Groot verlies. Ik had juist deze zomer zijn boek gelezen. De man heeft veel betekent voor de Nederlandse IT industrie ..

… Afgelopen vrijdag overleed Eckart Wintzen (1939) geheel onverwacht aan aan een hartstilstand in zijn huis in Frankrijk. Wintzen, oprichter van BSO, werd 68 jaar oud. Hij geldt als een van de belangrijkste Nederlanders it-ondernemers en denkers. …

Source: Computable ICT-nieuws – It-ondernemer Eckart Wintzen overleden

Porsche … there is no substitute …

Approach by Forrester on determining the business value of UC … (subscription required)

Unified communications (UC) generates interest as a potentially important business tool to improve existing business processes and reduce costly business delays for time-sensitive situations.

An intelligent software platform, it connects people to people and to applications directly and easily. UC also connects desktop collaboration technologies, such as presence, email, instant messaging, and Web conferencing with communication applications (e.g., telephony, audio conferencing, voice messaging, and video).

Its intuitive user interface promotes adoption and usage of UC across the enterprise. To justify UC investments, organizations should evaluate UC’s business benefits and IT improvements, and explain its full value — for example, how it enables faster response to critical situations, allows employees to collaborate more easily, and reduces overhead such as travel and conferencing expenses.

Source: How To Evaluate Business Value For Unified Communications
“Elizabeth Herrell”
Date Published: Thu, 27 Dec 2007

Onlangs won Microsoft 3 Computable awards, nog een kleine reactie vanuit Microsoft :

Microsoft won drie Computable-100 Awards voor: ‘Imago beste werkgever’, ‘Imago beste zakenpartner’ en ‘Krachtigste ict-bedrijf van het jaar’. Eric Thijssen, director Small & Midmarket Solutions & Partners nam de Awards in ontvangst …

Source: Winnaars aan het woord: Microsoft
Date Published: Fri, 23 Nov 2007

Microsoft’s IT Showcase  is Microsoft’s way to inform you about the often large scale implementations of our own technology. Check out the latest update on Exchange 2007 :

Ever wondered how a large enterprise plans and implements design and architecture of its next generation of messaging system? View this content to find out how the Microsoft IT messaging team will uncover these details.

Source: Exchange Server 2007 Design and Architecture at Microsoft
Date Published: Tue, 13 Nov 2007

Surpring news on one hand and not so surpring on the other, as a lot of consolidation is going on in the software market.

Quest software and Proposion are noth vendors focussing a lt of their solutions to help organisation move form Lotus Notes Domino  to the Microsoft platform …

Blogger: Karen Hobert

… Quest Software and Proposion just signed an agreement for Quest to acquire Proposion (details will not be made public). The Proposion products augment Quest’s Lotus Notes to Exchange migration tools with SharePoint migration and integration capabilities, making the entire Quest solution set the most complete package in the Notes to Exchange/SharePoint/.NET migration and integration market today. While there are few vendors in this domain, it is a market that is highly competitive and instrumental in Microsoft’s compete strategy with IBM Lotus – or what Microsoft calls the “Notes Transition” space. …

… Still, migrating Notes applications to SharePoint (or other platforms) is very challenging, and a hurdle Microsoft has not completely overcome. The consolidation of Quest and Proposion illustrates that the solution is not a found in a single tool but through a combination of data and application logic utilities that support the intermediate steps required to be successful.

We can expect that IBM will respond, as it is otherwise faced with the prospect of watching intensifying competition for the opportunity to migrate organizations from IBM Lotus products to the Microsoft suite.  The Quest/Proposion deal was relatively small in terms of the deal size, but it will likely have important consequences for the broader superplatform competitive landscape in collaboration and content management. …

Source: Quest acquires Proposion
Author: Karen Hobert
Date Published: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:30:25 GMT

Darren Strange, the UK Product Manager for Microsoft Office, his motivation / drivers for blogging … I have to say I can relate to most of them .. Check his blog for the full details

... I’m presenting at a blogging conference in a few weeks and as I thought about what I will say I started to ask myself why I bother?  Why blog?  What is it that makes me think this is a good idea?  If you are thinking of starting a blog, maybe this will help you decide: …

Source: Why do I blog?
Author: dstrange
Date Published: Fri, 12 Oct 2007

Besides blogs, twitter and other Online activities, the “offline world”   remains equally important. I speak at events on a regular basis and also print is still a relevant means of communications.

This page gives an overview of the Events and Publications I have contributed to.

E = Event

M = Masterclass< /p>

A = Article Online / Print

R = Radio

V = Video

Presentations of events and seminars will be posted for viewing and download on my presentations & Publications page

If you comment on other blogs you know its very hard to keep track of of the blogs / posts you’ve commented to.

The list below is dynamic and represents only a recent snap shot of my comments of approx. the last 3 months.

Should you be interested, check them out …

Very good read …

… Microsoft’s five new Office Servers give Office 2007 users a wealth of new features and capabilities. We examine how in this four-part series, starting with SharePoint 2007

2005. A good year made more pleasant because we were still living under certain illusions. For one, we thought Paris Hilton headlines were in a decline. I was still 39 and therefore didn’t have to worry about not being married. And Microsoft leaked that Office 2007 was going to have “a server component.” Foolish technology journalists that we are, we assumed this meant ‘a’ server. As in one. As in single. As in my Friday night.

But Microsoft wasn’t building a lonely-heart wallflower of an Office server. They were building a swinging frat party of servers; the

Alpha Beta RTM fraternity complete with hazing ritual and a kegger on release day. Five Office servers is the final tally — almost as many servers as there are front-facing productivity apps. We were tempted to have Dean Yager simply close down this Animal House with some light-hearted comments on fixing things that aren’t broken, or vast complexity designed mainly to squeeze ever more revenue out of an already starving customer base. …

… Remember, SharePoint is a vast Las Vegas buffet of truly useful (and thus potentially dangerous) collaboration features. That’s what makes it scary. But Microsoft has done a decent job of allowing administrators to limit access to these features, meaning you can roll them out when you’re ready rather than causing feature chaos at the outset. So take advantage.

Bottom Line: Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a platform that offers amazing new potential to Microsoft Office users, and it does so without loads of new training for IT. However, the platform is so powerful, that administrators will need to be careful when planning architecture and hardware distribution as well as when and in what order they’ll roll out certain features. …

Source: InfoWorld.com
Author: Brian Chee , Oliver Rist
Date originally published: Mon,13Aug 2007