Microsoft News Center – News and Announcements from Microsoft

Tablets: An ideal vacation companion

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — May 16, 2013 — Packing for summer vacation used to be quite a chore, but today a new travel companion is removing a lot of the guesswork and lightening the load. Travel guides? Check. Books? A whole library. Movies, music and games for the kids? Got ‘em. Map, compass, calculator, and even Office 2013 so you can get a little work done? Of course.

The best part is that it all comes in one small package. Sleeker, lighter and with more battery life, today’s tablet PCs are the perfect way to navigate new cities, stay entertained on the train, and keep connected to the office while you’re on the road. A tablet paired with a keyboard (or a convertible with a keyboard built in) can help travelers both work and play while away from home.

Paired with a growing number of Windows 8 apps, tablets can also tap into a variety of Web services to offer insight and information. With built-in GPS, Windows 8 tablets are able to suggest nearby restaurants and help locate fun family activities. Office 2013 provides familiar tools to be productive whether you’re connected or not — keeping a journal, writing a blog, or just sending emails to make your friends and colleagues jealous of your vacation getaway. You can even upload pictures from your camera or Windows Phone to SkyDrive for safekeeping and then access them on your tablet so you can edit them before posting them in a status update. After traveling with a Windows 8 tablet, it can be hard to believe we ever lived without them.

Click through the slideshow below to check out some of the top tablets and convertibles available, with a variety of features like HD displays, built-in keyboards and more. Each one is perfect to take along on your next travel adventure and will easily fit into your carryon.

Highly logical: Microsoft and Paramount Pictures team up to promote new ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ film

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – May 15, 2013 – Star Trek and Microsoft — a logical pairing, Spock might say.

Paramount Pictures thought so.

Star Trek Windows Phone app
May 14, 2013
The unprecedented cross-company collaboration to promote “Star Trek: Into Darkness” kicked off with apps for Windows Phone (shown here) and Windows 8.

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And that’s when executives from Paramount, on behalf of director J.J. Abrams’ sequel to the 2009 wildly popular reimagining of the Star Trek film franchise, set upon a course to seek Microsoft as a marketing partner for the movie.

“We knew that linking with all the new, high-technology products and services Microsoft offers consumers would be the perfect way to build excitement for this latest Star Trek movie adventure,” says LeeAnne Stables, executive vice president of Worldwide Marketing Partnerships at Paramount Pictures. “Working with all the teams across Microsoft has been an incredible experience for us.”

That kinship prompted Microsoft to boldly go where it’s never gone before and launch an unprecedented cross-company partnership to promote the new film. Virtually every Microsoft consumer brand — Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Xbox LIVE, MSN, Bing and Microsoft Stores — is coming together to help celebrate a huge pop culture moment with the release of the film, says Jen Buckmaster, senior marketing manager at Microsoft’s Lifestyle Marketing Group.

“Microsoft speaks to Trekkers and vice versa,” Buckmaster says. “Our developers’ deep love for the Star Trek lore and interest in the J.J. Abrams reboot of the film franchise helped bring together all of Microsoft’s brands (in a compelling way) for the first time.”

The partnership officially jumped into warp drive earlier this month with the release of a Star Trek app for Windows Phone and Windows 8. The app will enable fans to purchase tickets via Fandango for the movie’s advance screening in IMAX on May 15, one day before the official theatrical release. Fans can also get news about the film, perform missions as a member of Starfleet Academy, enter sweepstakes and watch exclusive behind-the-scenes videos.

Star Trek will continue to materialize across Microsoft’s products in the days leading up to the film’s debut. Curious how to say “beam me up” in Klingon? Microsoft today added Klingon to the list of supported languages on the Bing Translator. Paramount connected Bing’s developers with CBS (long-term stewards of all-things Star Trek), and in turn, the professor who created the fictional Klingon language. They worked closely to feed enough Klingon root words into the program to be able to translate just about any phrase. Plus, Bing will have a special homage to the Star Trek franchise on its home page to celebrate the new film, along with a few surprises up its sleeve if you enter the right phrase into the search engine.

Xbox SmartGlass
May 14, 2013
Xbox SmartGlass will provide a rich second screen experience that gives people access to behind-the-scenes footage from the 2009 film when they watch the movie on Xbox Video on their Xbox 360. It will also provide “Star Trek Into Darkness” exclusive trailers, videos and special promotional offers.

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For fans looking for deeper Star Trek features, Xbox SmartGlass will provide a rich second-screen experience that gives people access to behind-the-scenes footage from the 2009 film when they watch the movie on Xbox Video on their Xbox 360. It will also provide “Star Trek Into Darkness” exclusive trailers, videos, and special promotional offers. “Star Trek: The Video Game” is available for Xbox 360 and Windows PCs now.

Last month, as part of the launch of the company's first-ever Xbox Video Awards, Microsoft invited Xbox LIVE users in the U.S., Canada and Australia to submit their questions for J.J. Abrams through Facebook and Twitter for a chance to have him answer them via video on Xbox LIVE when the Xbox Video Award winners were announced.

The experience also extends beyond the screen. Actors from the new film will beam into Microsoft Store locations in Toronto, San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles leading up to the premiere, handing out tickets to advance screenings.

‘Looking out toward the future’

The partnership started in December 2012 when Paramount hosted Microsoft execs for a tour of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production facility to see early film footage and meet the director. Within days a Paramount team was visiting the Microsoft campus to discuss the opportunity in detail. They thought a collaboration would be natural: Star Trek and Microsoft are both iconic, forward-thinking, technology-loving brands with intensely loyal fans. Together, they could create an impactful pop culture event that would “have people buzzing until stardate 2055.”

Buckmaster and her colleague Alison Pember were sold. Now they just had to get all of Microsoft’s consumer brands to agree to a cross-company campaign, which turned out not to be too hard. “Turns out love for the Star Trek franchise runs deep at Microsoft,” Buckmaster quips. Developers quickly got on board with the campaign, viewing it as a passion project.

Rick Rashid with James Doohan
May 14, 2013
The crown jewel in Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid’s office is this photo with James Doohan, aka Scotty, with whom he shared a stage years ago at a special Microsoft event.

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While there is no shortage of Star Trek fans at Microsoft, the biggest just might be Rick Rashid, the company’s chief research officer.

Rashid is a well-known Trekker. His office at Microsoft is crammed with Star Trek paraphernalia, most of it gifts he’s received over the years: props, posters, unproduced television scripts. The crown jewel is a photo with James Doohan, aka Scotty, with whom he shared a stage years ago at a special Microsoft event.

A sci-fi fan since childhood, Rashid was hooked from the moment he watched his first Star Trek episode back in high school. “The whole idea of looking out toward the future and constantly trying to discover new things — those themes have always appealed to me,” he says.

They still resonate today at his day job. Some of the work Rashid oversees at Microsoft Research (MSR) seems straight out of Star Trek. Sometimes, it is. A few months ago, MSR researchers with backgrounds in computer vision and machine learning came up with a way to make the elevator in their building automatically open whenever someone walks up to it — just like the doors on the Starship Enterprise, Rashid says.

What technology is he still waiting to see?

“I’m really looking forward to the teleporter,” Rashid says with a laugh. “We’ve got some researchers doing quantum computing in Santa Barbara, but we’re still a long way away from teleportation. For someone like me who travels all the time, boy that would just make life a lot better.”

Since the first Star Trek movie, Rashid has always taken the people who work for him out to the theater. In 1979, that was two graduate students. Next month he’ll take more than 500 MSR colleagues and their friends and family out to see “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

He’ll be in his Captain Picard costume, naturally.

Rashid is eagerly awaiting the film. And he’s happy that Abrams has helped expand the franchise’s audience beyond just Trekkers. But he hopes the new fans don’t look askance at the more passionate moviegoers.

“If all you're paying attention to is people in costumes and pointy ears, you're missing the point,” he says. “The enthusiasm for Star Trek over the years has really been as much about the enthusiasm for a positive future, for the opportunity for a better world, and the excitement of discovery. If people focus on that, it's great.”

Building the intelligent car of the future

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — May 7, 2013 — In the 1920’s, carmakers started offering an accessory that would revolutionize the driving experience: the radio. While tooling down the road you could tune into the nightly newscast, a live jazz performance or the seventh game in the series. It provided a connected experience that replaced the steady drone of the four liter under the hood with the soaring notes of Duke Ellington’s bugle or the crack of Babe Ruth’s bat as the ball hurtled toward the right-field stands.

Since then, the notion of the connected car has changed. Features such as streaming music from your smartphone and using voice commands to control the stereo and environment are standard equipment in many models. And Microsoft has a vision for in-car technology that takes us beyond the confines of the cockpit to what they call the intelligent car — a scenario in which telematics data can help improve the driving experience, and the design of the vehicle.

Led by Group Program Manager Pranish Kumar, the Windows Embedded Automotive team is focused on fulfilling this vision and, in the process, developing an upgradeable technology solution that extends the useful life of the vehicle.

Says Kumar: “The automotive industry faces a lot of unique challenges, perhaps first of which is that cars must be supportable for much longer than consumer electronics devices — 10 or 20 years, in most cases. I think we’ve developed a solid understanding of some of these challenges and how technology can address them, while providing drivers with a better experience.”

A relationship built on experience and trust

Microsoft’s involvement in the automotive industry stretches back 15 years to 1998 when the company partnered with Clarion to announce the Auto PC, a first-of-its-kind solution that gave drivers access to email, driving directions, paging and traffic alerts, and their entertainment system. And in 2003 Microsoft developed the Microsoft TBox, a telematics device that went on to power infotainment systems for a variety of carmakers.

When it came to working directly with carmakers, Kumar says it was an uphill battle to gain their trust. Many had tried to design their own infotainment system and were convinced that it couldn’t be done in a shorter time than seven or eight years. Microsoft has since proven itself by reducing development time down to just two to three years.

Kumar’s team also adopted the same level of rigor and many of the testing methodologies that carmakers use when conducting customer road tests. Making this change gave the team a “greater degree of confidence” that their development and reporting processes met the carmaker’s need and that the finished product would meet or exceed the driver’s expectations.

From the connected car to the intelligent car

For carmakers, the Promised Land lies in giving drivers the ability to access information and services anywhere they live, whether an app on their smartphones, a music file on their tablet at home, or customer contact information on their computer at work or in the cloud. Over time, members of the Windows Embedded Automotive team have earned a reputation for providing solid insight to help make these experiences a reality.

Together with Kumar, Creative Director John Hendricks, Principal Program Manager Jay Loney, Partner Development Manager David Kelley, and Experience Designers David Walker and Melissa Quintanilha are part of a larger team developing and designing the future of Microsoft’s automotive technologies.

In doing so, they are moving away from a focus on creating in-dash technologies, such as the entertainment or navigation systems, to an emphasis on creating a solution that would power these technologies as part of an overall user experience. Taking this approach has given carmakers the ability to provide periodic updates that refresh the driving experience and extend compatibility to the latest consumer devices.

In the future Microsoft wants to take that experience a step further. Whereas today consumers demand a car that’s more connected — to their phones, their music and their services — Windows Embedded Automotive is focused on designing intelligent cars that respond to the driver’s needs.

One example that Kumar cites involves the difficulty of pairing new phones, which is one of the most frequent problems facing car owners. According to IDC, 722 million smartphones were shipped globally in 2012, a 46.1 percent increase over the previous year.[1] As demand for smartphones continues, ensuring compatibility between new models and infotainment systems will remain a challenge.

A Windows Embedded-based system could transmit data about the unsuccessful pairing to Microsoft and overnight a solution could be identified and downloaded to the car. When the owner gets in his car the next morning, his phone would automatically pair. Over time, that same data could be used to design a user experience that’s not only easier to use but that performs tasks on your behalf, such as tuning to your favorite station or rescheduling a meeting due to traffic delays.

Drivers also stand to gain from the availability of data. Many vehicles contain sensors that monitor factors such as speed, braking, fuel consumption, tire pressure and environmental conditions. Drivers can already use this information to assess their performance and get recommendations on how to improve fuel efficiency or vehicle maintenance.

Using the same data, carmakers could augment the existing battery of tests that are part of their proving process. So in addition to putting a vehicle through the environmental extremes of Northern Sweden or California’s Death Valley, they could evaluate its performance in day-to-day conditions. Engineers and product planners could get a head start on the next year’s model through insights around where design improvements are needed or where a car has been over-engineered. They could even fine tune an engine over-the-air to improve fuel economy of the current model year.

Kumar believes that many of the systems are already in place to make this vision a reality. Using technologies such as Windows Update, cars could be automatically updated — in much the same way as smartphones automatically update when you activate them. And the combination of big data and machine learning could lead to cars that develop an understanding of your preferences and driving behavior to become more responsive to your needs.

“We’ve come a long way in terms of creating a product that works reliably and meets the quality standards of the automotive industry. And we’re continuing our work with carmakers to reach the full potential of in-car technology,” says Kumar. “Through a combination of software, hardware and user-centric design, we believe that car owners will experience driving like never before possible.”

[1] IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, Jan. 24, 2013

Great gadget gifts for moms, dads & grads

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — May 6, 2013 — Browse through the slideshow below for great gifts that will make your mom, dad or grad happy on their special day and beyond.

A techie with a dream sparks a new generation of computer scientists

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — April 23, 2013 — Kevin Wang could have followed his career.

Instead, he chose to follow his calling.

Kevin Wang
April 22, 2013
Kevin Wang, the self-described "ringleader" of TEALS, the program that wants to help erase the lack of computer science classes in American high schools.

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It was the early 2000s, and Wang had just graduated from Berkeley with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He was trying to decide which tech company he should offer his services to, when a high school came calling.

“I interviewed with the school,” said Wang, now a Microsoft program manager and co-founder of Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS), a Microsoft YouthSpark program that brings technology professionals and curriculum to high school classrooms. “And they essentially gave me a call and said ‘We want to hire you because we really need to do this.’”

The “this” those educators referred to is the same “this” that occupies most of Wang’s time a decade later: Bringing a computer science curriculum to teenagers to spark their interest in the profession.

“It felt like it was something I had to do,” said Wang, who accepted almost immediately, leaving behind the prospect of a lucrative high-tech job to teach high school students.

Timing was a big factor in Wang’s decision.

His career was just starting and he knew it would be a lot harder to go into teaching once he got more settled into tech industry pay.

“If you’re established in the industry and you’re used to a certain lifestyle, stepping back into a teacher’s salary would be awkward,” he said. “To step back is a lot harder than to step up.”

He was also swayed by the need for computer science teachers that was off the charts.

“Look at the numbers,” he said. Out of 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,200 offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses in computer science. Only 37 of the 771 high schools in Washington state offer AP computer science classes, fewer than 5 percent.

And, as he would find out later, tech companies like Microsoft have faced a severe shortage of candidates to fill key jobs because not enough students choose computer science as their career path.

Wang taught high school for three years in the Bay Area. Encouraged by the experience, he pursued a master’s degree in computer science education from Harvard University.

After leaving Harvard, he put his teaching dreams on the shelf and moved to the Puget Sound area to work for Microsoft on Office 365. He needed to scratch his urge to build a product that millions of people use, and he also wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in Seattle, where he wanted to move since first getting excited about the grunge band Nirvana in middle school.

(That’s when he realized another major difference between education and computer technology. “I was a teacher,” he said with a laugh. “I was used to getting up early.” Not many computer people do, he joked.)

Even though he hired on at Microsoft, the teaching bug had not gone away, and nor had the need for teachers.

Wang began showing up early at a local high school to teach before heading for his day job in Redmond. He did that for a year and then decided to start spreading the word to his colleagues at Microsoft in hopes they would catch the teaching bug and join him. This was in 2009.

Wang’s colleagues liked the idea, schools liked hosting them, and so TEALS – the Technology Education and Literacy in Schools group that Wang cofounded – was born.

Wang quickly shifted from showing high school kids how to write code to teaching fellow computer scientists how to teach kids to write code.

From one school with Wang as the lone volunteer, TEALS soon had four schools and 10 volunteer teachers.

After a while the program grew so much that it was decision time for Wang.

Again.

“I was a program manager on Office 365,” he said. “It was not something I could do in my spare time without being terrible at both my day job and running TEALS.”

Again, Wang chose education.

He would leave Microsoft, sell his Porsche 911, live off that for a year and keep TEALS going.

Before Wang could turn in his badge, David Thompson, then a vice president in the Microsoft Office Division, intervened with a question: “What if your job became TEALS?”

With the blessing from Server and Tools President Satya Nadella, Wang kept his car, but more importantly, his dream of running TEALS from inside Microsoft became a reality.

“We were thrilled to bring Kevin and TEALS into our Corporate Citizenship team, where we are focused on creating opportunities for youth around the world,” said Lori Harnick, Microsoft’s general manager of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “Providing access to computer science in high school is a very important part of our companywide YouthSpark initiative, which aims to prepare young people for the jobs of today and tomorrow. It’s also a great way to fill the pipeline of future Microsoft innovators.”

Thanks to the efforts of Wang and the scores of volunteers that he works with, the program is growing in size and reach – it now has 100 volunteer teachers teaching 1,500 high school students at 35 schools in seven states.

“We’re learning new things every year,” he said. “Every year we want to make computer science more exciting for the students, and we want our volunteers to have a great experience teaching.”

TEALS also works across the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. One Bay Area school has an engineer from each company teaching AP computer science together. “I doubt you will see that anywhere else,” Wang quipped.

The entire tech community has to come together to solve the lack of computer science high school education in America, he said, adding that there is still much work to do.

“The finish line is really far away,” he said. “We want to give every high school student the opportunity to take computer science when they are in high school.”

With more than 38,000 schools to go, there is a big need for more volunteer teachers.

Refreshed Artist Series Mice Enhance Every Computing Experience

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – April 22, 2013 – Life on the go is easy when you have the tools to work from virtually anywhere. The Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 series gives you just that – precision, portability and wireless freedom. But Microsoft knows you don’t want to sacrifice style when choosing wireless accessories. The latest Limited Edition Artist Series also offers a handful of customized designs that add beauty to your daily activities.

Featured artists Dana McClure, Deanne Cheuk, Kustaa Saksi, Matt Lyon, Joy Deangdeelert Cho and Si Scott designed these six stylish mice. Each design demonstrates the artist’s personality and artistic approach, which helps liven up any workspace.

Read on to learn more about the artists who designed the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 Limited Edition Artist Series and how you can use it to help personalize your computing experiences.

These mouse designs are the latest in Microsoft’s ongoing artist series. Not only does the Limited Edition Artist Mouse Series allow you to express your personality, it’s also ideal for productivity. It features a battery life of up to eight months, and its 2.4GHz wireless technology and BlueTrack Technology let you work, browse and play from virtually anywhere. The snap-in Nano transceiver allows you to remain plugged into your computer at all times, and the ambidextrous design and rubber side grips keeps you comfortable while you’re working away.

Dawn of Windows 8 Brings New Device Opportunities as Sun Sets on XP

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — April 8, 2013 — On April 8, 2014, support will end for two venerable Microsoft products: Windows XP and Office 2003. This means that XP customers and partners will no longer receive security updates or be able to take advantage of tech support from Microsoft.

It’s the end of an era, but for businesses that still have PCs running Windows XP and Office 2003, it’s also an opportunity to make their IT more secure, mobile and productive and to meet the demands of the modern worker.

“Moving away from Windows XP to a more modern platform in Windows 7 and Windows 8 will ready your IT infrastructure for future technology solutions and growth of your company,” says Erwin Visser, general manager, Windows Commercial in a Windows for your Business blog post today. “Windows 8 is the modern OS for modern businesses, building on Windows 7 fundamentals such as speed, reliability and enhanced security, while creating a modern platform designed for a new generation of hardware options.”

It’s a process that can take time, but it’s also one that can get more expensive for procrastinators. Last May, in its white paper entitled “Mitigating Risk: Why Sticking with Windows XP is a Bad Idea,” IDC found the longer a company waits, the pricier supporting Windows XP is likely to get: IT labor costs could go up 25 percent in the fourth year of continuing to run Windows XP past next April. In the fifth year, IT labor increases by an additional 29 percent.

Although there’s a downside to waiting, Nick Parker, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s OEM Division, says the upside of upgrading is equally compelling: “From a hardware perspective, the benefits of upgrading to a Windows 8 device are very real for business customers, with new touch capabilities, tablet and convertible form factors, all-day battery, increased performance with the latest processors, TPM chips for enterprise security, sensors, stylus pens and HD cameras.”

One of the biggest cases for a modern PC is enhanced security. As the security landscape continues to change and new threats come to fruition every day, protecting sensitive customer data and IP against these threats is an imperative.

Although Microsoft will discontinue security patches for Windows XP next year, Windows 8 contains the latest hardware security-enhanced features and software enhancements to help companies stay safe, along with features such as BitLocker and BitLocker to Go to encrypt information stored on company devices no matter where they are.

For companies that need the utmost in security, some manufacturers have even coupled hardware enhancements with Windows 8 security-enhanced features. The Dell Latitude 10 tablet and HP EliteBook Folio 9470m Ultrabook both offer an optional built-in fingerprint and smart card reader combo for biometric access control and authentication.

Since 2006, many PCs are also equipped with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security chip, a technology that was not readily available when Windows XP was first released in 2001. The TPM chip allows data to stay encrypted and lets networks check device integrity and decide whether to assign full trust.

A modern PC can also help workers be more productive. According to Forrester Research’s February 2013 Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends Report, 29 percent of the global workforce is characterized as anytime, anywhere information workers — those who use three or more devices, work from multiple locations, and use many apps. This is number has risen from 23 percent of the global workforce in 2011 and will continue to rise; Forrester predicts that 905 million tablets will be in use at work and home globally by 2017.

Parker encourages companies to keep up with these trends and outfit workers with modern devices.

“Modern users demand technologies that fit their personal work style and allow them to stay productive virtually anytime, anywhere, while businesses have an ever-increasing need to protect data and help ensure security, compliance and manageability,” Parker says. “We work very closely with our OEMs to design devices that deliver these requirements and a breadth of choice.”

For companies that have workers constantly traveling and value thin and light PCs to work from virtually anywhere, the ASUS Zenbook Touch UX31A, with its 178-degree viewing angle and high-definition, In-Plane Switching touch display, or the Sony VAIO Duo 11, which combines a touch screen convertible with a keyboard and stylus, are just a couple of examples of new devices available for Windows 8 Pro.

Other companies may need durability or versatility. New products, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch with carbon fiber construction and BIOS encryption, can offer great performance and enhanced security in a rugged package. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is ultralight, ultradurable and ultraresponsive, thanks to a capacitive touch panel that yields incredible response time to 10-finger touch. Others, such as the Acer Iconia W700P, allow employees to tackle any task with ease, from pictures to Web browsing to spreadsheets. The 178-degree viewing angle, 10-point touch control and cradle allow for any perspective: portrait for viewing pictures or reading, landscape at 20 degrees for comfortable touch control, or landscape at 70 degrees for notebook-style viewing and keyboard productivity.

Since migrating to a new platform can take substantial planning and time to test and deploy across businesses, Visser recommends that “those that haven’t yet started their migration process need to begin as soon as possible to ensure that they meet the April 8, 2014, deadline.” The good news is that high Windows 8 compatibility with Windows 7 makes it possible for companies to have a custom adoption path that works for them, bringing in Windows 8 for targeted scenarios side by side with Windows 7 in their environment.

Companies in the middle of Windows 7 deployments or considering a hardware refresh should also look at areas in their organization where it makes sense to get touch-supported hardware, so that as they move to Windows 8 they are set up to take advantage of the full touch experience the new OS delivers.

Companies looking to make the leap can contact a qualified Microsoft partner and get started today.

elicit Helps Improve Your Website’s Searchability

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — April 3, 2013 — One of the biggest fears for website developers is that their visitors click an internal search button on the site, can’t find what they’re looking for and leave frustrated. Because every failed search can mean a lost opportunity for business owners, elicit was founded to help people find what they are looking for within a website.

Conference Call
April 02, 2013
A drag-and drop-interface lets the customer prioritize and target results by context, time, keyword, location or any way they need.

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The founders of elicit are all serial entrepreneurs who met when working together at various startups. Brothers Eric and Adam Heneghan are the co-founders of Giant Step, a digital marketing firm; Jeff Froom is an application and interaction developer; and Chip Aubry is a software architecture expert. While working at an interactive marketing agency, they formed the idea for elicit based on feedback from customers.

A client in the window manufacturing industry offered an extensive range of sizes, materials and other options in its products. The company’s website had poor search functionality, which made it difficult for customers to find the exact products they wanted. The idea stuck with the teammates, and they realized it would be helpful for their client to have control over its website’s search functionality.

“We knew that site search was a universal problem that was crying out to be fixed,” said Aubry, co-founder and vice president of Architecture at elicit. “But with our agency backgrounds, we also recognized that we couldn’t build a sustainable business by offering one-off solutions. We launched elicit in 2011 to make a site-search solution available to marketers at any website in the world, and we chose a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model because it made sound business sense.”

A Contrarian Approach: Less Automation, More Human Touch

To develop a solution, elicit approached the problem with the understanding that searching an individual website is a vastly different experience than broadly searching the Internet.

“People use ‘browse’ and ‘search’ in entirely different ways when they’re looking for information,” said Aubry. “The algorithmic-based approach of search engines that’s appropriate when sifting through the entire Internet universe is not well suited to finding what you need within a particular website.”

The team researched how website visitors actually behave when they’re trying to find something on a site.

elicit Screenshot
April 02, 2013
With elicit’s solution, marketers can determine the most effective keywords for their website.

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“We found that when using elicit on a website, 50 keywords and associated synonyms represent approximately 50 percent of the searches on that site,” said Aubry. At that scale, it’s easier to put keyword search control into the hands of humans rather than algorithms.

The elicit solution lets marketers paste a simple JavaScript analytics tag directly onto their websites, then determine the most effective keywords for their site and prime them into the system using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Keywords can be changed as often as needed to take advantage of new products, promotions, marketing campaigns or evolutions in customer search behavior. elicit search is also designed to work on social media sites and mobile devices as well as on any website.

“We’re challenging the point of view that says site search needs to be primarily automated,” said Aubry. “By emphasizing human curation over algorithms, elicit search decreases SEO-generated noise in search results, allows for fine-tuning and control of search results and descriptions, and vastly improves the effectiveness for both customers and marketers.”

The Confidence to Take Risks

The team works with marketers and retailers to make site search a powerful tool. Early adopters of elicit are reporting that their click-through rates doubled and abandonment rates dropped by half.

Still, every startup faces risks, even for veterans of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“We wouldn’t have been able to create what we did without the support of the Microsoft BizSpark program and Windows Azure technology,” Aubry said. “BizSpark allowed us to take risks in pursuing our contrarian approach without having to worry about overspending at the beginning of our venture.”

The elicit founders also chose Windows Azure SQL Database to manage the application data because it worked well with their existing ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2012 technologies and could help them scale to meet the demands of their clients’ high-traffic websites.

“Windows Azure takes care of things such as provisioning the virtual machines, firewalls, load balancing and redundancy, so we can focus on building our application and making it great,” said Aubry.

elicit also takes advantage of the SaaS model to implement frequent improvements to its search solution. The team consistently talks to its customers to gain valuable feedback about how it can make elicit search even better.

“As soon as we come up with a new feature or a performance improvement, the SaaS approach lets us push it out immediately to our customers,” Aubry said. “More often than not, though, our customers report that they are delighted to have such a simple and powerful way to control their site search.”

Now Online: A Century of Women’s Entrepreneurialism

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – March 28, 2013 – At Microsoft, advocating for women in business is rooted in the corporate conscience, along with the belief in women’s power to blaze trails and shape their own destinies through entrepreneurship. In recognition of March commemorating both International Women’s Day and National Women’s History Month in the United States, Microsoft is shining a light on the stories of women entrepreneurs around the world and showcasing how technology has played a transformative role in enabling entrepreneurship.

Over the last 100 years, the upward trajectory of women entrepreneurs has been significant. Today, the proportion of the world’s sole-proprietor enterprises that are women-owned is between 20 and 40 percent. Women entrepreneurs have long fought to reach this level of representation in the world of commerce and enterprise, and they continue to fight for the continued advancement of women in business.

American W omen E ntrepreneurs

To explore these stories, Microsoft partnered with the U.S. National Women’s History Museum to launch a new online exhibit that examines the journey of American women who have started businesses over the last century.

Decade by decade, the exhibit explores the experience of women on their paths to economic and professional empowerment through stories, biographies and information about the socio-economic forces that have both hindered and helped this group over the last century. The exhibit also explores the pivotal role of technology in enabling women to launch and grow their business concepts, while balancing competing demands of work and life.

To add contemporary context to the conversation around women’s entrepreneurship, Microsoft commissioned a study among “new” and “established” entrepreneurs (those in business less than five years, and more than five years, respectively) to analyze the motivations, challenges and impact of technology associated with starting a business today. Among the findings was that technology has had a positive impact on an entrepreneur’s ability to launch a business: 71 percent of new entrepreneurs and 56 percent of established entrepreneurs agreed technology reduces the time needed to get a business up and running, a reality that is reflected in millions of tech-era success stories, both in the exhibit and continually unfolding around the globe.

Women E ntrepreneurs A round the World

Business technologies have catalysed women business owners to carve out corporate niches and independent professional identities. For example, Natalia Dimitrova recently founded Acta Verba, a PR company based in Bulgaria. Dimitrova launched her own business because she wanted to develop her professional passion in consulting, while striking a more flexible work-life balance that allowed her more time with her children.

Dmitrova uses Microsoft technology, including Lync, Outlook and Word, for the day-to-day activities of her business. She says she chose Microsoft because of a user-friendly interface, quality and security, which ultimately enables her to complete tasks efficiently, achieve greater organization and devote more time to family and friends. “Microsoft has taught me that if one follows her dreams, success is right around the corner – it’s just a matter of time to reach that corner,” she says.

Microsoft research and conversations with women entrepreneurs have also revealed that the desire to be one’s own boss, and the associated potential for greater flexibility and work-life balance, is a leading reason women start businesses. In this context, technology is a critical asset in facilitating business communications and operations, and in bridging businesswomen’s personal and professional interests. Cloud productivity solutions like Microsoft Office 365 have facilitated the entry of many women entrepreneurs in both established and emerging markets. Removing many traditional barriers to marketplace entry, including resource constraints and lack of deep technology knowledge, cloud technology offers secure and mobile business collaboration and productivity options at a price point affordable for many small business owners. Its accessible productivity and collaboration features allow women entrepreneurs to present their concepts and operate on a level playing field with large, established competitors.

For more examples of women-owned businesses launched by technology, check out the slideshow below. Visit the Microsoft Business Hub to explore the exhibit and additional stories of female entrepreneurship, as well as find business-building resources for all small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Bing Hosts an Exclusive Dinner With New York Foodies and Chef Marcus Samuelsson

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK — March 28, 2013 — Bing recently hosted a special night in New York City with Chef Marcus Samuelsson at his Red Rooster Harlem restaurant to share a night of delicious food, great company of like-minded New York foodies, and demonstrations of how to bring technology to the dining experience. Chef Marcus served up a variety of dishes for guests to enjoy, as he shared his love for technology and how he uses Bing in the kitchen and when he travels. Guests were able to experience Bing Translator and Bing Local Scout throughout the event, including using Translator to interpret a French recipe to English.

First U.S. We Day Inspires 15,000 Youth to Change the World

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 03:00:51 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 27, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer joined the We Day stage, along with Free The Children co-founders Marc and Craig Kielburger; award-winning musicians Macklemore, Jennifer Hudson and Nelly Furtado; social activists Mia Farrow, Magic Johnson, Martin Luther King III and Martin Sheen; and other inspiring activists, to help 15,000 local youth celebrate their passion for making a difference.

The support springs from the company’s YouthSpark initiative launched in September 2012, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world over the next three years. Kids attending We Day Seattle explored how they can make a difference by turning their passions and talents into social action. In fact, every young person in attendance made a commitment to contribute their time to one local and one global social action project through We Act.

To Celebrate Kids Helping Kids Across the Globe, Microsoft Sponsors First U.S. We Day

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:00:00 GMT

SEATTLE — March 27, 2013 — At the age of 12, while looking for the morning comics in the newspaper, Craig Kielburger stumbled upon a news item about a 12-year-old boy killed in Pakistan for speaking out against child labor. Outraged by the story, he desperately wanted to do something to help. After a number of phone calls and attempts to contact nonprofit organizations, Kielburger realized it wasn’t so easy for kids to get involved with social activism. That’s when he got an idea.

That same year, the young Canadian founded his own nonprofit, Free The Children, to pave the way for kids to help other kids around the world. Twelve years later, in 2007, Kielburger took his organization to the next level, launching the We Act program in schools across Canada and creating a more widespread approach to helping youth make a difference. As part of the program, Free The Children hosts a celebration in each participating city called We Day.

Today Microsoft Corp. is helping bring We Act to the U.S. by sponsoring a We Day event at Seattle’s KeyArena. The support springs from the Microsoft YouthSpark initiative, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world over the next three years.

Young People Celebrate We Day
March 26, 2013
Youth gather at We Day to discover how they can channel their talent, energy, focus and expertise to solve societal challenges in their local communities and around the world.

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YouthSpark and We Day: An Inspiring Fit

Kids attending We Day Seattle will explore how they can make a difference by turning their passions and talents into social action. They’ll also get to rock out to live music, be inspired by celebrities and activists, and connect with one another around their common desire to change the world. In fact, every young person in attendance today has made a commitment to contribute their time to one local and one global social action project. This stadium-sized celebration rewards kids for their participation in the yearlong We Act program, which provides Seattle-area students and educators with free educational resources, pre-packaged campaigns for students to lead in support of community service and international development projects, and guidance to help kids use their passion and talents to get involved in their local and global communities.

As part of the Seattle We Day event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will speak to the audience of 15,000 youth about his passion for technology and how it can help change the world. The celebration also will feature presentations by world-renowned activists, such as Martin Luther King III, Magic Johnson, Mia Farrow and Martin Sheen; musical performances by award-winning singers and musicians including Jennifer Hudson and Nelly Furtado; and testimonials from local heroes who have made a difference either in the Seattle community or around the globe.

“We Day fits right in with our YouthSpark initiative, which is about empowering young people to imagine and realize their full potential,” says Lori Harnick, general manager of the Global Citizenship and Public Affairs Team at Microsoft. “Technology plays a big role in this empowerment by providing young people with the tools and skills to pursue their dreams, and an event such as We Day provides the inspiration to turn talent into transformation.”

At We Day, young people come together to discover how they can channel their talent, energy, focus and expertise to solve societal challenges in their local communities and around the world.

“Free The Children’s mission is about freeing children all over the world from poverty, exploitation, violence, bullying and all the negatives, but it’s also about freeing young people at home from the idea that they’re too young to make a difference and from the limits that are often put on their potential,” Kielburger says. “When you come to a We Day event, you stand in a stadium with all these other kids who feel as motivated as you do and you realize that changing the world is possible.”

Along those lines, Free The Children created We Act to bring community service learning to youth in a more effective way. The We Act program uses a simple equation to motivate young people to take steps toward making a difference: Gift + Issue = Change. By helping kids apply their unique gifts and identify their personal issue, We Act shows them how simple it is to make a difference.

“We want to establish community engagement as an educational pillar in every person’s life as much as reading, writing, arithmetic, music or sports,” Kielburger says. “We’ll have more than 100 school districts across Washington taking part in this program. We would never have had the opportunity to provide We Day, along with the We Act program in schools, without the financial support of an amazing corporate citizen such as Microsoft.”

Big We Day Event
March 26, 2013
Microsoft and Free The Children welcome 15,000 youth to the first U.S. We Day to listen to great, live music; be inspired by celebrities and activists; and connect with one another around their common desire to change the world.

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Microsoft also has supplied volunteers and technology to power the state-of-the-art event. Kids at the event will have an opportunity to connect online with communities around the world, and special guests will dial in via Skype to share their community service experiences. In addition, event attendees and We Day online viewers will have the opportunity to write a short statement about their commitment to change the world and enter a sweepstakes to win Microsoft Surface or Windows Phone 8 devices. Beyond helping make We Day possible, Microsoft has supplied Seattle-area middle and high schools participating in the We Act program with technology and other resources to help support students and their commitment to changing their world.

YouthSpark Ambassadors and Reporters

Specifically for We Day, Microsoft has equipped 50 YouthSpark ambassadors — selected from schools participating in the We Act program — with a Microsoft Surface device, which they will use to share their experience at KeyArena with their classmates, friends, family and those tuning in from around the world (click here to stream the live webcast). In addition, three youth will have special access to roam the arena on We Day and interview participants, including celebrities, business participants and community leaders, about their experiences; capture backstage excitement; and tweet and blog about the event as a Microsoft YouthSpark reporter.

Oklahoma City Thunder Scores With Microsoft Dynamics

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 20, 2013 — In only its fifth season, the Oklahoma City Thunder already possesses one of the best home court atmospheres in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Welcome Home Thunder
March 19, 2013
More than 4,000 fans showed up at Will Rogers World Airport to welcome home the Oklahoma City Thunder following its first appearance in the NBA Finals.

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In 2008, Oklahoma City began building an NBA franchise from the ground up, aiming to develop a sports institution deeply rooted in the city’s culture and identity. To generate and maintain fan loyalty, the Thunder also strove to create an experience that went beyond just having a great basketball team.

“We knew we needed a business strategy that focused on our fans,” said Scott Loft, vice president of Ticket Sales, Retention and Database Operations for Oklahoma City Thunder. “Our vision was to make the Thunder the most fan-centric organization in professional sports. When fans enter the Chesapeake Energy Arena for a Thunder home game, we want them to feel like guests rather than customers or numbers.”

Plans to deliver exceptional customer service were executed to personalize the fan experience. The Thunder customer service team promoted various campaigns, collected metric-based research data and shaped its training programs. To succeed in these efforts the team needed a user-friendly customer relationship management (CRM) system to help manage all aspects of guest satisfaction.

The franchise selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 over Salesforce.com because of its flexibility, ease of use, integration capabilities and lower total cost of ownership. The Thunder wanted to use the industry-standard Ticketmaster solution for ticketing, and Hitachi Solutions helped the Thunder build a Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation that wrapped every touch point of the fan experience process around the ticketing package.

“We used Microsoft Dynamics CRM to design a CRM system that allows us to personalize our fan experience,” Loft said. “It provides our staff the right tools and knowledge to create memorable guest experiences.”

This focus has paid off. According to the team’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), a system that helps businesses measure customer satisfaction, the Thunder has an NPS of 91.2 percent — more than twice as high as the NBA average.

Oklahoma City Thunder Fans
March 19, 2013
Fans cheer on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM created accountability within and standardization of the company’s guest care best practices and now serves as the centralized repository for all customer information, providing a 360-degree view of franchise guests. The Thunder also uses four additional solutions that work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to verify data that closely measures guest satisfaction.

“We endeavor to provide a memorable experience that keeps fans coming back for more,” said Karlis Kezbers, director of Season Ticket Retention for the Thunder. “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can do just that by creating fun fan experiences even outside basketball season. The opportunities to enhance the guest experience in a nonbasketball setting are endless.”

More than 18,000 fans visit the Chesapeake Energy Arena on Thunder game nights. The team’s CRM system contains preferences for thousands of fans, which helps customer service representatives tailor each guest’s individual experience. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has allowed the Thunder to capture valuable personal data about guests through a Season Ticket Member Preference Center.

Bison Hug
March 19, 2013
Rumble the Bison makes friends with an Oklahoma City Thunder fan.

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All data from that preference center and an online survey program are transferred in real time as captured into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, making it easy to view important information individually. To date, the team has had 60 percent of its season ticket base provide basic information about their favorite players, favorite opponents, birthdays, family members’ information and lifestyle activities, such as hobbies, favorite foods and social networking data.

“When guests share their Twitter and Facebook profile names, that opens another channel of engagement between our organization and customers,” Loft said.

The franchise provides guests with the means to keep in touch with the team and other fans via social media and encourages fan feedback through telephone, email and online surveys. This data is fundamental to ensuring the customer support team can consistently improve.

All interactions are compiled into a monthly trending report that delivers a snapshot view of the current level of customer service. At the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 conference in New Orleans, the Thunder shared how these customer satisfaction scores have soared since the team implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In fact, the Thunder has been ranked the top NBA team in terms of the overall fan experience; 99 percent of guests have rated their overall experience as “good” or “excellent.”

“Our loyal fans are the driving force behind everything we do,” Loft said.

Chobani Increases Its Appetite for Business Growth With Microsoft Technologies

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 19, 2013 — When Chobani's operations began in a shuttered factory in 2005, its founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, had no idea the company would rapidly become the No. 1-selling yogurt brand in the United States. He simply wanted to create a delicious, high-quality product for consumers. At the time, Chobani’s original five employees used just one truckload of milk each day to make their tasty product. Today, the company needs enough trucks to ship more than 2 million cases of yogurt each week between its two production facilities in New York and Idaho.

Chobani Plant in Twin Falls, Idaho
March 18, 2013
Chobani’s Twin Falls, Idaho, plant is the largest of its kind at 1 million square feet.

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Rapid business growth can be too much of a good thing unless you have the proper technology to keep up with the high-speed pace of sales.

As a startup, Chobani had limited IT resources in place, and employees did most of the production and customer tracking work in Microsoft Excel. This approach was fine when the company was small; however it quickly became insufficient as the staff size skyrocketed to more than 2,200 employees who process more than 2 million pounds of yogurt daily and contribute to roughly US$1 billion in annual sales in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

To sustain — and ideally even surpass — this rate of growth, executives knew they needed to implement a robust business solution to provide inventory control as well as supply chain and warehouse management. They went looking for a system that was easy to use and could scale with the pace of their business. Most important, the system needed to allow the staff to remain focused on ensuring the production of high-quality, authentic, strained Greek yogurt.

“At Chobani, we’re focused on making one cup of quality yogurt at a time,” said Maureen A. Hurley, vice president of information technology at Chobani. “We guide all of our decision-making processes — from milk selection to IT solutions — on the desire to lead and grow while keeping things simple, efficient and focused on producing the perfect cup each and every time.”

After researching a range of options, Chobani selected Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, to meet the needs of its people and keep pace with its aggressive plans for future growth.

The Chobani team especially liked the flexibility Microsoft business solutions enables, since workers can roll out new modules swiftly and add functionality over time as needed. The system is used throughout the company to review production numbers and distribution levels to more deeply understand and analyze the company’s performance and current business challenges.

“Microsoft Dynamics AX lets us track the entire process of transforming milk and cultures into fresh yogurt — from the processing facility to distribution channels and, finally, right to grocery store shelves,” Hurley said.

Yogurt Production Begins in Twin Falls, Idaho
March 18, 2013
The first cups of yogurt produced at the Chobani facility in Twin Falls, Idaho.

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As a result of implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX, Chobani experienced lower production costs, inventory control and reduced employee workloads. The company had its state-of-the-art processing plant in Idaho, the largest of its kind at 1 million square feet, up and running on Microsoft Dynamics AX in just 27 days, which helped increase shipment speed to various distribution locations.

Another large portion of Chobani’s success stems from its interaction with consumers, which Microsoft Dynamics helped enhance.

“As our company grew, so did the volume of messages from consumers across the world. We receive hundreds of contact messages and phone calls daily,” Hurley said. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM has enabled us to make that feedback actionable, to better track and understand what our customers want, and to continue to provide best-in-class service. This has helped us build deeper, more immediate connections with our fans and continue our growth.”

Further, the business suite has helped the company get beyond the online space and connect with customers face to face. Chobani SoHo, a one-of-a-kind Mediterranean yogurt bar in New York, invites customers to experience an artisanal menu starring fresh Chobani. In 2010, Chobani launched the CHOmobile, a truck that samples the company’s products at various events across the U.S.

“Our CHOmobile travels to festivals and events, delivering hundreds of thousands of cups of our freshest yogurt directly to customers,” Hurley said. “We can then track these interactions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to see a complete picture of our customers’ preferences and habits.”

Maureen Hurley
March 18, 2013
Maureen A. Hurley, vice president of information technology at Chobani.

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Chobani’s customer loyalty team works directly with customers, using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to track nutritional inquiries, complaints, coupon requests, product donation requests, recipe submissions and more. The Microsoft Dynamics solution gives Chobani employees crucial feedback, helping them understand what customers want and better connect with them to continue providing exceptional service.

“We are very passionate about our commitment to deliver beyond what we produce. Our philosophy is ‘nothing but good.’ And we live those words every day,” Hurley said. “Nothing but good is what we say; that's what we deliver. It guides who we are as people, as employees and as a corporation.”

The “nothing but good” philosophy also drives Chobani’s employees to give back to local communities whenever they can. Despite its rapid growth, Chobani has stayed true to its roots, giving 10 percent of its profits to individuals working toward positive, long-lasting change through its Shepherd’s Gift Foundation.

This morning at the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 conference in New Orleans, Chobani discussed the ways in which its technology suite has helped the company grow while maintaining its commitment to quality, customer satisfaction and community involvement.

“Microsoft Dynamics has contributed to our success and consistent growth,” Hurley said. “We can’t wait to see how it keeps us one step ahead as our business continues to flourish.”

App Offers Flurry of Exciting Features for Skiers

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – March 14, 2013 – Winter Ski & Ride, a new Windows Phone app in the Nokia Collection, is taking skiing and snowboarding to a new altitude.

Winter Ski & Ride App
March 13, 2013
The Winter Ski & Ride app for Windows Phone gives skiers a wide range of new ways to get more from their favorite sport.

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Say you’re riding a ski lift to the top of a snow-covered mountain, be it in Colorado, Canada or China. You touch the screen of your Nokia device, with frosty, gloved hands, and pass the lift time by looking at your stats. How many runs have you done? What was your top speed? You look at your contacts, and note what friends are still on the mountain. You decide to ski a mogul-heavy double black diamond run next, and watch a short video by a professional instructor to brush up on your bump skills.

Snow sports plus technology equals an unparalleled experience on the mountain, said Kevin Ashley, a senior technical evangelist for Microsoft’s Windows Phone team who created the app with the help of a Silicon Valley startup. As a professional ski instructor, Ashley couldn’t find a ski and snowboard app that met his own high standards, so he decided to make one.

“None of the other apps out there quite made it to being the ultimate for skiers and snowboarders. This is my attempt to change that, and to change the snow sports industry – to turn it around completely,” Ashley said. “We did hundreds of tests and did a lot of thinking to make this design happen. With this app, Windows Phone 8 and Nokia are now the cool kids on the mountain.”

Winter Ski & Ride has a flurry of helpful features for skiers and snowboarders, including ski analytics (speed, duration, vertical drop), "zoomable" resort maps for thousands of resorts, snow reports, activity tracking and goal-setting, a social network, leaderboards, and lessons (skiing, snowboarding, telemark, freestyle and cross-country) from some of the “best instructors on the planet,” Ashley said.

“Our plan is to target this app as a tool,” he said. “It’s not just YouTube videos of guys skiing; it’s the top selected videos from rock stars of the sport. The top ski and snowboard instructors have provided the content for us. Really, it’s taking the sport to the next level.”

In addition, the app is specially designed for elements on the mountain – for use in the bright sun, use by cold or gloved hands, or even voice control rather than touch. The app can also run all day without draining the phone’s battery, Ashley said.

“The phone is more than just a communication tool; it really becomes a device that combines all these sensors. With one touch, the device in your pocket becomes a device that collects all of the information about your runs,” Ashley said. “What speed were you going? What distance? How many runs? You can use all this information to help motivate you to compete against yourself or friends. It becomes a device that allows you to really enhance your activity.”

Ashley said he loves coming into work after a weekend of skiing and using the app to swap stats with his coworkers and to check and make sure he’s still “King of the Mountain” (a distinction given to the app user who has logged the most vertical feet). Turns out Ashley was just ousted by someone named Jochen who tore it up in at the Heavenly Mountain Resort in Lake Tahoe.

The free app has been in the Windows Phone store for about a month, and now has more than 3,000 registered skiers and snowboarders who have used the app at more than 300 resorts worldwide.

The app is endorsed by the Professional Ski Instructors of America and American Association of Snowboard Instructors (PSIA-AASI), which represents more than 30,000 ski and snowboard instructors in the U.S. who teach students one-on-one or manage ski resorts.

Kevin Ashley
March 13, 2013
A professional ski instructor, Kevin Ashley couldn’t find a ski and snowboard app that met his standards, so he made one himself with the help of a Silicon Valley startup.

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The organization’s job is to get people excited about skiing and snowboarding, and the Winter Ski & Ride app contributes to that, said Bill McSherry, director of partnership marketing for the PSIA-AASI. McSherry will help Ashley showcase the app at the organization’s annual conference at Utah’s Snowbird ski resort next month.

“There’s going to be a big reveal, and I think the reaction is going to be very enthusiastic,” McSherry said.

The organization has been long-interested in technology and how it affects the industry, and McSherry said developing a partnership with Nokia and Microsoft will help move that forward more than ever. Both Ashley and McSherry point to upcoming opportunities to give the app international exposure, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and Interski, an international snow sports conference in Argentina in 2015.

“I haven’t looked at technology in this way before now. This interaction has truly opened my eyes to the dynamic opportunity,” McSherry said. “There are no real limits.”

The app has also been tested and approved by diehard snow-lovers in Utah, California and British Columbia – and by Randy Guthrie, a Microsoft employee in Colorado.

“When you’re in a sport, even if it’s a solo sport like skiing, there is a competitive element. Not with others, but with your own past and trying to get better,” Guthrie said. “Having the ability to compare to yourself and others is really compelling. No other app gives you that.”

Guthrie began skiing about nine years ago when one of his sons got into snowboarding. He was a college professor in California at the time. After being recruited to Microsoft, the family moved to Colorado and now they are all season pass holders to ski resorts, sometimes spending up to 40 days on the mountain per season.

Guthrie met Ashley a few years ago, and saw an early version of his app. Later, Ashley was looking for testers and Guthrie volunteered. Guthrie had been using his own monitoring equipment, including a GPS, and was eager to compare his equipment to the new app. He provided Ashley with feedback and tweaks for some of the features.

“Once, I forgot to turn the app off, and drove off the mountain with it running,” Guthrie said.

The app gave him credit for skiing 65 mph down thousands of vertical feet. Ashley then added an option for users to be able to delete erroneous information.

Guthrie particularly enjoys the social features (he’s currently locked in a fierce battle with a coworker to be King of the Mountain at Breckenridge Ski Resort). As someone who skis at various resorts, he also appreciates that Winter Ski & Ride works everywhere.

“You don’t have to do anything special – it automatically knows what resort you’re at and what run you’re on,” Guthrie said.

The app also lets users put their season standings as their lock screen, so with one glance Guthrie knows that his fastest speed is 44 mph, he’s skied 10 days this season so far (work has been busy), and he’s covered 90,000 vertical feet.

“Every time I turn on my phone, it connects me with this sport that I love. It’s all about community – to me, that makes whatever you do better. The Winter app excels in that aspect,” Guthrie said.

Ashley hopes the app will find success, but he also hopes that over time, Windows Phone and Nokia will be ubiquitous with snow sports.

“I enjoy building apps that bring people to Windows Phone, and I hope we see more apps in the future that take full advantage of this wonderful platform,” Ashley said. “It has all of these beautiful concepts, we just have to take it forward.”

Microsoft Convergence Conference Brings Volunteers Together to Help Rebuild New Orleans

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 14, 2013 — To many people, New Orleans is synonymous with jazz, Louisiana cuisine and Mardi Gras. To Habitat for Humanity, one of the world’s largest nonprofits and a Microsoft Dynamics customer, the lively city is home to many families and neighborhoods still struggling to rebuild areas affected by the Gulf oil spill, Hurricane Isaac and Hurricane Katrina. The organization is doing everything it can to provide the region with much-needed relief — and Microsoft is getting involved.

Raising the Roof
March 13, 2013
Volunteers attending the Microsoft 2009 Convergence conference carefully place the first roof frame on a new house in Musicians’ Village in New Orleans.

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Next week, Microsoft employees, customers and partners from around the world will travel to New Orleans for the annual Microsoft Dynamics Convergence conference. On March 18, before the convention networking begins, more than 400 customers, partners and Microsoft employees attending Convergence are teaming up with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, Hike for KaTREEna and St. Paul’s Homecoming Center to frame two new Habitat houses. They will also plant 200 trees in medians and streets within the Gentilly/Seabrook community; build a fence surrounding a one-acre area that is the future site of a community sports field; landscape several neighborhood homes; finish a senior lounge inside the Hope Community Center, while also building shelving for the center’s food pantry; repaint a number of indoor areas and paint a mural for the gymnasium; and paint the fence of a nearby park.

Jim Pate, the executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, said new housing remains one of the nonprofit’s biggest needs.

“It’s been seven years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, destroying 10 times more homes than any other natural disaster in U.S. history. We have the opportunity to help those affected get back on their feet — starting with giving them shelter,” Pate said.

This is the second time Microsoft has collaborated with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity in its rehabilitation efforts since the catastrophic storm. The first took place in 2009 in Musicians’ Village, where volunteers worked on six houses dedicated to preserving the musical culture and heritage of New Orleans, while also spreading nearly 5,000 cubic feet of sand to complete an irrigation project. This time, Microsoft volunteers will extend their efforts to include a number of activities, all focused on neighborhood revitalization.

New Orleans Habitat for Humanity has built or rehabbed 557 homes, organized volunteers to gut over 2,400 homes, and welcomed help from volunteers on more than 285,000 instances.

Supporting Habitat for Humanity
March 13, 2013
Volunteers attending the 2009 Microsoft Convergence conference work on new houses in Musicians’ Village in New Orleans.

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“New Orleans Habitat for Humanity’s mission is to help families feel empowered to transform their own lives,” Pate said. “New Orleans Habitat for Humanity wouldn’t exist without volunteers, and each person’s contribution makes a lasting impact for local families.”

Since 1996, Habitat for Humanity has used Microsoft Dynamics NAV to manage its global activities and progress by tracking materials and resources to build and refurbish homes. Streamlining these important logistical processes is a crucial factor in boosting the amount of support Habitat for Humanity can provide to communities around the globe.

Habitat for Humanity International has built more than 600,000 houses around the world, sheltering more than 3 million people in more than five continents and 3,000 communities worldwide. Microsoft Dynamics NAV has provided the organization with a flexible solution that helps its employees manage all steps in the supply chain, such as processing donation dollars and handling shipments by land, air and sea.

The home-building and community center work on March 18 is just one way Microsoft will contribute to the ongoing rebuilding efforts in New Orleans next week. As part of the company’s broader sustainability commitment, Microsoft focuses on minimizing Convergence’s environmental impact by working with the Convention Center to donate leftover food to local food banks, as well as donating leftover event supplies and materials to local organizations and schools. Microsoft will also donate $1 to the NOCCA Institute for every attendee who completes an evaluation form during the event.

Several other volunteer opportunities will take place on site during Convergence:

On Monday, through The Birthing Project Baby Shower, Microsoft volunteers will package baby supplies for low-income families.
Tuesday is Fuel for the Future day. Microsoft Convergence attendees will package bags of food to distribute to children to bolster the weekend diets of those who sometimes go hungry when they don’t receive school lunches.
Wednesday brings the chance for volunteers to assemble hygiene kits for the New Orleans Mission and Ronald McDonald house in partnership with World Vision.
On Thursday, conference attendees will finish their offsite volunteer project by constructing and painting a large sign for the Hope Community Center.

Convergence attendees can join Microsoft in providing assistance to the New Orleans community by donating time and money to Habitat for Humanity, World Vision, American Red Cross, UNICEF and other notable organizations using Microsoft Dynamics to achieve their missions.

'Classed In' Brings Private Social Networks to Schools

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 7, 2013 — During a trip to his home town in St. Petersburg, Russia, Gabriel Levi noticed that his local school system could modernize its services for educators and students by streamlining communication and reducing manual tasks. Using his entrepreneurial instincts, he saw a need and created a solution. Now Levi is CEO and founder of Classed In, where he has turned his mission into a thriving business with a comprehensive educational social network that connects teachers, students, administrators and parents at approximately 27,000 K–12 schools in Russia — more than half the country’s schools.

Gabriel Levi
March 06, 2013
Gabriel Levi, founder and CEO at Classed In, turned his mission into a thriving business, creating a unique educational social platform and learning management system that connects students, teachers, parents and school administrators.

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Levi attended college at Columbia University in New York and studied economics and computer science, while he dreamed of starting a business. When a work assignment took him back to St. Petersburg a few years later, he was struck by how Russian schools were still relying on completely manual processes for everything from registration and grade reporting to class assignments and homework. His point of reference was personal: Levi’s mother was a university instructor, and his younger brother was in middle school at the time.

“The main difference I noticed in the U.S. approach to education was that so much happened online: signing up for classes, communicating with instructors, reading lecture materials and so on,” he says. “As a student, it made it easier to choose classes, do research on teachers and teaching styles, and receive grades — and I could imagine the time savings for instructors. I thought that something like this should be in every school and university, everywhere.”

In contrast, Russian educational processes remained mostly unchanged from over 50 years ago. Strict bureaucratic requirements meant that teachers had to send grades and reports home with students daily as well as regularly submit test scores and reports to Ministry of Education officials, including school districts, regional ministries and the federal ministry — over 80 reports in all.

“I saw that by fixing a problem affecting my own family, I could also help address an issue apparent to every other family in the country,” Levi says.

All-In-One Solution Connects Classrooms

Levi’s solution, known as Dnevnik.ru in Russia and renamed Classed In for the North American market, is a cloud-based software platform that automates administrative processes, while also providing online learning capabilities and a private social network with security features for each school or school district.

Employees at Classed In focus on three areas where schools need the most assistance:

Efficiency. By automating administrative processes, including grading, homework, reporting (to principals, administrators, regional education officials, etc.) and admissions, Classed In works to increase efficiency. According to Levi, the automation function alone saves teachers up to 30 percent of the time they used to spend reporting, preparing for lessons, doing research and managing grades.
Collaboration. Classed In works to improve communications for the school community, including personal messages, blogs, email and documents. This helps connect teachers, students, parents and administrators in an open and transparent way that is designed to be completely private. Classed In has the same functionality as a social network but is a closed system. Teachers can confer with one another to prepare better for classes, and they can engage more with students than in the typical classroom teacher-student interaction.
Access. Classed In provides e-learning capabilities such as webconferencing, streaming lectures, media libraries and online testing. A school can provide online courses for a particular student or for a whole class, so learning can continue when schools are closed due to bad weather or when students stay home when they are sick.

Classed In Scales Education Services With Cloud Technology

ClassedIn.com Timetable
March 06, 2013
The Classed In course scheduling system supports semester, trimester, quarter and modular reporting periods. Users can also view detailed lesson information by clicking on the corresponding fields.

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“Running an entirely cloud-based solution serving millions of users presents some interesting technical challenges,” Levi says. “We knew that scalability would be a major priority for our customers.”

Offering administrative resources, private social networks and online learning tools, Classed In uses Microsoft software to help schools create modern classrooms. In addition to using ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server, the company uses Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. “Windows Azure lets us store essentially unlimited amounts of video, photos and other content in the cloud and to back up our enormous files,” Levi says.

In addition, Classed In uses the Microsoft Live@edu suite of hosted services and applications for its email service. “We are now one of the biggest providers of Live@edu email in the world, but we started out small,” he says. “Even when we had fewer than 100 schools signed on, Microsoft was willing to work with us, and that vote of confidence meant a lot.”

That encouragement was repeated when Classed In was accepted into the Microsoft BizSpark program, which has helped provide the company with software licenses, technical support, connections to investors and go-to-market strategies.

“It’s very important that major corporations with budgets and influence help startups get off the ground,” says Levi. “And it’s smart for the corporations, too, because they’re helping create a broader ecosystem.”

Classed In Looks to Help Schools at a Global Scale

Classed In has expanded from only a few employees, its founder and three programmers to a staff of 120 employees, including 70 technical professionals. Within its initial market of Russia, Classed In is adding about 1,000 new schools a month and plans to expand both geographically to more countries worldwide and in the range of services it offers.

Classed In is thinking big with global plans, but the company is expanding carefully to ensure it retains top-notch customer satisfaction.

“The problem we’re solving is universal; improving educational processes is important in any country and any school,” says Levi. “We’ve found that about 90 percent of the time educational problems aren’t hard-coded in the system and can be fixed with the right information and technologies.”

Getting Rid of Cable: Wireless In-Flight Entertainment Offers New Options for Airlines, Passengers

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 08:00:00 GMT

KELSTERBACH, Germany — March 7, 2013 — In the world of in-flight entertainment (IFE), there’s nothing worse than a “dark flight,” where passengers are forced to watch that movie stored on their laptop for the 15th time, fumble through seat-back magazines for a quick read, or, heaven help us, try to get some work done.

Happily, the world of air travel is looking brighter with a new solution developed by Lufthansa Systems, one of the top IT providers for the aviation industry. Lufthansa Systems’ BoardConnect is an in-flight infotainment system that can deliver a rich variety of content wirelessly throughout the cabin, accessible from almost any device.

In-Flight Infotainment at Your Fingertips
March 06, 2013
BoardConnect allows passengers to wirelessly access a range of content through their own personal devices.

Instead of stringing cables throughout the plane across hundreds of seats to power seat-back screens, BoardConnect uses a single Windows Embedded Server and distributes its content through a network of wireless access points installed into the aircraft’s ceiling.

According to Norbert Mueller, senior vice president at Lufthansa Systems, airlines can use BoardConnect to deliver their own branded experience and offer whatever kind of content they want — movies or music protected by digital rights management software, e-books, catalogs, menus and more.

“Airlines could offer a wide variety of content,” Mueller says. “From the beginning we decided to give customers and ourselves the option to integrate almost any application. If someone comes up with a clever way to entertain or inform passengers, why shouldn’t it run on our platform?”

Passengers access the content either through tablets and seat-back screens provided by the airlines, or using their own laptops, tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices. Using the system, passengers can watch streaming on-board movies. If an airline decides to provide tablets to the passengers as a service, it may even show “early window” content from Hollywood due to BoardConnect’s approval to serve movies not yet released to DVD.

“Videos shown on flights must be protected with an approved form of digital rights management,” Mueller says. “The BoardConnect system uses Microsoft PlayReady technology to facilitate DRM for video streaming, so all content is more secure.”

Since the solution eliminates the need for all those cables and screens built into the aircraft, it also makes the plane lighter, which can result in a surprising savings of fuel: Lufthansa Systems estimates that a single Boeing 767 with 260 seats could save as much as 80 tons of fuel per year just by going wireless and eliminating more than 1,100 pounds of classic IFE hardware.

Though the system is simple by design, Mueller says a lot of work has gone into making it airworthy. One of the first challenges was to make the network efficient enough to handle the throughput required to serve potentially hundreds of devices spanning the Windows, iOS and Android platforms, especially considering the bandwidth needed for streaming video.

“At a public hot spot you have maybe 50 people with low bandwidth requirements,” says Mueller. “In an aircraft you have 300 people all using the same wireless network with high-quality content, which requires a lot of bandwidth. We cater to that by fitting several wireless access points throughout the cabin and actively optimizing network traffic so there is always ample bandwidth available.”

Another challenge was to build a system that not only works 100 percent of the time, but that also doesn’t put any extra burden on the crew to keep it operational.

“Our system switches on automatically in accordance with regulatory requirements at the appropriate altitude,” he says. “The crew doesn’t have to start anything or push any buttons, and we’re using a special implementation of Windows Server 2008 R2 for Embedded Systems that makes sure the system is always clean and robust.”

Of course, you can’t just install an intranet into an airplane without buy-off from the world’s air-traffic regulatory bodies. In the U.S., every aircraft has what’s known as a type certificate that comes from the original manufacturer. Every additional component an airline wishes to install, electronic or otherwise, must obtain what the Federal Aviation Administration calls a supplemental type certificate, or STC.

“Components must pass a variety of tests to ensure they’re not flammable, can handle pressurization and that they don’t interfere with flight operations,” Mueller says. “This requires a lot of effort and paperwork, and the process must be repeated for every aircraft type.”

The FAA as well as its European and Australian counterparts have already approved the system, and BoardConnect is being tested on passenger flights with Australian and European airlines. The product has won two coveted industry awards for its innovative passenger experience: at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, and last year’s APEX Expo in Long Beach, Calif.

In the future, passengers could see a variety of implementations as airlines explore what works best. Mueller says the system provides a backbone for IT in the aircraft that could be used in other ways. It could link through Windows Embedded handheld devices, for example, to form an intelligent system that collects operational data to optimize operations, identify cost savings and create other efficiencies.

Says Mueller, “If the airline collects information on how much soda was served, they can place an order on the ground or even from the air to optimize their catering processes.”

While potential uses of the system remain to be seen, for now there’s no doubt that BoardConnect will offer a small revolution in the passenger experience, bringing a much wider variety of in-flight entertainment options, and bringing them to many flights that didn’t have IFE at all before, such as short to medium routes using the Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s of the world. But with such a flexible, adaptable solution built by Lufthansa Systems, the sky’s the limit.

TechFest 2013 Showcases Latest Work from Microsoft Researchers

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – March 6, 2013 – TechFest kicked off Tuesday with Microsoft Research teams sharing their work to harness big data and deliver more human natural user interfaces. The event, which continues through Thursday, features demos organized around 15 research themes.

Touch Points: Explosion in Touch Devices Has Apps on the Rise

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 6, 2013 —Windows 8 was designed for work and play, for today and into the future. As OEMs have produced a new class of PCs, tablets and all-in-ones with amazing touch experiences that deliver entertainment and productivity, the possibilities for new apps have begun to unfold.

Since the opening of the Windows Store at the launch of Windows 8, the number of apps available has more than quadrupled. Along with major brands such as CNN, Audible, Hulu Plus and Netflix, the Windows Store now features many top games and other entertainment apps such as Angry Birds Space, Music Maker Jam and Skulls of the Shogun. It is the combination of compelling hardware and compelling, relevant apps that really bring this story to life.

The ability of Windows 8 to work across devices is making content more portable, so people can get what they want on whatever device they’re using. Touch is making things more accessible, too: Microsoft’s own research indicates consumers search more often, share more often and multitask more easily on touch-enabled devices.

With more apps being introduced every day, Microsoft News Center has launched a new “App of the Week” series to take a look at some of the latest and greatest. Check out the slide show below for a look at some recent hits, and some of the best hardware to play (and work) with them.

TechForum Demos Reveal New World of 'Intelligent Technology'

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:10:29 GMT

Editor’s note – March 5, 2013 – The Microsoft Researcher named in slide 8 was corrected from Jamie Shotton to Cem Keskin.

REDMOND, Wash. – March 4, 2013 – Microsoft’s strategic and technical vision for the future was discussed this week at TechForum, an annual event hosted by Craig Mundie, senior advisor to the CEO, and Eric Rudder, Microsoft’s chief technical strategy officer.

Mundie and Rudder were joined by Interactive Entertainment Business President Don Mattrick, Online Services Division President Qi Lu, Skype Division President Tony Bates, Microsoft Office Division President Kurt DelBene, Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid and others in discussing and demonstrating how the company is approaching this evolution in computing.

See highlights from TechForum in this slideshow.

Microsoft Solutions Help Fix an Ailing Healthcare System

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – March 4, 2013 – There’s no one cure for all that ails healthcare, whether in the U.S. or abroad.

However, Microsoft today showcased its comprehensive plan to help healthcare providers of all sizes meet increasing productivity and security demands; improve mobility, collaboration and communication; control ever-burgeoning costs; and focus on patient-centered care.

Dennis Schmuland, M.D.
March 03, 2013
Dennis Schmuland, M.D., chief health strategy officer of Microsoft U.S. Health & Life Sciences.

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At the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's 2013 conference (HIMSS13) in New Orleans today, the company also announced new customers and partners who are using these solutions with success.

Though revolutionizing health information technology (HIT) will be key to delivering quality, cost-effective healthcare in the future, the solution is not merely to digitize and move health information, says Dennis Schmuland, M.D., chief health strategy officer of Microsoft U.S. Health & Life Sciences.

The healthcare crisis is a tangled web of ever-increasing medical costs, an increasing demand for documentation (and a corresponding decrease in care provider productivity), a shortage of qualified care providers, and increasing systemic waste, Schmuland says.

Improving health IT isn’t the lone solution, but could be a major factor in solving the crisis. That is why Microsoft is working with health organizations, communities and partners worldwide to address healthcare’s toughest challenges and rebuild the industry.

“If we can’t increase productivity in healthcare using technology, and we can’t leverage technology to enable virtual multi-disciplinary teams to work together and coordinate hundreds of processes in a way that improves the quality, safety, speed and outcome of care, we will not be able to solve our medical cost growth problems,” Schmuland says. “On the other hand, if we use HIT to improve productivity and to enable clinicians to do new things, securely, in less time and at a lower cost, we have a chance of solving our medical cost growth crisis.”

Cost is one of the major benefits of adopting Microsoft solutions.

On a large scale, healthcare spending is now 18 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), up from 14 percent in 2000 and 5 percent in 1960. The United States spends twice as much on healthcare per capita as other industrialized nations, yet access to care and health outcomes are worse. In addition, people’s out-of-pocket costs have doubled in the last decade.

“We’ve all heard about the runaway growth in medical costs. This is now everybody’s problem,” Schmuland says. “Every additional dollar we spend on healthcare now comes at the cost of something else we value, such as higher education and global competitiveness.”

In order to reduce cost and inefficiencies, the practice of medicine must be transformed from provider-centric piecework to patient-centric teamwork, with providers working across organizational barriers to improve health and outcomes for patients quickly and efficiently, Schmuland says.

That’s where the power of HIT comes in.

Imagine a healthcare system full of highly mobile doctors and nurses working with their Windows 8 devices in hand, and with access to a full spectrum of health information, patient information, and communication and collaboration tools. Instead of having to log on to a different computer in each room or clinic, instead of leaving voicemails for colleagues to request information on a case, instead of having to locate a patient’s physical file or test results, care providers can carry at their fingertips the keys to all of that.

On a Windows 8 tablet equipped with an electronic health record and Office 365, they can securely access a patient’s records from multiple and even non-network care providers; form virtual teams with experts next door or across the world to provide the best care possible; examine test results; instant message with colleagues; take notes using touch, a stylus, a keyboard or voice dictation; and run a variety of healthcare apps including the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Mayo Clinic on Pregnancy or an electronic health records (EHR) app from Greenway Medical Technologies.

“Right now, healthcare providers’ ability to be productive and collaborative is limited by fixed devices and physical phones,” Schmuland says. “There are more than 1,500 new devices to choose from in the Windows 8 ecosystem, and the beauty of that is that in healthcare, one device never fits all. Some may prefer a clamshell, some a convertible laptop, and others a tablet as they move from room to room, patient to patient, and clinic to clinic.”

In addition to the capabilities of a mobile office in Windows 8, the cloud-powered Office 365 comes embedded with the security and IT controls required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which sets national standards for the security and privacy of electronic health care data.

“What’s particularly exciting is that Microsoft is uniquely the only major cloud productivity provider to offer a business associate agreement to enable customers to comply with HIPAA and to offer productivity, collaboration, relationship management, application hosting, and storage, backup and disaster recovery services that cover the complete range of public, hybrid and private cloud solutions,” Schmuland says.

This means that by using Windows 8 and Office 365 together, an organization of healthcare providers can do things like securely store and access private patient information, create an internal directory of physician areas of expertise, and even communicate securely with other health organizations using Office 365 to work and collaborate as if they were on the same team, even though they’re in separate organizations.

Microsoft has teamed up with healthcare providers large and small to provide the latest IT solutions, and the results have been positive, from massive healthcare systems to small-town clinics where physicians manage their own IT.

For instance, Advocate Health Care, the largest healthcare provider in Illinois, has 30,000 employees, 10 acute care hospitals, and two integrated children’s hospitals. The company adopted Office 365, and has used it in some innovative ways.

“They are using SharePoint to create a single network out of 250 care sites, so that each can connect to the other, but it all rolls up to the larger network,” Schmuland says.

Advocate Health Care is also using Office 365 tools to help track patients when they’re discharged and to make sure they’re following up with discharge instructions so they don’t relapse and end up back in the hospital. They’ve also created a database of provider skills, capabilities and interests that their staff can use to find expertise, topics or solve problems.

Mihills Webb Medical, a small family practice in Texas, has five care providers. By using Office 365, they realized they could improve workflow, reduce delays and reduce costs overall. With just one receptionist manning the front desk, relaying important patient information to doctors and nurses used to require placing calls that didn’t always get answered right away. Now, the receptionist can instant message nurses and doctors as soon as a patient walks in the door to begin the triage process, a practice that improves speed and enables employees to provide a better patient experience. Not only did Mihills Webb Medical improve its ability to collaborate, communicate and work as a team to deliver exceptional customer service; at the same time they drove down cost while meeting security and privacy regulatory requirements.

“Compliance in particular was critical for us, and it’s a non-negotiable requirement that we demand from our technology solution providers,” says Dr. Cody Mihills. “Because Microsoft cloud services are HIPAA-compliant and came with a HIPAA business associate agreement, we’ve used Office 365 to unify communications across the office with confidence. Tasks like coordinating schedules between employees and collaborating with peers outside the office who support patients now can be executed in an efficient, HIPAA-compliant manner. Office 365, from a business standpoint, has been a winning proposition.”

Schmuland says health IT is at a tipping point, and when organizations combine the power of Windows 8 and Office 365, along with exciting breakthroughs in electronic healthcare records and medical apps, all kinds of new things become possible.

“Usually the assumption has been that you have to have a complex solution to solve this complex problem of healthcare collaboration and service,” Schmuland says. “When a provider chooses Windows 8 and Office 365, they’re surprised not only at the ease of implementation, but at the cost being so much more favorable than traditional solutions.”

As this week’s HIMSS show demonstrates and as the industry continues to evolve, HIT holds new promise for clinicians and hospital administration, with Microsoft solutions serving as a critical component to making intelligent and mobile health a reality.

Rockford Health System Simplifies Electronic Health Record Management With Microsoft

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — March 4 , 2013 — Rockford Health System, the largest health group in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, had been using disparate electronic health applications for years, which resulted in the implementation of numerous separate systems for different departments and services. Clinicians had to keep track of a large number of usernames and passwords to access as many as 20 different applications for the data needed for patient care and billing. To simplify user access, eliminate fragmentation of health data, and modernize the system in accordance with meaningful use requirements, Rockford Health System invested in an intelligent system running on a Microsoft operating system to deploy a comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) to support integration of disparate health data applications and to provide badge-enabled enhanced sign-on at the point of care.

Accessing Health Records in One Tap
March 03, 2013
Rockford Health System has implemented a proximity-badge system to give clinicians single-tap access to health records from thin clients located throughout healthcare facilities.

With more than 3,000 employees across system locations including a 396-bed hospital, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation services and home healthcare, Rockford Health System is a vitally important regional health provider, offering emergency and trauma care, pediatrics, cardiology and neurology, and other specialties and services. To continue to provide award-winning services and care to its regional community of more than 400,000, Rockford wanted to simplify its processes and make secure system access easier for clinicians, administrative staff and other users.

“Working with multiple systems could be time-consuming and frustrating, because doctors and nurses had to remember a different user ID and password for each application,” says Shawn David, chief technology officer at Rockford Health System. “We also had to frequently reset forgotten passwords and add or delete credentials separately for every system — it was a lot of maintenance.”

In April 2010, Rockford Health System began to implement an intelligent system that brought together thin clients located at patient bedsides and throughout health facilities with proximity cards and readers for secure access to an enhanced sign-on system that replaces single sign-on to multiple applications, and an integrated health record system to unify disparate records. The system simplifies the clinician’s workday and provides quick, easy access to important health records at the point of care.

To access their patients’ health records at the start of their day, physicians, nurses or other Rockford staff members log into the system by simply “tapping” their ID proximity badge and entering their Active Directory password.
They tap their ID badge on a badge reader that is connected to a thin client running Windows Embedded Standard, located at the patient bedside, at a nursing station, or in a hallway or other convenient location. The single tap provides access in seconds to records as authorized by the clinician’s Active Directory credentials encrypted in a SQL database and associated with his or her badge number.
The Rockford Health System IT staff can set AD passwords to be saved for a specific length of time — for example, two hours. Each time a clinician taps into or taps out of a terminal, the time limit rolls over and the saved password is refreshed, meaning that clinicians who are active throughout the day will not have to re-enter their password. In addition, the password save rollover feature creates an incentive for clinicians to securely tap out, which reinforces HIPAA-compliant behavior.
If the clinician’s session times out because of inactivity, the clinician need only tap his or her badge to immediately re-access the session. Tapping out at the end of the session secures the patient’s record and clinician’s session, so that the next clinician to use the thin client will see only his or her own patient’s records, not those of the previous user session.
The thin client terminals use the HealthCast QwickACCESS enhanced sign-on solution to provide access to the EpicCare EMR solution, which brings together data from the numerous existing health record systems already in place at Rockford Health System. Clinicians can view patient charts, lab results, radiological images or other data without having to enter multiple usernames and passwords.
Health records do not reside on the terminals but are hosted on Rockford’s server and infrastructure systems. The centralized system ensures that individual records can be updated and accessed from terminals at any location, and helps to safeguard data and system security.
In addition, devices built on Windows Embedded deployed throughout Rockford Health System facilities, such as barcode scanners, signature pads and cameras, can be connected to the data system and the information accessed and used to help manage patient care, service or billing.
The HealthCast QwickACCESS solution utilizes Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server software and Active Directory Domain Services to manage clinician access and security, and leverage the intelligence and security built into those systems.

“What HealthCast does is to make access and security technology unobtrusive to clinicians so they can spend their time taking care of patients,” says Trip O’Donnell, senior vice president of business development at HealthCast. “They are not concerned with how they get into a computer or with data security; they just want to take care of their patients and get to their records as quickly as possible. We optimize secure access and speed to patient information, and automate as many processes as possible that they would otherwise have to do manually.”

Doctors and nurses no longer have to search among multiple applications to find the information they need to treat patients who need immediate care. The enhanced sign-on process alone means that clinicians can do in seconds what used to take 15 seconds or more — which may seem to be a small time savings, but with frequent logons for the clinical teams caring for patients, it can save up to 30 minutes per day, which is time now devoted to the care of their patients.

“As a busy physician, I look for any opportunity to save time,” says Dr. David Deutsch, a pediatric GI physician at Rockford Health System. “Multiple logins or extra clicks to access Epic are frustrating. Tapping into Epic using SSO is so easy and quick. Using this multiple times each day saves me a significant amount of time, which I really appreciate.”

Rockford Health System IT help desk staff members are also spending less time resetting usernames and passwords for clinicians who forgot them. In addition, the simpler user interface and centralized data hosting allow them to more quickly deploy new HP Windows Embedded Standard thin clients throughout the system. And because the thin clients can be easily deployed throughout facilities, clinicians do not feel the need to carry around their own handheld devices, eliminating the temptation to introduce personal hardware into the highly secure medical IT environment.

At present Rockford Health System has deployed 600 thin client devices in physicians’ office and clinics, and expects to install 400 more. The intelligent system with Microsoft also helps ensure that new patient care or service devices can be easily integrated into the system and the data made immediately available to those who need it.

“We feel that moving to an electronic health record will help us give our patients the best possible care and this is where healthcare is going,” says Rockford’s Shawn David. “Everybody is looking at implementing an electronic health record to improve patient care. For us, implementing the QwickACCESS enhanced sign-on solution with HP Windows Embedded Standard thin clients gives us a way to transition to something that’s new in the electronic world but still make it as easy as possible for clinicians to securely access and use that system.”

New Lab Envisions the Future of Work and Play

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – March 1, 2013 – The future of work and play is on display at Microsoft’s reimagined Envisioning Center, the result of collaboration between the company’s Strategic Prototyping team and Office Labs. Visitors can work on interactive desks, talk with colleagues through digital walls, and cook in a Kinect-enabled kitchen. Microsoft expects thousands of customers to explore the new space each year.

“We want to excite customers about the direction we're heading in and show that we are constantly thinking about new scenarios based on trends and real work in Microsoft Research and the business groups,” says Jonathan Cluts, director of Microsoft’s Strategic Prototyping team. “These scenarios are based on reality, not science fiction.”

“We don’t imagine that we’re predicting the future,” says Anton Andrews, director of Envisioning in Office Labs. “But it’s a case of staying on the cutting edge of the conversation, and promoting that conversation.”

Around the World With Windows Store Apps

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 26, 2013 – This week, thousands have descended upon Barcelona, Spain, for Mobile World Congress, the world’s premier mobile industry event. In honor of this international gathering, we’re celebrating Windows Store apps from around the world, along with stories of the people working behind the scenes to bring those apps to life on Windows 8.

‘Most Verbose’: Meet Microsoft's Original MVP

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 21, 2013 – It's 1993, and you need technical support. Who you gonna call?

Most techies at the time would plug in their modems and dial up CompuServe. In the days before Twitter, Facebook and broadband, CompuServe's forums were a gathering place for geeks to talk shop and get answers to burning questions.

Calvin Hsia
February 21, 2013
Calvin Hsia, pictured here with his son Tyler, started Microsoft’s MVP program 20 years ago as a simple list of “most verbose” people on a forum.

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Calvin Hsia, a developer who lived in Hawaii, thought it might be fun to figure out who posted the most. So he wrote a program that could download, organize and tabulate hundreds of daily forum messages. He then published a list of hundreds of the forum's "Most Verbose People," as he liked to call them.

Microsoft saw value in that verbosity, so much so that the members of "Calvin's List," along with its creator, became Microsoft's first Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs).

As part of the launch of the program, the MVP Award was created in 1993 to thank exceptional, independent community leaders who — often verbosely — share their passion, technical expertise and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others. This week, as Microsoft celebrates the 20th anniversary of the MVP Award, the original group of 34 award winners has swelled a hundredfold. Hsia was among the attendees who honored the milestone at this week's MVP Global Summit, not as an award recipient — he became a Microsoft employee 19 years ago — but as a supporter.

"Our MVPs are incredibly important to the company," said Hsia, a senior software development engineer (SDE) on Microsoft’s Visual Studio team. "They help our customers, they act as beta testers and they give us honest feedback. They're huge for us."

He isn't the only fan. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also expressed his gratitude for the community's longstanding passion.

"For 20 years, the insight and feedback from the MVP community has helped drive and shape Microsoft's product advancements," Ballmer says. "The contributions that MVPs make to technical communities is invaluable, and I deeply appreciate their passion as well as all that they do for our customers."

This year Microsoft honored 3,800 MVPs across 90 Microsoft technologies. Every day, MVPs reach 1 million customers through social media, in forums, at user group gatherings and as presenters at technology conferences around the world.

That reach makes them the company's "best buddies," says S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division.

"These are our best and most passionate customers, those who take it upon themselves to learn about everything we're doing, to provide invaluable feedback and to then help the rest of the world discover and make the most of our technologies,” he says. “I view our MVPs as ambassadors to the technologies and work that we do at Microsoft."

A Dev in Paradise

Hsia didn't need much to create his original MVP list — just a little code and a dial-up connection via his blisteringly fast (and much bigger than a bread box) US$549 2400 baud modem.

That code helped Hsia stay on top of the 700-plus daily messages posted on the forum for FoxPro, the database program at the heart of his consulting business. At the time, Hsia mostly stayed away from Microsoft products. But after the company began publishing FoxPro, he changed his tune. The company was pouring a lot of resources into improving the database, and Hsia took notice.

Meanwhile, the MVP Award helped him gain a reputation as a FoxPro whiz. If someone posted a question on CompuServe's forums, Hsia usually had an answer.

That technical expertise attracted attention in Redmond. One day Hsia got a question from a senior Microsoft executive: did he want a job at Microsoft? He handed the phone to "the boss" — aka his wife — who listened for 30 seconds, said "No thanks," and hung up.

"We live in Hawaii!" she said.

The young couple eventually changed their minds and made the move to the Seattle area. Hsia became an SDE working on FoxPro. He continued to maintain “Calvin's List,” but the conversation soon drifted from CompuServe to other forums and websites. Today, he ranks the top MSDN and TechNet blogs.

Hsia also stayed in touch with the MVP community, listening to their feedback about the various products he worked on throughout his career. They really are Microsoft's most valuable — and verbose — external community, he says, and over the years they have played a big part in changing public perception of "big, bad Microsoft" among customers.

"Our MVPs — they're out there trying to help our customers every day,” Hsia says. “And in doing that, they really help us."

Hsia himself perhaps best articulated the value and spirit of MVPs 20 years ago, when CompuServe Magazine profiled him shortly after winning his award: "I know how difficult it is for an independent developer to see all angles to a problem, and I know how nice it is to receive a reply with a solution. It's extremely gratifying to know that I've helped solve somebody's problem."

A ‘Golden Era’ of Insight: Big Data’s Bright Future

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 15, 2013 – At Microsoft Research labs around the world, some very deep thinkers are contemplating big data.

Eric Horvitz
February 14, 2013
Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft and co-director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab.

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This includes Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft and co-director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab, who was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his work in “computational mechanisms for decision making under uncertainty and with bounded resources.”

He sees a future where machines, fueled by large amounts of data, can become “empowering, lifelong digital companions” who know what you want or need (be it pizza or medicine), where you want to go (be it Hawaii or the most traffic-free route to the ball game) and generally work with a passion on your behalf.

Capturing data, storing it, interpreting it, and leveraging it can provide insights on small and large scales, and in high-tech and mainstream fields alike, Horvitz said.

“In today’s world, effective large-scale data analytics for predictive modeling, visualization, and discovery are becoming central for success in many areas.”

Microsoft News Center recently spoke to Horvitz about how Microsoft Research (MSR) is investing time and talent in the area of big data and machine intelligence, what breakthroughs MSR has made, and his vision for the future of these fields.

MNC: Why do you think there is such a buzz around big data right now?

Horvitz: Buzzwords arise for variety of reasons. In this case, I believe a confluence of several factors led to the popular use of that catchy phrase. One is the data that’s being collected in unprecedented quantities now on a variety of fronts, and advances in computer science – in sensing, storage and networking. Large amounts of data are being collected in part because of the shift of many human activities to the Web – and that has made it easy to collect transactions and events of various kinds in stream with activities. This includes everything from e-commerce to cars driving over sensors in roads to smartphone services leveraging location data, to healthcare. In healthcare, the explosion of genomics and the increasing capture of clinical data in hospitals has brought gigabytes and terabytes of patient data into databases – and we are in the early days of biomedical informatics. Storage also has become very inexpensive compared to what it used to be. We used to talk about maybe one day having terabytes of data. Now terabytes are something your kids can carry on a small drive in their pocket as they go to middle school. On the computational side, there have been advances with computational procedures we use to harness data for multiple interesting uses – such as building predictive models from data. As examples, we can leverage data to make real-time predictions about a computer user’s changing intentions or interests and learn to recognize someone’s gestures. We can learn from patient data to predict the likelihood that a patient will be readmitted after their discharge from a hospital.

MNC: What makes Microsoft Research’s machine learning research unique from others in the field?

Horvitz: Microsoft Research is well known as an open research lab where we promote research freedom to publish on our results and advances. That has attracted the best and the brightest people. Folks at MSR are energized by a stream of interesting real-world challenges. They also have access to large data resources – and the tantalizing opportunity to get one’s best ideas into into the hands of hundreds of millions of people. Our researchers investigating machine learning are very much part of the larger community of researchers worldwide pursuing studies in machine intelligence. Beyond machine learning, this reseach includes machine perception, automated reasoning and decision making. Machine learning runs deep in the DNA of Microsoft Research; the area of work was one of a few early critical priority areas that we invested in.

Today, people doing machine learning research across our labs are a substantial intellectual force. This includes teams of deep thinkers working on core principles as well as applications. We have teams of folks doing machine learning in Redmond, Cambridge, Beijing, Bangalore, Silicon Valley, New England and New York City. Together, these groups form one of the largest machine learning efforts in the world.

MNC: What are some ways that MSR machine learning research has found its way into Microsoft products?

Horvitz: Numerous effort s have found their way into Microsoft products and services. Many of these successes stem from very close collaborations between people at MSR and folks on the product teams. As one example, Microsoft Research did the core work on learning how to rank items. This work led to Bing’s core methods for ranking search results in response to user queries. MSR is also well-known for is its work in vision systems – machines that can see and recognize what they’re seeing – as well as speech recognition and translation. When you use Bing voice search or Bing translator, you’re leveraging core MSR machine learning efforts.

Our Cambridge team is well known for methods that learn to understand how to take an image and to segment and categorize it; this valuable and innovative work was a critical enabler for the Kinect, which can identify people and their gestures in a room.

MSR is also known for applying machine learning research in the field of biomedical informatics and other aspects of clinical healthcare. In the Redmond lab, we’ve had major efforts in harnessing and utilizing the large quantities of clinical data coming out of hospitals now to build predictive models for guiding decision-making in hospitals. These systems are at work as I speak, in hospitals around enhancing healthcare. Another application is Bing Maps and Bing Directions, which provides traffic-sensitive directions for 72 cities in North America. Bing Directions uses methods from MSR that showed how we can learn from histories of traffic data how to predict real-time flows on all streets in a greater city region. Machine learning even occurs deep in the Windows operating system. MSR teamed with Windows to develop a real-time prefetching system that runs in Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows continues to learn from users about their patterns of activity and then makes predictions about next actions – making the operating system even faster.

MNC: What are some goals of this extensive machine intelligence research?

Horvitz: The directions and goals are broad, from explorations of the basic science of machine learning to understanding how to best solve particular classes of data and perform specific tasks. We also explore the development of more efficient and powerful tools to support the engineering practice of machine learning. On this front, we’ve been exploring the development of tools and methods that let non-experts or or semi-experts do a great job with their own predictive modeling and data analytics. This is a very, very interesting challenge – to put the power in the hands of end users – typically, this kind of analytical power has only been in the hands of machine learning experts and statisticians .

MNC: That sounds like an immense challenge. Where do you start in trying to make machine intelligence available to the masses?

Horvitz: In machine learning, numerous algorithmic procedures have been developed; each typically comes with levers and knobs for tuning the methods to the data and task at hand. Questions arise about which method is best to use for a particular dataset and learning task. There are also challenges with cleaning, preparing and anonymizing raw data so it can be easily processed and analyzed. There are multiple danger zones in machine learning, and new kinds of tools can help people to specify what it is they want to learn and how to validate the accuracy of the predictions made by the models that they build. Then there’s decision making. This centers on how to guide actions and policies in the world based on predictions. We’re working to create new kinds of tools that guide data collection, analysis and testing – and that also provide end users with insights about visualization and decision making.

MNC: What are some of the other hurdles in the world of machine learning?

Horvitz: One challenge that we’ve been taking on is machines that can understand and even translate conversational speech. Sometimes small gains in accuracy have big implications for the competency of a system. Recently, (MSR Chief Research Officer) Rick Rashid demonstrated in front of a large audience in Tianjin, China, the ability to do real-time translation from English to Mandarin Chinese. He was talking freely and having his speech translated and then re-rendered in his own voice – he was speaking Mandarin in real time. That translation pipeline was enabled by several technologies, but in some ways the most salient and surprising innovation was a surprising increase in the accuracy of speech recognition for conversational speech. That’s just happened in the last couple of years, and was the result of research and experimentation at MSR on new directions in machine learning.

MNC: So what aspects of big data will Microsoft Research focus on?

Horvitz: There are so many fun and promising directions. I have to say, it’s really an exciting opportunity area – and we’re at an exciting time. Looking out at the longer-term future, I expect that machine learning, and machine intelligence more broadly, is going to provide us with foundational new tools for doing scientific research, and that many breakthroughs over the next few decades will come as a collaboration between people and the machine learning and reasoning tools. There are opportunities to learn new things from large amounts of data, including getting to the bottom of healthcare mysteries by going through data with automated learning tools – some of which can recognize causality, that A actually causes B.

Another direction is working to weave together a set of technologies – machine learning, speech recognition, natural language understanding, machine vision and decision making – to create systems that act like bright collaborators and that complement human intellect in new kinds of ways.

On another front, there’s a great deal of opportunity to do new kinds of search and retrieval on the Web. We’re also applying machine learning in new ways to pick out signals in large amounts of population data. For example, in recent work, we’ve developed a way to discover clues about medication side effects in anonymized search logs. I believe that data-centric methods will change the world in so many ways, with influences on health, education, science and commerce.

MNC: If you were to get a bit Jules Verne, what could all of this research mean for the future?

Horvitz: Looking out to the future, I believe that there’s an opportunity to build systems that really become empowering, lifelong digital companions that deeply understand what it is you want to do, where you want to go, what you want to learn, what you need to do to stay healthy, what your good and less good at, and that continue to work on your behalf to assist and to complement you. Work on several fronts is already providing some foreshadowing wisps of wider possibilities.

MNC: Why did you get into this field?

Horvitz: I have long been interested in understanding the human mind and my curiosity led me from biology to physics to the world of information and computation. Beyond that core pursuit, I’ve come to be excited over the years with applying principles of learning and decision making in real-world applications that provide value – while somehow being related to the big questions about thinking systems. I’ve had a blast working with and alongside fabulous colleagues on principles and applications. And at a place like Microsoft Research, we all have this tantalizing “lever” in mind – with a fulcrum at the horizon. Our next innovation or idea could really move the planet, via having an influence on Microsoft’s products and services.

MNC: All in a day’s work, huh?

Horvitz: [Laughing] Exactly. But I’m serious about this, we’re not kidding around.

MNC: The Harvard Business Review has declared the data scientist the new sexiest job.

Horvitz: That’s great. You might say that, in some ways, computer science and other engineering fields have suffered over the years in that people making career choices had been looking for “noble endeavors” – in fields like healthcare and law. I believe that the computational sciences are becoming the noble endeavors of our time, because computing enables so many other things from aerospace to healthcare to science to law to government.

Editor’s note – Feb. 15, 2013 – Several updates were made post publication.

Big Data + Great Western Bank = Triumph in a Time of Austerity

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 14, 2013 — Remember 2008? It was the year the Great Recession descended, bringing the global economy to a near-standstill. The financial meltdown on Wall Street flowed through main streets around the globe, destroying many community banks in its path. In fact, according to the IMF, through 2010 the recession had already drained a whopping $3.4 trillion from financial institutions around the world.

Ron Van Zanten
February 13, 2013
Ron Van Zanten, vice president of Data Quality at Great Western Bank.

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Which makes Great Western Bank’s story truly amazing. As some institutions shuttered and shrank, Great Western reinvested – in its people, customers and in how it uses technology to make its business better.

And it grew. Great Western Bank is now one of the largest banks in the United States, with 200 branches and over 400,000 customers. The bank has expanded by more than 300 percent since 2008 and continues to have ambitious growth plans.

To support these plans, Great Western Bank needed a technology solution that would enable increased profitability and better insight into customer relationships.

MNC: How will big data enable Great Western Bank to achieve your growth plans in the coming years?

Van Zanten : Big data gives us a 360 degree view of our customers. It allows us to understand customer activity, such as clicks through our webpages or ads. We can also compare that activity with the products those customers use – such checking or savings accounts or loans – and whether they are happy with, if they want a new product offered what it could be. So we can start to predict what types of engagements or services they are looking for. It also allows us to understand the behaviors of potential customers: what are they looking for when they go to our website, which products do they examine.

We are able to analyze employee actions and customer interactions and measure against results, to see which activities increase the bottom line. And we can see which activities are not adding value. For example, a customer that just opened a checking may get a call within a couple days asking how her experience was, and to talk about additional products or services. This is a legacy process that provided an opportunity for the bank to offer whatever products were currently being sold (such as credit cards and a new promotion). But that might not be the best product for everybody. So now, we can build these relationships more effectively - bringing opportunities forward that our customers want to hear about.

MNC: How are executives at your banks embracing big data?

Van Zanten : Our executives are under the same pressure to perform and do more with less. This data is the best way to move the dial and prove the dial is moved. If they don’t have the analytics to defend what they spent money on, they can be in a tough spot. So out of necessity, our executives are in. Some people are interested in it because of their background – the risk department has seen how trends and analytics really changed the financial industry. Business bankers are the guys who shake customers’ hands; they can come back and prove a customer is profitable, and that the return on equity is where the bank wants to be – because that’s what they’re measured on.

Having data that can quickly and easily be analyzed by our bankers turns out to be a corporate asset. It becomes a way for bankers to pilot programs they were unable to justify before.

MNC: What tools are you using to manage all of this data?

Van Zanten : We use the Microsoft stack – SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 – as the core engine to bring all our internal and external data sources together to classifying it and get it standardized. We are able to relate all systems together through the concept of time, which is really linear. Then we can build a cause and effect diagram and relate data back customer. This is where we start to see some important trends, because we can link to customer accounts, their demographic data, biographical data, and activities related to that customer or like customers.

As for reporting, PowerPivot allows us to get information in front of users that is consistently valuable. In my previous life we had a huge data warehouse and thousands of reports. There were 7,000 reports in and 1,500 weren’t being used anymore. With PowerView, people can interact with the data, and either get to the quick answer or manipulate the data to a point where it is a useful, productive report. – Then they have the option of publishing via Microsoft SharePoint in order to share with their teams, or request an analyst to make a formal report that is a supported production item.

MNC: Why did you choose Microsoft?

Van Zanten : I had used the Microsoft stack before and I knew it would scale well beyond our size. I previously had a 30 terabyte database and it served thousands of people and about 20,000 report executions a day. I knew we could scale, and I knew it would be flexible enough to connect with all of our different data sources. SQL Server always allows us to build a schema and model that fit our bank, with our naming convention, and present it in a manner that our bankers are comfortable with (via pivot tables in Microsoft Excel).

Bankers have been living in the Microsoft Office environment for 20 years, so I didn’t have to retrain people on the tool. They felt comfortable with the data, and the tools they were using were familiar to them. It’s a lot easier to get them to trust what’s going on and get them to interact with the data warehouse.

MNC: What is the bottom line impact on your business?

Van Zanten : We get cost savings from eliminating activities that are not adding value to the bank. With a data warehouse, we can look at the effectiveness of mailing or calling campaigns or follow-up visits, and relate back to the performance of that customer after the fact. We can even figure out if the activity in a branch is justifying enough value for the branch’s existence.

This is the billion dollar question in banking. Does a bank need 4,000 branches? All banks are afraid to give them up, because this was their homestead. Traditionally a branch location allowed a bank to own that neighborhood, and they would have coverage to interact with customers. But now, people are doing banking on mobile phones, on the internet, on the phone, etc.

At Great Western Bank, less and less of our customers go into a branch each year. What is the new value proposition for that? What kind of infrastructure do we need to ensure we can support those customers, to ensure we still have that connection, that our customers feel engaged? Connections are so lightweight, there is no sense of loyalty. So, we can now understand if there is a lift from TV commercials or mailers. Those measurements were historically done by feel (from branch managers, etc.), but banks no longer have the margins to make these decisions ad hoc. There has to be a justifiable return on investment, and the data warehouse can make that happen.

It’s almost a necessity for banks to measure their customers and measure their activities. Banks that take this step will talk to customers in increasingly effective ways and customers will eventually feel a bond with this bank. For examples, mailers aren’t the best way to engage a 20-year-old kid that only wants to interact via mobile phones. But if you can build these touch points these people will be customers for 50 years. If you can establish a strong product suite with a customer (such as bill pay, online banking, checking accounts or loans), you’re in a much better spot than trying to talk them into coming in their 40s.

Big Data? No Biggie. Microsoft Partners Have Your Business Covered

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:17:59 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 13, 2013 – IT departments are being overrun with big data – gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes of data – that is racing through their servers, often untamed and uncontrolled, with more data crowding onto the IT network every day, every hour.

While businesses can choose to keep all this data penned up, they are missing an opportunity to mine valuable business intelligence from their big data unless they harness it and analyze the information they have corralled, using that insight to gain a competitive edge. While a portion of this big data is well-organized information on products and finances, much of it is unstructured, from social media posts and photos to disparate research findings and customer feedback.

Microsoft has developed a range of solutions to manage big data and to help companies both understand and share valuable insights across their organizations. While Microsoft could offer its own big datasheet on these solutions, their value can be best appreciated in the success stories of Microsoft partners. We asked a handful of Microsoft partners to provide advice and insights on the ways big data can change a business in a big way, transforming a stampede into an organized flow of critical information. Check out what Microsoft partners Infusion, BlueGranite and Neudesic have to say about big data.

Q: What does the term big data mean to you? What do your customers think when they hear big data?

Infusion: Big data means the exploitation of very large data stores and the underlying technologies to manipulate those stores. For our customers, big data can mean a variety of things, usually the utilization of large data sets for specific business purposes. For some clients, large equals several gigabytes; for others, it means mean terabytes. For this reason, the definition, even within our firm, is fluid and inexact.

BlueGranite : Big data is an evolution of traditional data warehousing and business intelligence solutions to accommodate greater data volumes and increased data variety. The goal remains the same: extracting insights from data to make better decisions and improve organizational effectiveness.

Customers are interested in incorporating a greater variety of data for analysis, including unstructured or semi-structured data sources, such as call records, survey responses, or social media content.

Neudesic : Big data means we are coming into an age that requires us to understand more about how we can leverage extremely large amounts of data that has been created over the recent past and couple it with ongoing data creation and the ability to leverage it in the business to gain a true competitive advantage.

Most of our customers understand they have a lot of data that has been stored over the years, and they have been waiting for ways to dive into this data to make it into tribal knowledge.

Q: What is the most common frustration customers experience when it comes to the amount of data and information their organization acquires?

BlueGranite: In some cases, customers are already collecting a great deal of the information they need to monitor and analyze their organization. Unfortunately, often the data isn't integrated properly, or data quality is an issue, hindering their ability to utilize the data effectively.

Another issue we see is the challenge IT teams face in keeping pace with changing business requirements. The formal, corporate data warehouse and business intelligence solutions might not evolve quickly enough to address the specific information needs present in the various departments and teams across the business. That's leading to a drive toward more ad-hoc and self-service solutions developed by power users and data analysts in tools like Excel and PowerPivot. Most organizations should expect and plan for a mix of corporate-governed formal BI and user-driven ad-hoc and self- service BI solutions.

Q: How do you assess the right solution for each customer?

Neudesic : We apply an approach we have used time and time again to understand the business through a series of assessments, discussions and interviews with both the business and technical staff. This helps us understand the applications that can be built with little technical difficulty and offer a high value to the business – leading to the creation and isolating of quick wins.

Q: Typically how long does it take for a customer to realize the benefits of these solutions?

Neudesic : Once we have gone through our strategic roadmap assessment they will start seeing an immediate impact within the first few sprints of work using our agile process; this means weeks, not months.

From the day we start to the day your end users are employing their first parts of the software, it can be as quick as eight weeks. This would be with a roadmap already laid out to follow for the next few years of their big data development.

Q: What’s the next trend or solution when it comes to big data?

Infusion: The current trend points to the integration of big data with the cloud. Gradually, companies are acclimatizing to the idea of storing sensitive data in the cloud, as providers such as Microsoft are addressing concerns around security and privacy in real time – removing the barriers that have caused companies to pause in the past. Given the heavy hardware requirements around big data, and the simultaneous push from users wanting to access it more and more from a myriad of devices, it will be interesting to see how cloud technology might benefit this space, i.e., “Data on Demand.”

Q: Are certain industries more open than others to implementing solutions that allow them to work with big data (retail, financial services, manufacturing, etc.)?

Infusion: Data-intensive and mature industries, such as financial services and manufacturing, are most open to implementations around big data. Such verticals, which depend on information for their survival, are more open to cutting-edge technologies to store and exploit it. In particular, Infusion has done considerable work with Wall Street and Bay Street clients with end-results that are smart and intuitive.

BlueGranite : Certainly, the data-intensive industries, such as financial services, healthcare and retail, are adopting big data solutions. Common scenarios in these industries include predicting customer churn, detecting fraud, and spotting patterns in top selling or lagging product sales. We also see interesting solutions in manufacturing, such as analyzing a production process to predict and avoid failures.

Neudesic: A number of industries that require quick actions, which means quick decisions like what you see in financial brokerage, manufacturing and healthcare, are also quickest to harness big data. This will blend the business intelligence systems we see today, with real-time structured and unstructured data feeds, with a completely natural-speech-driven interface.

High Stakes: Businesses Make Big Data Bets

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 13, 2013 – For the first time in history, it’s going to start raining information.

Eron Kelly
February 12, 2013
Eron Kelly, general manager of product marketing for Microsoft SQL Server.

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Hallelujah or headache? For businesses, it’s all about being ready to ride this perfect storm of big data – and their understanding of what’s at stake.

“I think everything’s at stake,” said Eron Kelly, general manager of product marketing for Microsoft SQL Server. “Organizations that harness the power of big data will outperform their peers.”

Digital data is now more vast than all the world’s oceans (there is 2.7 zetabytes of data on the planet versus the 1.37 zettalitres of seawater) and it’s multiplying at breakneck speed. And it’s just as easy to drown in information if your organization doesn’t have the right tools to garner useful insights from big data, Kelly said.

Today, the promise of big data remains largely unfilled. Microsoft’s goal is to make big data accessible to the masses, Kelly said. Whether it’s businesses, educational institutions, healthcare companies or governments, if organizations don’t take full advantage of all of the information around them, they will fall behind.

As big data becomes more mainstream, the tools used to manage it must follow suit, which is why Microsoft has invested in providing a wide-ranging suite of tools for all types of users – the geneticist sequencing and comparing DNA, a bed-and-breakfast owner looking at occupancy rates alongside weather data, or a car manufacturer looking for ways to increase productivity and reduce inefficiencies.

“Those that are able to derive insights from data will make better decisions,” Kelly said. “They’ll be more efficient, and they’ll move whatever agenda it is that they have forward much faster than those that don’t.”

Tools of the Trade

Dave Campbell, a technical fellow at Microsoft, has a degree in robotics and has worked with large data sets his entire career. About five years ago he started investigating big data issues in earnest.

Why the buzz now, he asked himself recently. What has fundamentally changed?

His conclusion is that big data, and its potential applications in business and beyond, have reached a tipping point. There are several reasons for this, he said. First, more data than ever is available in digital form. Data storage is now inexpensive and plentiful. And, finally, more advanced computers and software are handling the new deluge of data with gymnastic algorithms that can help spot never-before-seen trends and provide new insight.

What’s more, the technology needed to harness big data is available in the cloud, which makes it even more accessible for businesses – no up-front costs or infrastructure are needed to get going.

Armed with an understanding of the worth of big data, Campbell said, businesses should think of their data in two different dimensions of value – refined data, and combined data. Microsoft can help with both, he said.

Dave Campbell
February 12, 2013
Dave Campbell, technical fellow at Microsoft.

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Businesses can store large amounts of data with Windows Server, and once they have all of their data, they can manage and refine their structured databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Using their structured data, most universally found in databases that use Structured Query Language (SQL), businesses can select exact pieces of that data using columns and rows – perhaps the rows with a certain zip code or the columns with a specific product type.

However, one of the biggest areas of growth and opportunity in big data is around unstructured data. This data, which includes everything from email and Tweets to photos on Flickr and likes on Facebook, doesn’t have the architecture of structured data but can be just as valuable to a business.

Microsoft is working with communities around Hadoop, an open-source data platform for managing unstructured data, to help customers work will all types of data, both structured and unstructured.

“Being able to reach out and combine the data I have and to work with other groups and organization to bring in the world’s data provides a tremendous amount of value,” Campbell said. “Our approach is to put tools in the hands of businesses and other users that will allow them to derive their own insights.”

Microsoft is also working to integrate Hadoop with SQL Server and Windows Azure to ensure customers can combine all their data sources. The Windows Azure Marketplace can help businesses find trustworthy third-party data to combine with their own.

“Say I have a hotel on the beach in Florida, and I want to bring in weather data to improve my business planning for my hotel’s occupancy, and to better forecast room rates and demand. Now I can take my data, and combine it with information from an outside organization without making a lot of investment,” Kelly said.

Ashvini Sharma
February 12, 2013
Ashvini Sharma, group program manager in Microsoft’s Office Business Intelligence team.

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With a firm handle on their data, and by incorporating outside data that can be combined with in-house data to help it pack an insightful punch, businesses can then turn to Microsoft’s business intelligence capabilities within Office, for example. Applications such as Excel, PowerPivot and SharePoint can help them find insight, analyze, and visualize that data.

“We know users, we know what they’re looking for, and we can provide them highly accessible ways of making a decision,” said Ashvini Sharma, group program manager in Microsoft’s Office Business Intelligence team.

Sharma said the main people using big data today are data scientists and others who are highly proficient at using technological tools. But that is all changing, and Microsoft will provide a familiar and intuitive platform for accessing big data, he said.

Sharma spoke to a business customer last year who was trying to incorporate more big data insight. Because Hadoop runs on Linux, the company would remotely connect its PCs to a Linux machine; open a text editor where they would type a query to Hadoop using the data warehouse system Hive to execute a search in that system; and then wait for minutes, hours or days for the search to return the search results. The company would FTP the search results back to PCs to open them.

“This is what people are doing today to get insights out of the big data world,” Sharma said.

What if businesses could run the query with their existing tools such as Office and save all of that effort? This is the big data value Microsoft is bringing to businesses.

”You’ll just take what you already know today and extend it to a new set of technology to get insights and wisdom you used to have to wait or ask others to get for you,” Sharma said.

Microsoft even uses its own big data tools, including Bing, to deliver more than 100 petabytes of data in the form of search results; at Microsoft Advertising to target 14 billion ads per month; at Kinect for Xbox 360, where machine learning and sensors have revolutionized hands-free controlling; and at Exchange, where Microsoft uses machine learning to detect spam in up to four billion e-mails a day.

Microsoft’s Hottest Gear for the New Year

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Editor’s note – Feb. 13, 2013 – Zumba Fitness Core was removed from the slideshow below post-production .

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 13, 2012 — Whether you’re working to keep new year’s resolutions or getting ready for spring, Microsoft has tech to help you get fit, keep you connected with friends and family, and stay motivated to achieve your goals. Explore our top tech tips and product picks this season, including Surface, Windows 8 PCs, Windows Phones, Xbox 360 and Kinect, Office 365 Home Premium, Bing and Skype.

Head to your local Microsoft retail store or Microsoftstore.com for more information.

Up Next: The Weather Channel Forecasts the Business Value of Big Data

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 12, 2012 — Weather is money. It can be a fickle profit maker or shaker. Weather can propel an upstart skydiving outfit in Argentina, while freezing up national economies in Asia. And the more precisely businesses, nations and people can understand, predict and plan for weather, the more money they can make. So it’s no wonder organizations big and small, across industries and continents, seek the very best weather information to help create their own fortunes.

Bryson Koehler
February 11, 2013
Bryson Koehler, chief information officer at The Weather Company (TWC).

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Here’s where The Weather Company (TWC), the parent company of The Weather Channel, comes in. TWC understands that weather forecasts are much more than a reason to stay up for the 11 o’clock news; weather provides a healthy business opportunity that extends far beyond a segment on a TV news broadcast. And, according to The Weather Company Chief Information Officer Bryson Koehler, the recent rise in data volume, velocity and variety only means TWC can improve their forecasts at perpetually faster rates.

MNC: So what does big data mean for The Weather Company?

Koehler: We are big data. Weather is probably the biggest big data platform. Weather plays a massive role in how you work, how you live, how you play and how you shop. It impacts a significant portion of the world’s activity, and big data is about understanding how consumer behavior intersects with and is influenced by weather.

MNC: What led The Weather Company to implement a big data solution?

Koehler: The most intriguing part of this story is that weather is all around us and it impacts decisions we make on a daily basis; it’s the largest influencer in your life that you don’t always pay attention to. However weather is also entrenched in the business world, providing us with an opportunity to help companies make intelligent decisions as it relates to weather. And as you know, weather is dynamic. Figuring out the weather once doesn’t matter. What does matter is that once you understand how people have reacted to weather in the past, you can extrapolate to predict how people will act in the future. This is fascinating to us, and maintaining our position as the world’s best weather forecasting organization is really an exercise of big data.

MNC: What are your business goals in terms of big data capabilities with forecasting?

Koehler: We provide services to industries including aviation, energy and many local broadcast television networks in the United States. With big data, we are helping our customers understand the data, so that they can take action. For example, sometimes the weather impacts travel at the last minute. The reality behind the scenes is that we knew very well—six hours or three days in advance—exactly what was going to happen. If we take weather as a big data exercise, we can help our customers act on that data to forecast the impact that it would have on aviation flight paths and systems, as one example.

MNC: Has anything surprised you since you started to implement big data solutions?

Koehler: The most surprising thing is how large the impact of big data is on day-to-day business and how little everyone has known about the specifics of those impacts.

MNC: Does leveraging big data tools make it easier for The Weather Company to give people better information on how weather can impact them?

Koehler: Advertisers can make real-time decisions around the ads they buy or run based on the weather—for a better return on their investment. We know that when it’s cold, people buy soup. But how cold does it need to be? We can define the trigger conditions for increased soup sales—X degrees, X wind chill, and X cloud cover. The ability to personalize data to target consumers who are in the right place and have the right conditions is a really big deal.

MNC: How much data does The Weather Company manage?

Koehler: The implementation we’re working on now combines data and moves it to a non-relational data store when it makes sense. We call this the SUN Platform, our storage utility network. With this deployment, we will centralize our multiple petabytes of data and the 10 or 20 terabytes of weather data that we ingest every day. We manage both a high velocity of data and a large long-term cache of historical weather information.

MNC: Is big data changing the way your company delivers content and people consume it?

Koehler: Regardless of how it’s delivered –on television networks, mobile applications or websites—weather information drives behavior. You don’t need a lot of data to describe a sunny day. You need a lot of data when you have a complex storm system moving through a city. Instead of delivering the same weather forecasts to everyone, we can personalize and enhance the consumer experience. You’ll see a lot of changes to our product as we continue to learn how weather drives consumer behavior.

MNC: Is there anything you’re doing to empower your employees to manage big data?

Koehler: The first thing is getting the right systems and architecture in place. The speed at which people want to store new data continues to increase, so we need to be flexible and responsive to requests for any type of data. If somebody says she needs pollen data for the weather in Scotland, we need to ensure that we can categorize, store and synthesize that data through our products very quickly.

MNC: What is Microsoft doing to support The Weather Company in getting insights from big data?

Koehler: Microsoft is doing a great job of helping people understand why big data is valuable and how companies can use it to improve their business. Microsoft also provides an incredible set of tools and technologies that make it possible to glean insights from big data. But it is more important right now to educate executive teams and decision makers about why big data is important to them.

MNC: Why did you choose Microsoft for your big data solutions?

Koehler: The question I would ask is: why do we continue to choose Microsoft? I view Microsoft as a strategic business partner in terms of the overall technology foundation that we’re putting in place. Microsoft products are uniquely positioned to solve big data problems.

MNC: Do you have information or anecdotes you’d like to add?

Koehler: Weather influences more than a third of the world’s GDP on a daily basis. It’s a foundational arm of any big data strategy. The Weather Company is excited about partnering with Microsoft and organizations around the world to leverage data that helps everybody make better business decisions.

Autolib’ Brings Intelligent Car-Sharing to the Streets of Paris and Suburbs

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

PARIS — Feb. 12, 2013 — Paris is known for its broad boulevards, its picturesque side streets and its heavy traffic. Autolib’, an innovative car-sharing service, is helping make the traffic more manageable through a fleet of compact electric cars and an array of flexible services designed to help drivers reduce their reliance on privately owned cars — all connected and managed through an intelligent system based on Microsoft technology in the cars and at the points of registration, rental and service.

Autolib’ Brings Car-Sharing to Paris Area
The Autolib’ car-sharing service, featuring the all-electric Bluecar, uses Microsoft technology in its registration and rental kiosks, in the in-car systems, and in the handheld devices used by agents to serve drivers. The service is designed to reduce traffic congestion and emissions in Paris and its surrounding suburbs by making energy-efficient vehicles available as drivers need them, decreasing reliance on privately owned gas-powered cars.

The city government, in collaboration with 46 surrounding municipalities, established requirements for a car-sharing service that would serve the more than 1 million people who drive into or through Paris each day and offer flexibility for the majority of Parisians who do not own cars. In February 2011, the cities selected the Bollore Group to design and develop the service. Bollore was already marketing the Bluecar, a four-person electric vehicle built around a powerful lithium metal polymer battery designed by the company; IER, a subsidiary of the Bollore Group, was given the task of designing and creating the technology and infrastructure for a car-sharing service that would make the Bluecar available to Autolib’ members.

The technology for the Autolib’ program consists of five major elements, including three kinds of kiosk for registration, rental and vehicle charging; an in-car system for driver access, navigation and customer assistance; and Ambassador handhelds to monitor vehicle location, charging levels and maintenance.

Registration kiosk. Seventy freestanding enclosed kiosks located throughout Paris and its suburbs enable new users to join the program within minutes. The kiosks, which run Windows Embedded POSReady, enable registrants to scan a credit card and valid driver’s license, connect to a customer service agent via videoconference, and within minutes receive an RFID-enabled membership card that grants access to the 1,750 Bluecars in the Autolib’ fleet. More than 60,000 subscribers have enrolled in plans ranging from one day to one week, month or year.
Rental kiosk. Autolib’ members check in with a membership card and use the Windows Embedded POSReady-based touch-screen system to reserve the most fully charged car near their location — which may be right next to the kiosk or a short distance away if no car is available at the nearest station. The kiosk provides a map and directions; if the nearest station is empty, the kiosk shows the closest stations at which a car may be reserved, or lets members connect to a customer service agent if additional assistance is needed.
Charging station. There are 1,750 electric cars available at 750 charging stations throughout Paris and its surrounding suburbs; each station has parking spaces for four to six cars. Display lights at each charging station indicate if a car is available (green), reserved (blue) or unavailable for technical reasons (red). Waving an Autolib’ membership card at the driver’s door unlocks the car and the cap to the charging cable. The driver can then disconnect and stow the charging cable, start the car, and drive away.
In-car system. The Autolib’ in-car system, running Windows Embedded Standard, greets the driver by name upon arrival and sets the temperature and radio station in accordance with the driver’s saved preferences identified during the registration process. The driver can access GPS navigation via touch screen or be connected to a customer service agent to find a parking place or report any problems.
Centralized Autolib’ data management system. A team of 400 mobile ambassadors, using Ambassador handheld devices running Windows Embedded Handheld to connect to the Autolib’ data system, circulates through the region to inspect and repair cars and assist members who are involved in accidents. Cars and kiosks are connected to a management system that incorporates Windows Server and SQL Server with proprietary software, enabling ambassadors to monitor car locations and charging levels in real time so that they can locate drivers who need assistance or move charged cars to locations where they are needed. The system also enables software and firmware maintenance and updates.

A key feature of the Autolib’ service is the ability to rent a car for a one-way trip, picking it up from one charging station and leaving it at another — ideal for drivers who want to connect to a bus or train line to continue their journey, or to drive to a social gathering and then take a taxi home. The one-way trip is particularly important for drivers going from suburb to suburb, where there are fewer public transportation connections than from suburb to city center.

A Driver Claims an Electric Car at an Autolib’ Kiosk
A driver uses an RFID-enabled membership card to claim an all-electric Bluecar via the Autolib’ car-sharing service in the Paris metropolitan area. Swiping the card at pickup lets the driver unlock the vehicle, disconnect and stow the charging cable, and drive away; swiping at arrival lets the driver reconnect the charging cable and check the car back in so it’s ready for another driver.

“Another problem in Paris is that there are not enough parking spaces for all the cars that are there,” says Vanessa Colombier, Autolib’ spokesperson. Colombier estimates that more than 1.2 million trips have been completed in the all-electric cars, journeys that would have produced 1,500 metric tons of CO2 emissions if conventional combustion-engine cars had been used.

“It is estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of the traffic in the capital is generated by people looking for a space — creating a lot of unnecessary emissions,” says Colombier. The Autolib’ Bluecars can be parked in any of the 750 dedicated stations and 3,900 charging points.

In addition, Autolib’ can be less expensive than car ownership for members who only make occasional car trips, with a one-year membership costing just 144 euros plus a modest hourly use rate, as compared with the 5,000 euros that car registration, ownership and use would cost a typical Parisian each year. And in neighborhoods where a taxi might be hard to find late in the evening, a driver can find an Autolib’ rental kiosk and car station within 200 meters of any location.

“We really started this project from zero,” says Christophe Arnaud, vice president of marketing and director of business development for IER. “In seven months we had to make everything: the charging infrastructure, the system in the cars, the monitoring and information systems. Everything was new.”

The program is attracting international attention; Arnaud says officials from all over the world have come to Paris to see the Autolib’ cars and kiosks for themselves and to learn more about how they might create similar programs in their own cities. Autolib’ also continues to develop the service, with plans for enhanced in-car music playback capabilities, pop-up applications that can offer drivers discounts or location-based promotions, or other real-time connectivity and personalized services.

“Paris is changing quickly nowadays, with a dynamic mayor who has a modern view of the city,” says Pierre Avril, deputy mayor of the city of Malakoff and vice president of Syndicat Mixte Autolib’, the Paris-area municipal alliance that manages the program. “Autolib’ is a new concept, an expression of modernity. And as a program that improves the environment it is helping us modernize but also protect the historical background of Paris. This is also true for the surrounding cities that have adopted Autolib’, like Malakoff.”

“The Autolib’ subscriber is using something that is shared with everyone in the region, but when they are in the car they feel like it’s just for them because it recognizes them,” says Arnaud. “Subscribers can have a personal experience without having to own their own car.”

Caching In: How Some Organizations Are Using Big Data to Change the Way They Do Business

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 12, 2012 — Big data is changing the way organizations do business, make discoveries, and interact with each other. In fact, pundits are predicting that 2013 will be the year organizations across a range of industries begin implementing big data strategies, or face obsolescence. As David Selinger wrote in a recent article on Forbes online: “If executives don’t find a way to trap, tame, and train their data monsters, they’ll be extinct in two years—fossils who’ve missed the new world order.”

Microsoft believes that big data has the power to drive practical and theoretical insights that have eluded people to date. In the past, high costs and technology limitations have constrained access to data storage infrastructure and the tools needed to manage and analyze large quantities of data. This is finally starting to change.

And as many grapple with the “what” and “why” of big data, there are already customers leading the way and winning with better, faster insight. No organization knows this better than The Weather Company, parent company of The Weather Channel. Weather is at the core of many decisions that people make on a daily basis, and The Weather Company is at the forefront as they manage, consume and generate big data. The 1,200-person organization, based in Atlanta, Georgia, recognizes the opportunity that big data represents and is working to help consumers and businesses make intelligent decisions.

“Weather is probably the biggest big data platform. It plays a role in how you work, how you live, how you play and how you shop,” says Bryson Koehler, chief information officer at The Weather Company. “It impacts a significant portion of the world’s activity, and big data is about understanding how consumer behavior intersects with and is influenced by weather. With big data, we are helping our customers understand the data and take action in real-time.”

The Weather Company isn’t alone in this effort. A growing number of organizations are now thriving in the new world of big data. By using Microsoft solutions—including technologies that encompass machine learning and distributed computing—they have been able to ease the synthesis of big data to uncover powerful insights, effectively transforming massive data stores into a major competitive advantage. Some of these organizations include:

Bank New Zealand. BNZ implemented a self-service data analysis tool that can process data queries 60 times faster than its previous solution, making it possible for analysts to respond more quickly to market conditions and get higher quality insights.
CROSSMARK. A leading provider of sales and marketing services, CROSSMARK recently launched a new self-service data portal powered by Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 business intelligence tools. The company uses the portal to deliver actionable, real-time business insights to its manufacturer and retailer clients in the consumer goods industry. In 2012 alone, CROSSMARK supported 26 million in-store activities for its clients, generating enormous amounts of point-of-sale (POS) data. Now, through its Microsoft solution, the company can provide highly scalable, on-demand access to consolidated reporting to help clients maximize revenue.
Department of Veterans Affairs. By using Microsoft technologies, the VA—which is the single largest medical system in the United States—has consolidated its entire analytics infrastructure and established a state-of-the-art data warehousing and big data computing environment to synthesize its immense health information database and support initiatives to improve patient care and organizational performance.
Great Western Bank. With a new data warehousing and BI solution, the bank can make it fast and easy for nontechnical employees to get exactly the information they are looking for, such as lists of categories of account holders for marketing campaigns. Users can more easily ensure a better fit between customers and bank services.
National Health Index. NHI provides internet access to the most comprehensive reservoir of healthcare data at the zip code level. The organization’s newly announced solution with Microsoft Corp., called the National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN), delivers a platform providing a comprehensive database of clinical trial options to providers. NCTN will also be a data warehouse transforming isolated data repositories into an integrated, searchable, national archive, permitting the rapid identification of representative samples of risk populations who might benefit from a proposed therapy.
Super 8 Hotels (China) Co., Ltd. In just one system, Super 8 Worldwide gets data analysis, data integration, and data reporting, so management can more easily analyze the business from multiple dimensions. It intends to use the technology to intelligently expand from 450 hotels to 1,000 hotels in three years.
Stein Mart. By implementing a Microsoft data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution, the company can manage information more efficiently and cut reporting time from hours to minutes.
University of Washington. Renowned as one of the world’s premier research universities and widely regarded as a center of technology innovation, the various departments that make up the University of Washington need to manage and process enormous amounts of data each day. To fulfill its mission in fostering the development of big ideas and transformational solutions, University Advancement has moved one of its reporting solutions to the Windows Azure cloud platform. The greatest value it has gained is enabling non-technical teams to quickly uncover insights from hundreds of millions of columns of data, providing increased scalability and easier management to better tailor outreach efforts to its alumni, donors and friends.

“Our big data customers stand at the forefront of a technology super-trend, one that can unleash human creativity on a scale never seen before,” says Susan Hauser, corporate vice president of the Enterprise and Partner Group at Microsoft. “Big data’s shift from obstacle to asset can only happen when one can easily unearth insight, and that requires broad availability of great analytics tools. Microsoft intends to facilitate an era of unmatched innovation and creative disruption.”

Still, the promise of big data remains largely unfulfilled. Technology companies need to do more to empower more people, which will push big data forward into the mainstream. Microsoft’s goal is to bring big data to the masses, believing that when you empower more people to use technology, you pave the way for new opportunities and understanding on a global scale. This fundamental belief that technology can change the world and improve people’s lives is what drives Microsoft’s long-term investments.

emotive Helps Developers Create Apps for Enterprise Customers

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 12, 2013 —The founders of emotive, a middleware service for developers, set out to provide enterprise customers all the benefits of the mobile experience.

Paul Butterworth, co-founder and chief technology officer at emotive, is a distinguished engineer, having spent years at Oracle and Sun Microsystems. He co-founded emotive to help create intuitive mobile apps for enterprise customers.

The top issue he set out to address was to help create secure and easy access to information for enterprise customers. To do this, emotive built solutions to help developers create apps that continue to run when offline or when bandwidth is limited and automatically update when connectivity returns.

“Mobile devices are not good at talking to enterprise systems, and corporate IT is wary, at best, of mobile devices in the enterprise,” Butterworth said. “We take advantage of the cloud in our next-generation solutions, which bridge the gap between enterprise and mobile software.”

Established in 2011, emotive draws on the engineering-laden experience of its founders and staff members, who are steeped in database infrastructure, application development platforms, enterprise software, mobile and system management.

With the emotive platform, developers can use tools such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to create mobile applications for voice, video and text. By taking advantage of Windows Azure, developers get end-to-end enterprise mobile cloud services, and the applications they write can automatically run on virtually any device.

Scott Crawford, chief operating officer at emotive, understands the challenges enterprises face, as well as their demanding work environments. His deep experience at IBM and his record of success working in enterprise software sales helped him develop an end-to-end solution for developers and their customers.

“emotive empowers software developers to build applications that deliver a user experience in tune with their mobile devices, laptops and desktops, as well as robust, security-enhanced access to enterprise information assets,” Crawford said.

Bridging the Mobile-Enterprise Divide

By creating a middleware solution for developers, emotive is helping to bridge the divide between how enterprise and mobile applications operate. Organizations that rely on multiple enterprise systems are ideal candidates for applications built using the emotive platform.

Depending on your location, mobile connectivity can be inconsistent. A user might lose a mobile connection while walking from one area in a building to another or while riding in a car or train. Yet enterprise applications are built with an assumption of continuous connectivity.

“We can’t solve underlying mobile connectivity issues, so instead we work around them,” Crawford said. “Our technology allows applications to be written to tolerate communication interruptions and bandwidth variations, so they deliver much better performance for interactive applications.”

For instance, a multinational company that has a network of sales reps within extensive geographic territories can benefit from emotive’s platform. Typically, sales reps rely on distributed mobile apps for managing inventory. Those apps become useless when they lose connectivity, which happens frequently in the field. This forces employees to resort to using pen and paper to record inventory data, then later enter the information into the application to catch up — wasting time and resources.

Applications built on the emotive platform have offline capabilities built in, so when the sales reps lose connectivity, they can continue to enter data. When connectivity returns, the emotive-based apps automatically update the data.

“emotive does much of the technical ‘heavy lifting’ involved in mobile enterprise application development — things such as mobile-optimized data displays, interrupt-driven messaging, asynchronous communications and pre-caching that are hard for developers to do themselves,” Butterworth added.

Taking Advantage of Windows Azure and BizSpark One

The company originally decided to move to Windows Azure for the ability to scale without compromise. emotive now takes full advantage of the platform, including the following:

Hosting all the company’s back-end systems in the cloud
Running its collection of servers as apps in the cloud environment; the apps are provisioned, loaded and kept running in the cloud
Using the Windows Azure virtual machine capability to store database information and logs
Drawing on Azure enterprise features such as distributed cache and the ability to test apps in their local development environment and instantly deploy them into the cloud, where they are accessible by virtually any device

In the future, emotive plans to add more capabilities, such as security and hosting, to existing enterprise applications.

Just as important as the technology benefits of Microsoft’s cloud platform have been for the company, emotive is taking advantage of the business development resources through the BizSpark One program.

“Microsoft has unparalleled credibility in the enterprise,” Crawford said. “Access to the Microsoft and Windows Azure ecosystems accelerates our learning curve and provides exposure that would otherwise be difficult for a startup such as ours.”

Connections and exposure are also what appealed to emotive about the BizSpark One program.

“Long before emotive, I had worked closely with Microsoft,” said Butterworth, who is on the Microsoft Interoperability Committee. “But even for someone with established ties, the BizSpark One program provides a great, clear entry point to Microsoft resources and to the ecosystem around Windows Azure. We use a ton of open-source software, and our BizSpark relationships have connected us with the people within Microsoft who have the expertise to run open-source software optimally in the Windows Azure environment. It’s helped us overcome all kinds of technical hurdles and get to market faster.”

Butterfield and Crawford continue to extend emotive’s platform through strategic planning and using input from its growing customer base. As it evolves, the company expects the flexibility of its platform, in concert with the technical and business opportunities afforded by its Microsoft and Windows Azure connections, will help erase the barriers between mobile experiences and enterprise resources for developers, organizations and their customers worldwide.

Xbox Execs Talk Momentum and the Future of TV

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:30:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 11, 2013 — Living room entertainment is in its largest evolutionary period since the transitions of black-and-white to color, and from standard definition to high definition. The Xbox 360, alongside Microsoft’s entertainment industry partners, is at the forefront of that evolution as one of the only devices that brings all forms of entertainment together in one device, while making access to content easy and providing new ways to interact with existing programming. In 2012, the amount of TV and other entertainment offerings on Xbox almost tripled, now surpassing 100 custom, voice-controlled TV and entertainment apps on Xbox LIVE.

Snapshot of Xbox Momentum
February 10, 2013
New data illustrates how entertainment usage on the Xbox has exploded during its living room transformation.

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“Yes, we started with video games, but we have been on a journey to make Xbox the center of every household’s entertainment,” says Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business.

Today Mehdi, along with Nancy Tellem, president of entertainment and digital media at Microsoft, participated in a D: Dive into Media session, facilitated by Peter Kafka, to discuss that journey and the opportunities that lie ahead. Mehdi revealed some new data that illustrates how entertainment usage on the Xbox has exploded during its living room transformation, and Tellem shared more about her newly created Los Angeles-based Xbox Entertainment Studios.

Today, there are more than 76 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world. That’s three times the number of original Xbox consoles sold. And a Kinect sensor now sits next to roughly one third of those Xbox 360 consoles; the company has sold 24 million Kinect sensors since launch.

Social has been an important part of Xbox from the beginning, and that’s true today more than ever. The Xbox LIVE community has grown to 46 million members, a 15 percent growth since last year.

2012 also marked the Xbox’s biggest year for entertainment and games usage. Users enjoyed more than 18 billion hours of entertainment in 2012, with entertainment app usage growing 57 percent year over year globally. Last year in the United States, Xbox LIVE Gold members averaged 87 hours per month on Xbox, an increase of 10 percent year over year.

Yusuf Mehdi
February 10, 2013
Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business.

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Those numbers strongly indicate that consumers enjoy all kinds of entertainment via Xbox, and Mehdi believes the future of entertainment is even brighter, as Microsoft plans to keep the momentum rolling.

“We believe that Xbox is being used by more people in the household, during more hours in the day and for more forms of entertainment,” he says. “People are using Xbox in the morning to work out with the Kinect Nike+ Fitness program, kids are watching cartoons, families are enjoying movies, and of course people are playing blockbuster games like ‘Halo 4.’”

The Future of TV Is Interactive and More Engaging

According to Mehdi, Xbox has something in the living room no one else has – a large installed base of devices already in the home, connected to TVs, and over half of those are already linked together, delivering amazing personalized and social entertainment experiences via the Xbox LIVE network.

Microsoft believes that the future of TV and entertainment is one where the TV becomes interactive and more engaging, Mehdi and Tellem explain. Microsoft sees that viewers want to do more with their TV shows, movies, sports and other forms of entertainment.

“We believe that we are at the start of the next wave of truly interactive entertainment,” Tellem says.

Tellem is spearheading a new L.A.-based studio called Xbox Entertainment Studios, where the mission is to create true interactive content for Xbox and other devices that will change the way entertainment content is experienced and delivered. Tellem also now oversees live event programming for Xbox LIVE. Xbox has had success with live events such as the Elections 2012 Hub on Xbox LIVE, which aired the presidential debates with an added interactive polling capability. Viewers submitted 3 million answers to on-screen questions during the live telecast of one of the debates. More recently, Xbox aired an interactive red carpet experience for this year’s Grammy Awards and will be doing the same for the 85th Academy Awards.

Nancy Tellem
February 10, 2013
Nancy Tellem, president of entertainment and digital media at Microsoft.

“When I worked in traditional TV, we would find ourselves saying things like ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could add an interactive aspect directly into the show and engage directly with the viewers?’” says Tellem. “With Xbox, that is possible today.”

Xbox already offers content such Kinect Sesame Street TV, which blurs the lines between traditional linear TV show and interactive experience, where a kid can jump into their beloved Sesame Street and throw coconuts at Grover.

But it’s not just about new types of entertainment; it’s also about new business models and new engagement opportunities for advertisers. Mehdi called the launch of NUads – a new ad format that harnesses Kinect and natural user interface – an important moment for TV advertising. NUads deliver what is most scarce to advertisers today: consumer engagement. NUads enable natural interactivity using the simplicity of a spoken word or the wave of a hand. The first wave of NUads, which launched last fall with interactive polling, saw a record level of consumer engagement with 37 percent of people responding. With this model, passive TV advertising is transformed into engaging and actionable experiences.

Pioneering the Future of TV

In addition to Xbox Entertainment Studios creating content that will highlight what’s possible and demonstrate the capability of the Xbox platform, Microsoft will continue to partner with content creators, networks, aggregators and advertisers to “pioneer the future of TV,” says Tellem.

During 2013, Microsoft is planning to launch more than 40 new voice-controlled, customized TV and entertainment apps on Xbox.

“We want to partner with the industry to bring entertainment into a new era,” she says. “It’s an era when interactive entertainment becomes the greatest form of all entertainment – and we couldn’t be more excited to play a part in it.”

Fun With Big Data: Cat Ladies, Soccer Subs and Sexy Scientists

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 11, 2013 – If the plural of anecdote is data, as the saying goes, then it goes without saying that big data must be chock full of good stories.

Dan Vesset
February 10, 2013
Dan Vesset, program vice president of IDC's Business Analytics research.

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Few know this better than Dan Vesset, program vice president of IDC's Business Analytics research. He (and his Twitter account) is flush with examples of the kinds of close-up stories peeking through masses of data.

Here are a few notable big data nuggets from the mouth (and tweets) of Vesset:

Book clubs and peanut eaters: America, by the numbers.
More people are injured on toilets than by skiing or snowboarding. More households have dogs as pets than cats, but cat lovers are more likely to have multiple pets. Traffic congestion wasted more time for drivers in Los Angeles than in any other city. Americans are eating more peanuts and drinking less coffee. More Americans belong to a fantasy sports league (10.6 million) than to book clubs (5.7 million). Book club members are outnumbered by avid bird-watchers (5.8 million). According to the New York Times, these and other facts are part of the 2013 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the government since 1878.

GOAL!
Vesset said big data made its way to European football (or soccer, as the Americans call it) with a recent analysis of all major football leagues, what time in the game the teams made substitutions, and the outcome of each game, all to try to determine the best time to make a sub to result in a goal. “That’s good data for the coaches,” Vesset said.

Scientist. Data Scientist.
Forget Bond, James Bond – the Harvard Business Review has officially declared the data scientist the “sexiest job of the 21st century.” It’s not hard to imagine considering the big data market is growing an estimated 31 percent annually, which means major job opportunities, Vesset says. This will no doubt leave former top sexy job contenders (firefighters, actors, athletes, models, doctors, nurses) both shaken and stirred.

Ice cream, you scream?
Data may have a reputation for being cold and hard, but big data afforded the Cincinnati Zoo some ice cream-inspired warm fuzzies. The zoo analyzed its transactions to find out when the most ice cream was sold. Surprisingly, it was much earlier in the day than previously thought. Based on this data the zoo was able to open more carts, and open them earlier in the day, to maximize dessert demand – and revenue to the zoo. “It wasn’t a huge data set, obviously it’s ice cream sales at a single zoo, but the point is that the data allowed them to look at information differently,” Vesset said. “Instinctively they thought it would be later in the day, but data guided them to the right decision.”

Science ( non ) fiction.
Hollywood loves big data on the big screen. There was Brad Pitt in Moneyball as “the poster boy for what can be done with analytics and big data,” Vesset said. But remember Tom Cruise in Minority Report, working as a policeman in a future where crimes are predicted before they happen so they can be prevented? And Jude Law, the super smart machine in Artificial Intelligence? “So much of what we’re doing now does come from entertainment, and what was science fiction before now becomes reality,” Vesset said.

The Big Bang: How the Big Data Explosion Is Changing the World

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 11, 2012 – In the battle of the buzzwords, “big data” is about to render “guestimation” obsolete.

This is big.

“Big data absolutely has the potential to change the way governments, organizations, and academic institutions conduct business and make discoveries, and its likely to change how everyone lives their day-to-day lives,” said Susan Hauser, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Enterprise and Partner Group.

The world now holds twice as many bytes of data as there are liters of water in all its oceans, Hauser said. By learning to surf this wave of big data, it is possible to replace hunches with insight; to spot trends before they pass quickly by; and to take action while others are still deliberating.

Big data is the term increasingly used to describe the process of applying serious computing power – the latest in machine learning and artificial intelligence – to seriously massive and often highly complex sets of information.

What kind of information? You name it. Big data can be comparing utility costs with meteorological data to spot trends and inefficiencies. Big data can be comparing ambulance GPS information with hospital records on patient outcomes to determine the correlation between response time and survival. But big data can also be the tiny device you wear to track your movement, calories and sleep to track your own personal health and fitness.

“Our daily lives generate an enormous collection of data,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president of IDC's Business Analytics research.

Whether you’re surfing the Web, shopping at the store, driving your smart car around town, boarding an airplane, visiting a doctor, attending class at university, each day you are generating a variety of data, he said.

“The benefit of the data depends on where and to whom you’re talking to,” Vesset said. “A lot of the ultimate potential is in the ability to discover potential connections, and to predict potential outcomes in a way that wasn’t really possible before. Before, you only looked at these things in hindsight.”

With more data than ever available in digital form, progressively inexpensive data storage, and more advanced computers at the ready to help process and analyze it all, the field of big data has truly reached a watershed moment, Vesset said.

It’s a moment for which Microsoft is prepared, and has been preparing – virtually since the company’s origin, Hauser said.

“Microsoft believes that big data has the power to drive practical insights that just weren’t possible before ,” Hauser said. “It’s about managing all that data and providing tools that enable everyone to answers questions– questions they might not have even known they had. That’s the vision we have.”

A ‘Tipping Point’

The big data explosion – including its cross-over from the high-tech industry to a variety of more widespread, mainstream uses – can be traced to several factors, said Dave Campbell, a technical fellow at Microsoft.

First, there’s the growing ocean of data. Pre-computers, a database was little more than the tall, gray filing cabinet in the corner. But now, more and more information is being digitized – or just “born digital” in the first place.

Then, advancements in machine intelligence have made for increasingly clever algorithms that can be used to process, compare and visualize this rising tide of structured and unstructured data.

And housing those vast stores of data is now more affordable than ever – three decades ago a terabyte of data storage could cost millions, Campbell said. Today, it’s about US$30 at Office Depot.

“It’s a tipping point. There’s no reason to throw anything away any more,” Campbell said. “We are at an amazing inflection in which so much is already born digital today, even inherently analog data such as voicemail and photographs.”

Another reasons big data has turned a corner is that – well, there just is more data. Sensors, GPS devices, mobile phones, social media, smart cars, roads, bridges, buildings – all produce a steady stream of data just waiting to be examined and cross-examined.

“In the next five years, we’ll generate more data as humankind than we generated in the previous 5,000 years,” said Eron Kelly, general manager of product marketing for Microsoft SQL Server.

“It’s an inevitable reality of our new world that more and more data is being generated,” Kelly said. “Those able to derive insights from that data will make better decisions and will be more efficient, and they’ll move whatever agenda it is that they have forward much faster than those that don’t.”

Data, Data Everywhere

There may be oceans of data out there, but making it into something you can use is another matter entirely.

“Big data is a big problem, and it’s an incredible opportunity,” Kelly said. “What we’re providing is the tool that allows you to scoop the water out of the ocean, pour it into a filter, and make it drinkable rather than having to do on your own each of those potable steps you vaguely remember from high school chemistry.”

One challenge of big data can simply be managing its sheer size. Storing, searching, analyzing, comparing, refining, combining, visualizing – massive sets of data can be a challenge to traditional database software. That’s where database and business intelligence tools such as Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server, PowerPivot, Microsoft Office and SharePoint come in handy, Hauser said.

“Organizations that are partnering with Microsoft are seeing results pretty quickly,” she said. “The impact – that’s what’s most exciting.”

And what’s more, you don’t have to be an information technology (IT) specialist or a data scientist with a Ph.D. in analytics to get results, she said.

Another challenge in making big data useful is getting your hands on the right big data. Microsoft is working with Hadoop, an open source data platform that helps manage unstructured data, to help customers work with all types of data, both structured and unstructured.

Structured data, most universally found in databases that use Structured Query Language (SQL), is organized in a way that lets users select exact pieces, rows or columns of that database – perhaps you’ll select all of the rows with a certain zip code, or the columns with a specific date. Unstructured data, however, has no such architecture and can often include text or images that aren’t part of the free-form data (emails, for example).

Microsoft is also working to integrate Hadoop with SQL Server and Windows Azure to ensure customers can combine all their data sources.

“What we’re trying to do is allow a broad set of skills, driving simplicity and ease of use into the area of big data,” Kelly said. “Taking very complex technical problems and simplifying them with easy-to-use tools – that’s been the Microsoft strategy over the last 30 years.”

Vision for the Future

A hospital uses rapid gene sequencing to stop an outbreak of antibiotic resistant bacteria, saving lives. A railroad company gets an alert from a train’s sensor that a preventative fix is needed, saving the cost and time of removing the train from the tracks later. A university notices a student’s activity level has started to drop to a level consistent with dropouts, and reaches out to assist.

The data may be big, but in its essence, big data is quite personal.

“Big data is really a bit of a misnomer,” Campbell said. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with size.”

Rather, it’s about the insight it provides. Big data may hold the key to smarter cities, faster medical breakthroughs, greater academic learning, more efficient use of resources, and more profitable companies. Not to mention jobs – big jobs.

“Big data is important, yet the real gap is going to be in skills and ability,” Kelly said.

In the next few years millions of big data-related IT jobs will be created worldwide and yet, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, there is a major shortage of the “analytical and managerial talent necessary to make the most of big data.” The United States alone faces a shortage of more than 140,000 workers with big data skills as well as up to 1.5 million managers and analysts needed to analyze and make decisions based on big data findings.

Kelly said that in the years to come, businesses that successfully harness the power of big data will outperform and outcompete competitors.

According to the MIT Center for Digital Business, companies that adopt data-driven practices, and use big data to guide decision making, will have output and productivity that is 5 to 6 percent higher than what would be expected given their other investments and information technology uses.

“That’s not only about making more money in the near term, that’s survival. In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, you have to do everything you can to stay ahead of the competition,” Kelly said. “If you don’t harness the data and information around you to make better decisions and become more efficient, you fall behind. That’s true of companies, governments, healthcare, and pretty much any industry. That’s why it’s so critical.”

Presenting More Than Performance: The 2013 Windows 8 Device Lineup

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK — Feb. 7, 2013 — This week the catwalk lights up once again as Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week returns to New York City. The 2013 Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices present a go-anywhere look with clean lines reminiscent of high fashion, matched by inventive features that meet the customer’s need for constant connectivity, mobility and flexibility.

Equipped with brilliant touch-sensitive screens, blazing processors and the latest Windows 8 apps, these devices on this year’s virtual catwalk are built for superior performance, yet show off remarkable design. So turn down the lights, turn up the music and take in this new experience.

Computer Love: 5 Swoon-Worthy Apps for Valentine’s Day

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Jan. 31, 2013 — Love. As it turns out, one Microsoft employee had an app for that.

For more than a year, Kevin Reynolds was stuck in the “just friends zone” with Christine Amundsen, the girl of his dreams. But rather than being discouraged, Reynolds, a Microsoft software design engineer in test (SDET), decided to be the most thoughtful, charming, and considerate “just friend” ever.

To make a long and romantic story short and sweet, Reynolds kept up his Colorado River-like persistence, and the two “just friends” eventually found themselves in a Grand Canyon of love. A year ago on Valentine’s Day, Reynolds created a Windows Phone 8 app to propose marriage. They were married in September, and this Valentine’s Day, they’ll celebrate the one-year anniversary of the day she said yes to the app by taking a cooking class together.

“Those of us that are passionate about technology – it’s OK to express it,” Reynolds said. “Think of any great painter, or those great romantic singers. If technology is your passion, use that in your romance. Bring those two loves together.”

Using an app to propose – or even just to plan a great Valentine’s Day for someone you care about – can be a creative way of sharing yourself beyond the cultural norm, Reynolds said, “like flowers.”

Though Reynolds has yet to put his (now tried and true) marriage proposal app on the marketplace, here are some other apps that can help make your Valentine’s Day a success.

Takin’ Care of Business: 5 Hard-Working Productivity Apps

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Jan. 31, 2013 — We IM over pancakes at IHOP, take conference calls during the commute and edit presentations from the sidelines at soccer practice.

In other words, the desk-bound, 9-5 job is a thing of the past.

Powerful productivity software has untethered the modern worker, allowing them to get stuff done wherever, whenever and on whatever device they want. We can be just as productive on the go as in the office and also get more time to do the things we want.

So whether you need to call the Tokyo office from the Tucson airport or quickly exchange virtual business cards on the bus, these apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices can help you get work done—wherever you happen to be.

Game On: 5 Winning Sports Apps

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Jan. 31, 2013 — Sunday’s football championship game is the first big adrenaline-rush sporting event of the year—but it’s far from the last. The NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup finals are already just around the corner. And before you know it your favorite Major League Baseball team will be starting spring training, and the boys of summer will be swinging for the fences and competing for a spot in the World Series.

To help you get the most out of each game day, Microsoft and its partners have teamed up to provide a lineup of sports apps for Windows Phone, Xbox and Windows 8 devices that will satisfy even the most devoted and demanding fans. Get the latest scores and stats, high-quality photos and videos, and in-depth coverage of your favorite players and teams whenever and wherever you want them. Buy tickets, listen to podcasts, and enjoy interactive features that let you cheer on your team as you compare fantasy playoff predictions and talk trash with other fans.

Whether you’re getting set for this Sunday or just looking forward to your favorite basketball team’s next regular-season game, whether you’re crazy about hockey or more interested in golf, these apps are designed to put you at the heart of the action and enrich your sports experience. Download them before kickoff and pump up the fun for yourself and your friends.

‘Skulls of the Shogun’ Emerges as a Cross-Platform Gaming Pioneer

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. – Jan. 30, 2013 — With the new game “Skulls of the Shogun,” players can do something new: Switch back and forth between all of their Microsoft devices as they bounce from battle scene to battle scene.

'Skulls of the Shogun'
January 29, 2013
The first game to be available on all of Microsoft’s platforms, "Skulls of the Shogun" can be played solo or by up to four players at once in multiplayer mode.

Downloads:
Web

The game, released today, is the first to reach all Microsoft platforms. “Skulls of the Shogun” can be downloaded and played on Xbox 360 via the Xbox LIVE Arcade, and on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices.

“’Skulls of Shogun’ is a title that really promotes this connected gaming world where you can play a game on any Microsoft device against other players, save it to the cloud, move to another device, and pick up where you left off,” said Christopher Rubyor, a senior game designer for Microsoft.

The story, in short: You are a famous general who dies on the eve of his last great battle and you wash up on the shores of the samurai afterlife. There you set out to defeat an evil impersonator, make your way through the afterlife to become the shogun, or general, of the dead, meeting and joining forces with ghost-samurai warriors, magical animal-monks and mustachioed samurai generals along the way.

Influenced by samurai movies and 1960s-flavored sorcery, “Skulls of the Shogun” is a mash-up of classic arcade and “turn-based” strategy games, said Rod Chang, senior game producer at Microsoft.

“It pays homage to what we grew up playing, especially gamers of my generation who were addicted to turn-based strategy games,” Chang said. “I feel that the game ‘Skulls of the Shogun’ takes this genre of games that hardcore gamers grew up loving, and makes it accessible and fun for hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike.”

Skulls Across Platforms
January 29, 2013
"Skulls of the Shogun" can be downloaded and played on Xbox 360 via the Xbox LIVE Arcade, and on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices.

Downloads:
Web

Added Rubyor: “It’s very accessible. It’s easy to play, and difficult to master.”

The game offers a 15-hour single-player campaign, but also has local and online multiplayer (up to four players) battles.

“The maps in the game range from small, blitz maps with five to 10 minutes of game play to larger campaigns that take hours,” Rubyor said. “You play at your own pace, and you can have up to four battles going on, bouncing back and forth. It’s actually a lot of fun.”

Never before has a Microsoft game been cross-platform at its launch. You can start playing “Skulls of the Shogun” on your Windows Phone 8 device while riding the bus, then press pause and pick up right where you left off on your Xbox 360 when you get home. In addition, players can compete cross-platform: Lucy in Iowa City can play “Skulls of the Shogun” on her Windows 8 PC against Edgar in Sarasota who is using a Surface RT.

The game’s developer, 17-BIT, pulled off a “monumental” task with no shortage of “daunting” logistical and technical challenges in order to create “Skulls of the Shogun” as a cross-platform game, said Rubyor and Chang, who worked closely with the Seattle-based boutique game developer.

Chris Rubyor
January 29, 2013
Christopher Rubyor, senior game designer for Microsoft, said "Skulls of the Shogun" is a title that promotes a connected gaming world in which players can move between devices.

Downloads:
Web

“We’re pioneers,” Chang said. Though 17-BIT is a tiny company, it demonstrated some serious skill, adaptability and perseverance in launching the game for all of Microsoft’s platforms. That said, the effort to make “Skulls of the Shogun” cross-platform has definitely helped pave the way for other games to do the same, he said.

“I like to use the David versus Goliath analogy,” Chang said. “They’re a really small company that accomplished really big things, and they did it to help achieve an important strategy for Microsoft – cross-platform gaming.”

Chang said he believes there’s a serious demand for cross-platform gaming.

“We think this type of game and service really does unite all of our platforms, and that can give us a more robust game portfolio than ever,” Chang said. “People look forward to taking their favorite games wherever they go.”

Rubyor agreed.

“I think as we look towards the future, more and more games will support this type of game play where players are always connected to their experience,” he said.

“Skulls of the Shogun” will be discounted for a limited time on Windows 8 and Windows Phone. The Windows 8 version will launch at US$9.99 in the Windows Store, and the Windows Phone version will launch at $4.99 in the Windows Phone Store. The game costs 1,200 Microsoft points on Xbox LIVE.

A View in Pictures: Microsoft Releases Office 365 Home Premium

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 03:24:05 GMT

NEW YORK — Jan. 29, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced worldwide availability of Office 365 Home Premium, a reinvention of the company’s flagship Office product line for consumers. Office 365 Home Premium is a cloud service designed for busy households and people juggling ever-increasing work and family responsibilities. The new offering includes the latest and most complete set of Office applications; works across up to five devices, including Windows tablets, PCs and Macs; and comes with extra SkyDrive storage and Skype calling — all for US$99.99 for an annual subscription, the equivalent of US$8.34 per month. People can learn more about Office 365 Home Premium or try it free for 30 days at http://www.office.com.

It’s Time to Make the Most Out of Your Day

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 29, 2013 — Do you feel completely overwhelmed? From Mexico City to Beijing, people around the globe say they feel so busy that they don’t have time for the things they enjoy doing.* Now more than ever, technology can help you manage and enjoy your life.

Read on to learn more about how people find value in being more organized and how you can benefit from Office 365 Home Premium.

* Microsoft Corp. conducted a survey in 21 countries between Dec. 31, 2012, and Jan. 16, 2013, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States. This slideshow represents the results of 10,664 total survey respondents worldwide.

Bravo Outdoor Advertising Reaches Greater Heights With Intelligent System

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

DUBLIN — Jan . 23 , 201 3 — In Dublin today, dustmen still pick up street litter while banjo players entertain as in ages past. It is not uncommon to see a horse-drawn carriage alongside a double-decker bus.

At the same time, a number of global high-tech companies maintain their European headquarters in Ireland’s capital, making Dublin a city that embraces modernization alongside tradition.

So when Bravo Outdoor Advertising, which manages the advertising for Ireland’s national transport system, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ), started adding digital panels inside buses in 2011, it was no surprise that Dubliners welcomed this innovation.

“Digital advertising is a game-changer in outdoor advertising,” says Adrian O’Farrell, former marketing director for Bravo Outdoor Advertising. “For a city that has a long history of accepting innovation alongside tradition, it fits right in.”

With the help of Pica Vision, a local provider of digital media products, Bravo adopted a Microsoft-powered intelligent system that delivers dynamic content on digital panels. Commuters are engaged during their daily ride and have responded positively to the digital screens, particularly about the quality and variety of the content.

“Digital panels add greatly to the outdoor offering,” says O’Farrell. “It provides us the ability to take CIÉ into the next wave of growth.”

A Global Positioning System delivers customized content for each route, time of day and vehicle. Bravo schedules the advertising and monitors playback time and locations. This means that commuters could watch an ad for the Brazen Head, Dublin’s oldest pub, just as they pass the grey brick entrance. Bravo is also able to provide its end customers with written reports.

Driving Messages to Passengers
January 22, 2013
By the end of 2013, Bravo and Pica Vision are aiming to operate 1,800 digital displays throughout the country and deliver content to 170 million bus passengers each year.

In addition to advertisement, passengers can watch news and entertainment programming from broadcast networks. By the end of 2013, Bravo and Pica Vision are aiming to operate 1,800 digital displays throughout the country and deliver content to 170 million bus passengers each year. Bravo believes that the CIÉ TV channel delivered by Pica Vision on a Microsoft platform can become one of the biggest television channels in the country.

Bravo has already realized a number of benefits, including an increase in revenue and a decrease in costs. With digital panels, Bravo no longer needs to invest as much time and money installing and maintaining signs and billboards. It can now focus on selling advertising.

After making a sale, the company can schedule ads and manage inventory through its online system, which further streamlines its operations. “With digital, we can sell for one day, we can sell for a half a day and we can sell for two hours if that’s what’s required. The flexibility is enormous,” says O’Farrell.

Pica Vision chose to power the digital displays with the Windows Embedded Standard operating system, Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server data management software and Web services based on the Microsoft .NET Framework. For content delivery, Pica Vision decided on Windows Azure SQL Database, which extends SQL Server capabilities to the cloud.

“Our clients range from large, international firms, such as Coca-Cola, to the small business sector, like the local florist,” says O’Farrell. “With the technology of digital panels, we’re able to provide a solution that fits the needs of all types of businesses.”