchange feature which lets a user connect to a mailbox as if they were the mailbox owner) or a user with full control permission on all mailboxes, and copies all the items across.

Unlike Sharegate, MigrationWiz is priced per mailbox, at $11.99 each for a multi-pass license. This make it affordable for a business of any size.

I found MigrationWiz excellent. It was not entirely trouble-free and I got some time-out errors on my first attempt, but these may well be the fault of Office 365 itself. The user interface is good with plentiful statistics on how your migration is going. It did not create any duplicate items.

The worst thing about MigrationWiz is that you have to give your mailbox administrator credentials to a third-party. In some cases that might rule it out; but the company says:

Mailbox credentials are stored using AES encryption. Once credentials are submitted by either the administrator or end-user, the credentials cannot be retrieved or seen. The credentials are immediately purged from the system once you delete the corresponding configuration to which it is associated.

The company is based on Microsoft’s doorstep in Kirkland, Washington, and given how detrimental a security breach would be to the company’s reputation I figured that the risk is small.

3. Moving the domain

How do you move your company domain from one Office 365 account to another? MigrationWiz has a help document on this which is mostly helpful. You do have to accept some email downtime. I did what MigrationWiz suggests, which is to point the MX records for the custom domain at an unreachable site, temporarily. You can do this in the middle of the night or at the weekend to minimise the inconvenience.

However, I did not like this advice:

Delete all users, contacts and groups from the source Office 365 account.  This step is important to ensure that no object reference the domain.  Just removing the email address from objects is not sufficient.

I am cautious and wanted to keep the old site intact with its mailboxes until the business says it is confident that everything has been transferred successfully. Therefore I tried doing this the way Microsoft suggests:

  • Remove all references to the custom domain from the old site. This includes making sure it is not the default domain, and removing any email addresses which reference it, not only from users, but also from mail-enabled groups or resources in Exchange. If you have a public web site using the custom domain, remove it from there as well.
  • Remove the custom domain from the old site.
  • Add the custom domain to the new site, verify it, and amend the DNS records as needed.

I was successful and moved the custom domain without having to delete the old user accounts.

4. Reconfiguring Outlook

What happens when users now run Outlook? Might Outlook prompt for the new password (presuming you changed user passwords), connect to the new site, and upload the contents of its old mailbox to the new mailbox, duplicating the work of MigrationWiz and leaving users with two of everything?

Apparently it does not do this, though my recommendation is to delete the old Outlook profile (mail applet in control panel) and create a new one before attempting to connect to the new account. Outlook will have to re-download the mailbox, though it is smart about downloading new and recent emails first.

5. Migrating Intune

If you also use Intune, you have to set up a new Intune account linked to the new Office 365 domain (even if the custom domain is the same), and remove PCs from the old Intune account. You do this by “retiring” them in the Intune portal. This is meant to set up a scheduled task on the client PCs which removes the Intune client. Then you can join the client PC to the new Intune account by running the Intune client setup from the Intune portal.

If this does not work, and the client PC remains stubbornly enrolled to the old Intune account, you can use this procedure:

  1. Open an admin command prompt
  2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\OnlineManagement\Common
  3. Run "ProvisioningUtil /UninstallAgents /WindowsIntune"

It will create a scheduled task and shortly uninstall all the agents. (be patient)

For more information on removing the Intune client, see http://douwevanderuit.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/removing-windows-intune-client/.

There is a downside to this. Imagine you have used Intune to suppress some update that breaks something on your client PCs. When the Intune client is removed, the PC will revert to using Microsoft Update until it is re-enrolled in the new Intune. During that time it may install the update you were trying to suppress.

Note:

On one machine we got this error when reinstalling the Intune client:

image

“The software cannot be installed. The account certificate must be in the same folder as the installer, or the user account must already be authorized to use Windows Intune”

My guess is that the new Intune setup is fining the old Intune account certificate and therefore failing. The fix is to download the setup manually from the Intune Admin portal. This setup is a zip which includes the account certificate (the .exe download is different and does not include the certificate – you must use the zip setup). This setup ran successfully and rejoined the machine to Intune.

6. Why is this necessary?

Everything worked and while it is not entirely pain-free, with relatively little inconvenience for the users.

However, how difficult would it be for Microsoft to adapt its “switch plans” wizard to accommodate this kind of switch, subject to the proviso that anything which depends on a feature that does not exist in the target plan would not be migrated?

In fact, I am not sure why it is necessary to have so many plans at all. Why not have it so that you can mix and match licenses from any plan?

cloud computing, microsoft

Reflecting on Microsoft’s choice of Satya Nadella as new CEO

Microsoft has announced it’s new CEO at last: Satya Nadella, formerly in charge of Cloud and Enterprise (in other words, the server part of Microsoft’s business).

image

The press release also states that co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates will be a little more active:

Microsoft also announced that Bill Gates, previously Chairman of the Board of Directors, will assume a new role on the Board as Founder and Technology Advisor, and will devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction.

Microsoft is a curious company, perceived as failing due to the rapid decline in PC sales and failure to break through in mobile devices, yet announcing record revenue. What is significant about this appointment?

First, it is internal. That means the board decided that the risk of appointing an outsider who might shake up the company and change its focus was too great. I am inclined to agree.

Second, Microsoft is replacing a marketing guy (Ballmer) with a technical guy. “The best code is poetry,” he says in his bio. This also is a smart move. The key influencers in the IT industry – developers, IT admins, geeks – relate best to executives who also have a technical background.

Third, it is building on success. Microsoft has struggled with Windows client and devices, but has charged ahead in server and is progressing fast in cloud, both Azure and Office 365. That is in part a credit to Nadella.

I have met Nadella on several occasions; he is less shouty than Ballmer and will likely come over better in most public appearances. I had an opportunity to put a few questions at the launch of Visual Studio 2012, shortly before the release of Windows 8, and wrote this up for the Register. I asked him, “Is Windows so much weighed down by legacy and the need to support existing applications that Microsoft cannot advance its platform?” His answers demonstrate a clear understanding of the legacy problem that still entraps Microsoft: too much change, and you lose the confidence of existing users; too little change, and your platform races towards irrelevance.

Nadella’s appointment may be perceived as cautious, on the grounds that as an insider he is less likely to introduce a radical chance of direction. There is much nonsense talked about Microsoft though, and critics can be self-contradictory, seeing changes made to Windows as negative while at the same time stating that Microsoft has done too little to keep pace with Apple and Google in devices. The Ballmer and Sinofsky era was more one of too much change than too little, and the challenge now is make those changes work, rather than to tip them out and start again, so a certain amount of caution is no bad thing.

cloud computing, microsoft

OneDrive, SkyDrive, whatever: Microsoft needs to make it better – especially in Office 365

This week brought the news that SkyDrive is to be renamed OneDrive:

For current users of either SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro, you’re all set. The service will continue to operate as you expect and all of your content will be available on OneDrive and OneDrive for Business respectively as the new name is rolled out across the portfolio.

I have no strong views on whether OneDrive or SkyDrive is a better name (the reason for the change was a legal challenge from the UK’s BSkyB).

I do have views on SkyDrive OneDrive though.

First, it is confusing that OneDrive and OneDrive for Business share the same name. I have been told by Microsoft that they are completely different platforms. OneDrive is the consumer offering, and OneDrive for Business is hosted SharePoint in Office 365. It is this paid offering that interests me most in a business context.

SharePoint is, well, SharePoint, and it seems fairly solid even though it is slow and over-complex. The Office Web Apps are rather good. The client integration is substandard though. A few specifics:

Yesterday I assisted a small business which has upgraded to full-fat Office 365, complete with subscription to the Office 2013 Windows applications. We set up the team site and created a folder, and used the Open in Explorer feature for convenient access in Windows. Next, run Word, type a new document, choose Save As, and attempt to save to that folder.

Word thought for a long time, then popped up a password dialog (Microsoft seems to love these password dialogs, which pop up from time to time no matter how many times you check Remember Me). Entered the correct credentials, it thought for a bit then prompted again, this time with a CAPTCHA added as a further annoyance. Eventually we hit cancel out of frustration, and lo, the document was saved correctly after all.

Another time and it might work perfectly, but I have seen too many of these kinds of problems to believe that it was a one-off.

Microsoft offers another option, which is called SkyDrive OneDrive Pro. This is our old friend Groove, also once known as Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010, but now revamped to integrate with Explorer. This guy is a sync engine, whereas “Open in Explorer” uses WebDAV.S

Synchronisation has its place, especially if you want to work offline, but unfortunately SkyDrive Pro is just not reliable. All the businesses I know that have attempted to use it in anger, gave up. They get endless upload errors that are hard to resolve, from the notorious Office Upload Center. The recommended fix is to “clear the cache”, ie wipe and start again, with no clarity about whether work may be lost. Avoid.

One of the odd things is that there seems to be a sync element even if you are NOT using SkyDrive Pro. The Upload Center manages a local cache. Potentially that could be a good thing, if it meant fast document saving and seamless online/offline use. Instead though, Microsoft seems to have implemented it for the worst of every world. You get long delays and sign-in problems when saving, sometimes, as well as cache issues like apparently successful saves followed by upload failures.

OK, let’s use an iPad instead. There is an app called SkyDrive Pro which lets you access your Office 365 documents. It is more or less OK unless you want to share a document – one of the the main reasons to use a cloud service. There is no way to access a folder someone else has shared in SkyDrive Pro on an iPad, nor can you access the Team Site which is designed for sharing documents in Office 365. Is Microsoft serious about supporting iPad users?

Office 365 is strategic for Microsoft, and SharePoint is its most important feature after Exchange. The customers are there; but with so many frustrations in trying to use Office 365 SharePoint clients other than the browser, it will not be surprising if many of them turn to other solutions.

cloud computing, microsoft, windows

Microsoft financials: record revenue, consumer sales declining in drift towards Enterprise

2 Comments

Microsoft has announced record revenue for its second financial quarter, October-December 2013. Revenue was bumped up by the launch of Xbox One (3.9 million sold) and new Surface hardware. The real stars though were the server products:

  • SQL Server continued to gain market share with revenue growing double-digits.

  • System Center showed continued strength with double-digit revenue growth.

  • Commercial cloud services revenue more than doubled.

  • Office 365 commercial seats and Azure customers both grew triple-digits.

says the press release.

Another plus point is Bing, which Microsoft says now has 18.2% market share in the USA. Search advertising revenue is up 34%.

It is not all good news. While Microsoft is doing fine in server and cloud, the consumer market is not going well, leaving aside the expected boost from a new Xbox launch:

  • Windows OEM non-pro revenue down 20% year on year (that’s consumer PCs)
  • Office consumer revenue down 24% year on year – partly attributed to the shift towards subscription sales of Office 365 Home Premium

As usual, I have put the results into a quick table for easier viewing:

Quarter ending December 31st 2013 vs quarter ending December 31st 2012, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Gross margin Change
Devices and Consumer Licensing 5384 -319 4978 -153
Devices and Consumer Hardware 4729 +1921 411 -351
Devices and Consumer Other 1793 -206 431 -455
Commercial Licensing 10888 +753 10077 +751
Commercial Other 1780 +391 415 +199

The categories are opaque so here is a quick summary:

Devices and Consumer Licensing: non-volume and non-subscription licensing of Windows, Office, Windows Phone, and “ related patent licensing; and certain other patent licensing revenue” – all those Android royalties?

Devices and Consumer Hardware: the Xbox 360, Xbox Live subscriptions, Surface, and Microsoft PC accessories.

Devices and Consumer Other: Resale, including Windows Store, Xbox Live transactions (other than subscriptions), Windows Phone Marketplace; search advertising; display advertising; Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions; Microsoft Studios (games), retail stores.

Commercial Licensing: server products, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and Windows Embedded; volume licensing of Windows, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync; Microsoft Dynamics business solutions, excluding Dynamics CRM Online; Skype.

Commercial Other: Enterprise Services, including support and consulting; Office 365 (excluding Office 365 Home Premium), other Microsoft Office online offerings, and Dynamics CRM Online; Windows Azure.

Here is what is notable. Looking at these figures, Microsoft’s cash cow is obvious: licensing server products, Windows and Office to businesses, which is profitable almost to the point of disgrace: gross margin $million 10,077 on sales of $million 10,888. Microsoft breaks this down a little. Hyper-V has gained 5 points of share, it says, and Windows volume licensing is up 10%.

Cloud (Office 365, Azure, Dynamics CRM online) may be growing strongly, but it is a sideshow relative to the on-premises licensing.

How do we reconcile yet another bumper quarter with the Microsoft/Windows is dead meme? The answer is that it is not dead yet, but the shift away from the consumer market and the deep dependency on on-premises licensing are long-term concerns. Microsoft remains vulnerable to disruption from cheap and easy to maintain clients like Google’s Chromebook, tied to non-Microsoft cloud services.

Nevertheless, these figures do show that, for the moment at least, Microsoft can continue to thrive despite the declining PC market, more so that most of its hardware partners.

Postscript: Microsoft’s segments disguise the reality of its gross margins. The cost of “licensing” is small but it is obvious from its figures that Microsoft is not including all the costs of creating and maintaining the products being licensed. If we look at the figures from a year ago, for example, Microsoft reported a gross margin of $million 2121 on revenue of $million 5186 for Server and Tools. That information is no longer provided and as far as I can tell, we can only guess at the cost per segment of its software products . However, looking at the income statements, you can see that overall Microsoft spent $million 2748 on Research and Development, $million 4283 on Sales and Marketing, and $million 1235 on General and administrative in the quarter.

android, apple, cloud computing, facebook, google, microsoft

Reflecting on 2013: the year of not the PC, no privacy, and the Internet of Things

In last year’s review I wrote “Android up, Apple down, Microsoft so near, so far”. Same again? The headline still rings true, though I would not write “Apple down” today. Android ended Apple’s chance of world domination in mobile, but the company continues to thrive. In some markets Apple is almost the only company that matters. Earlier this month I interviewed Gregor Lawson, the co-founder of Morphsuits, for the Guardian web site. Lawson told me about the company’s mobile app, which he regards as strategically important; it is a free app used for marketing. I did not have space to include this snippet, when I asked him whether he had plans to support Windows Phone alongside Apple iOS and Google Android:

“Oh no. We could almost get away without doing Android. For the business that we track, we have about 80% iOS.”

Simple market share figures do not tell you that. It is a matter of context.

So what did happen in 2013? Here are some headlines.

The year of not the PC

You can safely predict that 2014 will be another year of “The PC is dead” “Oh no it isn’t” exchanges, providing technical commentators with an enduring topic. The PC is not dead; it runs most businesses, it is still the best tool for Office-style productivity, it is an excellent games machine, and a fine open platform for running whatever you want. Its decline is unmistakeable though; for people who can do most of what they need on a tablet, a tablet is a better choice, removing many of the hassles associated with PC ownership and offering portability that a laptop cannot match. Sales figures show that trend and 2013 will be another year of decline for PCs and laptops.

Might that tablet run Windows 8? I will say some more about this in the Microsoft-specific section below; but in summary, there was not sign in 2013 of Windows encroaching in any meaningful way on the iOS/Android tablet market.

The shift away from the desktop is huge for the industry. It continues a trend towards cloud and device which has been obvious for several years, but of which people are now more conscious.

BlackBerry dwindles

I dug out my BlackBerry Playbook (launched in 2011) during my Christmas clear-out. It is a nice little tablet – and the QNX embedded OS on which it is based is great – but it failed in the market for all sorts of reasons, the chief one being that it is neither iOS nor Android. 2013 was the launch year for smartphones running BlackBerry 10 (also QNX based), the Z10 and the Q10, but sales have been equally disappointing. It is a shame as the company did many things right: the operating system is good, the developer evangelism and support before the launch was strong, and the handsets in my brief looks are worthy contenders; but the barriers in front of any company trying to launch a new mobile OS have so far proved too great. Those barriers are to do with app ecosystem, the de-facto lock-in among users who have already purchased apps for their current smartphone and want to carry them over, operator support and marketing, retail support and marketing, and the difficulty of competing against Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft. Enterprise security was meant to be the USP for BB10 devices, but there are strong mobile device management solutions for other platforms; in fact, the current wisdom is that BES 10, the BlackBerry mobile device management software which also supports iOS and Android, may now be the future of the company.

The year of no privacy

Humans are not logical creatures, which is the only way to make sense of the no-privacy story of 2013. There are two key sides to this.

One is Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing over the data capture practised by his former employer the NSA (National Security Agency), which according to his reports goes beyond what the public imagines that national security agencies do and caused much consternation and indignation around the world.

The other is the increasing amount of data captured for marketing purposes by Google, mobile operators, internet advertisers, retailers online and offline, and others, about which the public cares very little as far as I can tell. The question is: how much data are we willing to hand over in return for free services, and the answer seems to be, pretty much everything. One or two individuals care about this – Aral Balkan for example – but it is not an issue for most of the public.

I am one who is concerned about this, because data is power, and it strikes me as dangerous to put so much power in the hands of a few large corporations, which are only lightly regulated. How much it really matters is open to debate; we are sailing into the unknown.

Turning this around for a moment, for many businesses the ability to make intelligent use of what has become known as “big data” is now critical.

Wearable computing on the rise

A nod here to wearable computing, with the big story being the previews of Google Glass, embedded Android with camera, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which is clipped to the side of your head and responds to voice control. It may or may not succeed in the market, and makes another bullet point for the Year of No Privacy, but it is a fascinating experiment with huge potential.

It is not just Google Glass. Devices like fitbit and Nike+ FuelBand monitor our movements for the purpose of fitness tracking and will become commonplace – more data, more possibilities, less privacy. Privacy aside, there is no doubting the potential of such devices to improve health, not only by encouraging exercise, but moving on into things like early warning of heart problems and better data on the effectiveness of different treatments.

The Internet of Things

Wearable computing is one facet of a wider field called the Internet of Things (IoT). I was fortunate to attend ThingMonk, a London event organised by analyst company RedMonk, which gave me several insights. 

image

Claire Rowland at AlertMe.com talks UX for IoT at ThingMonk, next to an internet-connected coffee machine.

One is that IoT will change our lives, mostly in a good way. Ubiquitous small wi-fi enabled computers will get everywhere, talk to sensors, and connect with web services to make our lives mostly better. Home appliances will report service requirements to engineers before we know, moving maps on our SmartPhone will show where our bus has got to, luggage will phone home, and so on.

For businesses, IoT ability will be an important product differentiator, initially at the high end, but increasingly throughout the market in some sectors; motor vehicles is an example.

At the same time, it was evident from ThingMonk that the IoT world is full of ideas not all of which are practical and plenty of mistakes will be made.

It was also evident that lack of standards will hold back the IoT. Vendors will each prefer to use unpublished APIs and proprietary protocols, to protect their business, even though open standards and published APIs would enable more innovation and be a public benefit.

Microsoft in transition

2013 was the year Microsoft lost a CEO (Steve Ballmer announced his retirement) but failed to gain one (no successor has yet been announced). It is a difficult appointment: does Microsoft need an outsider with new ideas, or simply an insider with the ability to execute on the strategy that is already in place? My view is that the latter is likely to work out better. Oddly, the company announced strong financials despite the decline of the PC, which is why regard the tendency of the media to equate the decline of the Windows client with the decline of Microsoft puzzling at times.

Growth areas in the last set of figures were own-brand hardware (Xbox and Surface), server and tools, and cloud services including Office 365 and Azure.

It is possible that 2014 will be the year when Microsoft unveils a dreadful set of figures but I have been waiting for this a long time.

Nevertheless, Microsoft’s traditional software business is under threat, not only from PC decline but also from cloud computing. Weakness in mobile might help competitors (especially Google) promote rival cloud services.

Microsoft also needs to up its game in quality and performance. Bugs in SkyDrive on Windows 8.1 cost me data this year. I edited an article, saved it to SkyDrive, attached it to an email, but the recipient got an old version. It is extraordinary that Microsoft has yet to get sync right after so many years of trying. Another annoyance is the slowness of Microsoft web properties at times, including Bing.

As always, this will be a fascinating company to watch in 2013.

  • Can Microsoft continue to do whatever Nokia was doing right with Windows Phone, so that market share grows?
  • Will the Windows 8 “Metro” platform build some real momentum as market penetration improves?
  • What will the promised unification of phone and tablet platforms look like for developers?
  • How will Xbox One fare against PlayStation 4, given its higher price and lesser graphics power, but greater innovation with Kinect 2 and voice control?
  • At what point does growth in cloud computing mean that growth in on-premise server licenses will stall?

Twitter, Google, Facebook free services get worse

Twitter got worse in 2013. More sponsored posts and the appearance of inline images on the web site mean that for me the appeal of the controlled, short-form feed which made Twitter great has been diluted. Google search got worse in 2013, with more ads and more brand-driven results, and its insistence on putting Google+ at the centre of its services became an annoyance. Facebook too is increasingly commercial.

These are businesses after all. Overall though, it seemed that the web got more proprietary in 2013.

Social media: the good and the bad

During much of 2013 I edited a section on the Guardian web site focused on social media marketing. The opportunity to talk to many experts in the field has been illuminating. Social media is not a short-term fashion; rather, it has changed the way we interact with each other and made it richer and more public. It is also changing marketing, and not just marketing, but the way businesses engage with their customers and potential customers.

Speaking for myself, user reviews on the likes of TripAdvisor and Amazon are now a significant influence on my purchasing decisions. Despite the fact that such platforms are gamed by vendors, overall I believe I am making better decisions as a result. Whether or not I am right about that, the influence is real.

The positive aspect of social media is the opportunity it presents for businesses to be better informed and more responsive to customer needs, and the increasing power of customer opinion to influence others, resulting in better products and more responsible behaviour.

Negatively though, social media marketing means that our public interactions with friends are now invaded by brands looking for a marketing opportunity, enabled by social media platforms which are monetized by selling our personal data (though hopefully anonymized) and access to our social media feeds. When that vendor interaction is shallow and one-sided, it leaves a sour taste.

The good outweighs the bad in my opinion, though see again the note above on the Year of No Privacy.

Personal hopes for 2014

A few personal hopes for me to review this time next year:

  • A redesigned ITWriting.com, probably on a new cloud platform, as time and funds allow
  • A converged device that works for me, so a smartphone can be good enough (for my specialised purposes) as phone, camera and recording device
  • Complete my Windows 8 game; I am working on it and will write up the experience in due course!

Happy New Year!

amazon, cloud computing, microsoft

Google Compute Engine: good enough to take on Amazon?

A week ago, Google make its Compute Engine generally available. The service offers virtual machine instances as a cloud service, at prices from $0.114 per hour for a single-core VM with 3.75 GB RAM. In addition, you pay for outgoing network traffic and persistent storage. Reflecting the shortage of IP addresses, a static IP costs $0.01 per hour – but only if it is not in use. Linux is the only available operating system.

The service seems similar to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), but there are a couple of reasons why Google has the potential to take on Amazon. One is that it has the scale: just as Amazon, prior to the launch of EC2, had datacenters already in place to run its ecommerce business, Google has them to run its search and advertising business, as well as services like the Android Play Store, Google Mail, Docs and other cloud services.

Second, Google can afford Amazon-like commodity pricing. It could even afford to lose money on cloud hosting for an extended period, thanks to its dominance in web advertising, if it needed to do so in order to win market share (though I am not suggesting that it is in that position).

Why though would anyone use Google rather than Amazon? A post on Quora highlights some of the reasons, including sub-hour billing, live migration of VMs (no downtime), persistent disks that can be mounted read-only by multiple VMs, more integrated virtual networking, and better network throughput. This last point is interesting: the suggestion is that Google can use its own private connections between datacenters, where Amazon is more dependent on the public internet.

Amazon also has advantages, including a larger portfolio of cloud computing infrastructure services thanks to its greater maturity. Unlike Google Compute Engine, Amazon supports Windows VMs, for example.

Some large customers will want to spread VMs across multiple cloud providers for resilience, and it will not surprise me if Amazon plus Google becomes a popular combination.