Microsoft Software+Services a Go-Go!

Well early this week Microsoft got a lot or web ink geared around the announcement made (Press Release Here) on Monday about expanding their Online Services for businesses, or better known as Software+Services model.

When Microsoft first started offering this, it was considered beta, and it was only for those companies that had seat numbers >5,000. Now that beta testing is over, and Microsoft is expanding this Software+Services offerings of Exchange and SharePoint to all businesses.

This is the first real big move in realizing the buzz term of 'Software+Services' to a greater user base. This means that instead of talking about what 'Software+Services' could mean, customers have the ability to choose and see what it can mean for them with Exchange and SharePoint.

These offerings, are really a choice to customers, one were they make a decision to either host Exchange / SharePoint on their own managed servers or allow Microsoft to host their instances in the 'cloud' via Microsoft based hostings and partner shared hosting.

When asked in an interview, Bill Gates talked about Microsoft's focus on symmetry between 'Server and Service'. This is actually the focus of what Microsoft what to achieve in the future of these offerings. Meaning, right now when a customer chooses to go with the Service hosted offering of say SharePoint, they actually will loose some ability of customization and configuration options. So Right Now These offerings do pose more than just a host or not question. It's a host and loose some options or own and not loose those options.

So this symmetry that Microsoft is driving towards, means they are pushing for the next level of these offerings, to be in sync as far as options, customizations, etc. etc. to where the choice becomes more about scalability and delivery vs. that plus loosing ability.

With these new announcements, a week before Convergence 2008, in Orlando, one might wonder what this means for the future of Dynamics AX?

Well with the push of MOSS being the front end more and more for Dynamics AX 2009 (And beyond) and the Dynamics AX platform become more agile and having the ability for parts of it to be subscribed too, this means that such an offering for SharePoint to be hosted in the cloud (not just SaaS), could mean that we are very, very close to Hybrid architecture to where half a customers Dynamics AX implementation in on in house owned servers, and have lives in the cloud on services. And to the end user, they have no idea... unless one part goes down. ;-)

Check back soon!

P.S. It was about a year ago when I started talking about the Hybrid offerings that Software+Services from Microsoft would bring. Check this post out from last year: 'ERP Live - Software+Services'. Now we are seeing this type of offering coming even closer, with guess what... SharePoint at the heart of it. ;-)

Office SharePoint Designer - Information Worker bliss!

When you think SharePoint, and sites today, you think of a possible long setup process, customizing pages, and fitting things together. The future though is not the most technical aspects, or should I say the code, but the designer of SharePoint itself.

What I mean by this is the new offering of SharePoint Designer with Office 2007 system. Bye-bye we say to FrontPage, and hello SharePoint Designer to take it's place. The goal with this is going to allow Information Workers, or super users to easily create the flows, and collabration sites needed by them, and managed by their IT dept. The future I see here, is the front UI for most information worker processes inside Dynamics AX today!

With this I see custom web parts for achieveing business goals, and out of the box ones as well, that then allow an information worker to talior their SharePoint site experince, targeted for their usage of the business logic, in a mashup of Dynamics AX web parts, Office System documents, and Software + Services offerings. The goal would be to allow the information worker, if they so choose, the abilities to better manage their flows. It makes sense, seeing they own and work the flows everyday right? This would then free up with IT dept. to focus on the next thing, and development of core business logic, vs. UI flows, and interactions. I really see a great deal of things that can be accomplished in the future with SharePoint, SharePoint Designer and the future releases of Dynamics AX.

For now, though, I would recommend looking more and more into the use of SharePoint 2007 and the entire Office 2007 system all together interacting with Dynamics AX as is. It's a bright future, and all kinds of possibilities!

Check back soon!

Link to Office SharePoint Designer Product page

Find a job at: www.DynamicsAXJobs.com