Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category
As you may know, the main thing which Windows 8 has adopted from Windows Phone is live tiles; a user can see them right after the computer starts. The more popularity Windows 8 will gain, the more people will wonder: what are the tiles for? What’s the use of them?
Potential customers are already a bit familiar with live tiles conception, for example, from the Nokia Lumia advertisement. Hence, they imagine what kind of information is displayed on them. Nevertheless, the number of those who are familiar with live tiles is negligible in comparison with the number of potential Windows 8 users. In the next two years Modern interface in Windows 8 is expected to cause confusion.
People will either love or hate these live tiles. But anyway Windows Phone 8 interface will seem familiar for Windows 8 users, even if they’ve never seen those smartphones. The same is with Windows Phone users – Windows 8 interface should be known to them.
Huge attention has been given to cloud integration in Windows 8. The same thing is for Windows Phone: products for these platforms and for Xbox 360 as well will be able to interact through SkyDrive and Xbox services tied up to Microsoft account (former Live ID).
Office and OneNote products for Windows Phone have already stored documents in SkyDrive, and now Office 2013 applications can do the same. It means you can create a document on one platform and continue your work on another one, and the application automatically determines where you’ve stopped your work last time. Photos made with WP-smartphone can be automatically uploaded to SkyDrive, and then they are automatically displayed in Windows 8 gallery. The same is with Facebook.
Also, Microsoft is going to implement tablets and phones interaction with Xbox 360 console. For this purpose SmartGlass application is to be released. The application will allow mobile devices to work as a console remote control and will display context information on the screen. Thus, smartphone or tablet may be used as a secondary screen in the games. Let me remind you that Xbox Live achievements are already synchronized among games versions for different platforms. Xbox Music service will provide an access to the music store and free broadcast from any device. Microsoft is not forcing to use Windows Phone, company’s service integration is available for other platforms as well, although in Windows Phone 7 and 8 it is more fully implemented. SkyDrive and OneNote clients are available for Symbian (only uploading files to the services), Android and iOS (with full functionality). According to Microsoft, next year service Xbox Music will become available for Android and iOS users. Microsoft has shown an excellent example of respectable attitude to its users.
For some time computer and mobile OSes resemblance will be only external. Although porting from Windows to Windows Phone is a quite simple process, users will have to buy separately the same application for different platforms.
It is the first time we see common interface in mobile and computer OSes. Earlier Microsoft was trying to port desktop Windows interface to smartphones on Windows Mobile. While now the company ports mobile sensor interface into computer operating system. Even Apple haven’t ventured on this.
The decision to use 2 kinds of interface in Windows 8 –desktop and Modern- is certainly rather controversial. The company risks encounter users’ complaint, who will confuse these interfaces and spend their time to find where the needed program starts from.
The situation can change only if lots of blue-chip Windows 8 applications appear in Windows Store. In this case users will be able to give up traditional desktop mode and switch fully to the Modern one.
For starting most of the applications desktop mode is needed, but in prospect more and more applications will start in Modern interface. Popularity and demand for Modern interface fully depends on applications developers. Currently there are relatively few applications in Windows Store – only 8,5 thousand. In case the quantity of applications for Windows 8 grows the same as for Windows Phone, in a couple of years there will be more than 100 thousand of them. By the way, many Windows Phone applications can be installed as trials version, which do not go separately from full versions. Let’s compare it with Android and iOS, where trial and full versions are two different applications.
After users start switching from Windows 7 to Windows 8, the number of Windows Phone 8 users will grow, opening huge perspectives in front of applications developers. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 work on the common core, which allows easily porting from one platform to another one. Huge amount of Windows8 users will inevitably pay their attention to the mobile version of this platform – Windows Phone 8. The interface will be familiar to them, applications will be the same, why not buy such a smartphone?
Thank you for consideration. I know there are still lots of opponents of the OSes discussed, but I’m eager to learn your thoughts on Windows 8 and WP 8, and first impressions as well.
Best regards,
Nadya Klim
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
- In: Cloud | Microsoft | Windows
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Microsoft has officially rolled out Windows Server 2012, the server partner to the Windows 8 operating system it is launching on 6 October alongside the eagerly anticipated Surface tablet.
Unveiling the new offering on the 4th of September, Satya Nadella, president of Redmond’s Servers and Tools Business, has dubbed the new-gen system as the first “cloud OS.” In his keynote speech, Nadella described how Windows Server 2012 is a cornerstone of the Cloud OS, which provides one consistent platform across private, hosted and public clouds.
Windows Server 2012 is seen as a central part of Microsoft’s new enterprise ecosystem, which also features Windows Azure and System Center 2012 for customers to manage and deliver applications and services across private, hosted and public clouds.
The Microsoft Cloud OS provides enterprises with a highly elastic and scalable infrastructure with always-on, always-up services. Automated management, robust multitenant support, and self-service provisioning help enterprises transform their datacenters to support the coordination and management of pooled sets of shared resources at the datacenter level, replacing fragmented management of individual server nodes.
The new operating system provides a comprehensive set of capabilities across the enterprise private cloud datacenter, and public cloud datacenters.
• Agile Development Platform: The Microsoft Cloud OS allows enterprises to build applications they need using the tools they know, including Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET, or open-source technologies and languages, such as REST, JSON, PHP, and Java.
• Unified DevOps and Management: The Microsoft Cloud OS supports unified DevOps and unified application life-cycle management with common application frameworks across development and operations. With Microsoft System Center integration with development environments such as Visual Studio, enterprises can achieve quick time-to-solution and easy application troubleshooting and management.
• Common Identity: The Microsoft Cloud OS implements Active Directory as a powerful asset across environments to help enterprises extend to the cloud with Internet scale security using a single identity and to securely extend applications and data to devices.
• Integrated Virtualization: To help enterprises achieve the modern datacenter, the Microsoft Cloud OS includes an infrastructure which provides a generational leap in agility, leveraging virtualization to deliver a highly scalable and elastic infrastructure with always-on, always-up services across shared resources and supporting cloud service delivery models with more automated management and self-service provisioning. With Windows Server 2012, the Microsoft Cloud OS is engineered for the cloud from the metal up with virtualization built as an integrated element of the operating system, not layered onto the operating system.
• Complete Data Platform: The Microsoft Cloud OS fully supports large volumes of diverse data, advanced analytics, and enterprise BI life-cycle management, with a comprehensive set of technologies to manage petabytes of data in the cloud, to millions of transactions for the most mission-critical applications, to billions of rows of data in the hands of end users for predictive and ad-hoc analytics.
At the core of the Microsoft Cloud OS is Windows Server 2012. The software supports 320 logical processors and 4TB of physical memory per server, with 64 virtual processors per virtual machine. Virtual disks can scale up to 64TB apiece, according to the firm, or 32 times what it said the competition can offer at the moment, adding that Server 2012 is capable of virtualising 99 per cent of all SQL databases.
New features of Windows Server 2012 include a refreshed version of Hyper-V, including expanded network visualization capabilities to run multiple configurations on the same LAN. Also debuting is a new Resilient File System (ReFS), which improves reliability.
Appearance wise, Windows Server 2012 is built in the Modern UI-style, featuring a tile-based interface like that of Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Microsoft officials say that launch of Windows Server 2012 is perhaps the biggest release of their server products in history, bigger than NT. They also believe that Windows Server 2012 ushers in the era of the cloud operating system.
Do you believe the release of Windows Server 2012 is a breakthrough in the server industry? And do you think Microsoft Cloud OS will be the winner in the competition among emerging Cloud operating systems?
Thanks for sharing your opinion 
Kind regards,
Aliona Kavalevich
Altabel Group – Professional software development
- In: .NET | Microsoft
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Microsoft started using an open development style with the Windows Azure SDK last year. It’s worked and worked well, so now they’re expanding the style to include some of the popular frameworks like ASP.NET.
At first Microsoft made the source code for ASP.NET MVC available under an open-source license. Now, the company has open-sourced another hearty chunk of its ASP.NET technology to the delight of some open-source players.
While the source for ASP.NET MVC has had source available since its inception, and converted to the MS-PL license in April of 2009, the developers didn’t take contributions from the community. While Microsoft was open source it was not “open source with takebacks.” Now ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Web Pages take contributions from the community.
Microsoft is open sourcing more of its ASP.NET programming-framework technologies and it allows developers outside of Microsoft to submit patches and code contributions for potential inclusion in these products. ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages v2 also known as Razor now all open source with contributions under the Apache 2.0 license. You can find the source on CodePlex.
Over the last four years at Microsoft developers have worked closely with the community to get feedback and voices heard by the developers. The goal of open-sourcing these technologies is to increase the feedback loop on the products even more and allow to deliver even better products. For instance, when having found a bug you can send a unit test of fix. If coverage seems not to be sufficient a developer can send a test unit. If community developers come up with a feature, they can get involved more deeply and help write it.
Like every large open source project, every check-in (open source or otherwise) are evaluated against the existing standards used by the developers. Even better, community managers get to see Microsoft developers’ checkins to the product out in the open.
Still it’s really important to remember that ASP.NET MVC, Razor, and Web API are fully supported Microsoft products and will still be staffed by the same developers that are building them today. The products will be backed by the same Microsoft support policy and will continue to ship with Visual Studio. Also, to be clear, Microsoft is maintaining the same level of development resources as always and actually, there are more Microsoft developers working on ASP.NET today than ever before.
Quite often the question about ASP.NET Web Forms arises, as it is not open sourced. The thing is the components that are being open sourced at this time are all components that are shipped independently of the core .NET framework, which means no OS components take dependencies on them. Web Forms is a part of System.Web.dll which parts of the Windows Server platform take a dependency on. Because of this dependency this code can’t easily be replaced with newer versions expect when updates to the .NET framework or the OS ships.
So Microsoft has reached the final stage in embracing open source—not only by opening up the code, but also by taking contributions. Do you think moving to an open development model, will make Microsoft products stronger?
Kind regards,
Aliona Kavalevich
Altabel Group – professional software development
People Say: Mac OS X Lion vs. Windows 8: Who Will Win the Post-PC World?
Posted on: October 11, 2011
The influence of mobile on Apple and Microsoft’s software is clear, but their approaches are different. Which one is better?
Gary Wicker, Technical Director/Software Engineer, Qhorus, Inc. thinks:
«No one knows for sure, but my observation is that the market is waking up and realizing that newer desktop Linux distributions like Ubuntu have rendered the 25-year-old model of cheap commodity hardware + expensive OS and productivity suite obsolete. The new model will be 80% cheap commodity hardware + free OS/productivity suite + optional service contract, and 20% premium hardware/software solution such as the one Apple provides. Microsoft needs to realize this and create a new game rather than playing the one that they won so big at in the 1980s and 1990s.»
Jared Kligerman, Witz Education has another point of view:
«I think OS X Lion will win on the consumer front as there is a trend towards Mac’s right now. However, in the business world, I think it is highly dependent on the industry and the software being used. For example, up until recently Autocad (engineering software) was PC only, making Windows the preferred OS in most firms. QuickBooks is still one of the most widely used accounting software and it is PC only. Video editors, on the other hand, often use Final Cut Pro, which is Mac only. I have seen an increasing number of small to medium size businesses switching to Macs as the OS and Server become easier to troubleshoot but the upfront cost is still lower with PC’s.
All in all, users need to be comfortable using the platform. If you grew up with Windows, you’ll probably stick with it and vice-versa!»
Darryl Balaski, Unix/Linux Engineer & Analyst at General Physics Corporation:
«Well, That depends.
In the Business market: Businesses are conservative and resist changes due to long term technology investments (such as business applications, training, etc). I think you’ll see Windows still a strong contender in that world, especially in Financial and Regulated industries …. In areas outside of that, you will tend to see it position weakening –especially with embedded systems.
In the Home User Community, I think this landscape is changing greatly. This being due to our mobile electronics — Smart Phones, Tablets etc. These embedded systems are changing our computing profile. We are seeing more and more Linux. (Thanks To Google Android and Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.) .
Who Wins — it doesn’t really matter IMHO — its intermediary overhead to people — Who supports the most useful client applications in a secure environment will be the winner .
We’re a long way from that yet.»
Please, share your opinion in the comments bellow.
Kind Regards,
Lina Deveikyte
Altabel Group – professional software development
