discussUC

Authors: Eric Schoch

Authors: Doron Aronson

Authors: Doron Aronson

Authors: Julia White

I am guest blogging on the Why Microsoft Blog today and tomorrow with some thoughts about Google.  Check out the post today here.

Julia White

Senior Director, Exchange Product Management

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Authors: Dean Howarth

 Today, we announced Office 365, our next generation cloud productivity service.  Office 365 brings Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online together with Office desktop software as a cloud service.  The technology will provide the latest, most complete, up-to-date service you can buy.  It's everything you...

Today we are proud to announce that the University of Arizona has selected Microsoft Online as the messaging and collaboration platform for all faculty and staff.  Earlier in the month I highlighted the fact that 10,000 institutions on every continent have enrolled with our Live@Edu offering in just the last six months.

Research Read and Compliant

The University of Arizona often receives funding and grants for research from the government.  As a result, the IT department needs to provide staff with cutting edge tools that can increase collaboration but do so in a way the remains secure and compliant to industry standards.  "With Microsoft's cloud based service, we found a solution that will essentially bring us into the 21st century for communications tools.  We have a complex environment and our employees demand modern-day technologies and Exchange functionality to be successful at their jobs" said Michele Norin, Chief Information Officer at the University of Arizona. "We also have federal programs we need to comply with, so meeting ITAR and HIPAA rules are critical, and we came away more confident that Microsoft can help keep us complaint."  You can also read up on our new BPOS Federal offering. 

Their criterion for selecting BPOS is similar to the announcementby three universities in the UK who recently chose Microsoft's cloud platform.  Chris Randle, IT Director at UCL summed it up "Microsoft could tell the university exactly where its data would be held and said that it would keep the content of all emails private."

These statements offer a stark contrast from the discussions being had at: University of California, Davis, UMass and Yale University, regarding deep privacy and security concerns related to the use of other solutions, namely Google Apps.  

Wisdom of Crowds through Diversity

So whether you are large research university like UofA or a sports union and pride of a nation or a small law office or a global Pharmaceutical firm, you can take comfort in the wisdom of others who found that only Microsoft Online could meet their unique needs.  We are "All In" and so are our customers.  Sign up for a free trial today. 

Earlier today Bill Hilf blogged about Microsoft’s Technical Computing initiative and Bob Muglia sent an executive email on the topic. So what is the Technical Computing initiative? I think Bob captured it nicely by positing that recent world events have clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables. Two events in particular - the behaviour of global financial markets and the (ongoing) occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. I’ve been personally affected by both with my mortgage going down and almost missing a trip home for a wedding due to the volcano (my own wedding!).

The Technical Computing initiative seeks to bring vast computing power to the scientists and communities who are focused on these problems. It will focus on 3 areas as Bill called out in his blog:

 

1. Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will help lead the way in giving scientists, engineers and analysts the computing power of the cloud.  We’re also working to give existing high-performance computing users the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable ‘just-in-time’ processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed—reliably, consistently and quickly. 
    
2. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores. But most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test, and troubleshoot.  We know that a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today’s computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We’re focused on delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop… to the cluster… to the cloud.
    
3. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: Scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power using simpler tools to increase the speed of their work, and we’re building a platform with this objective in mind. We expect that these efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration

 

All 3 are important, big hairy computing issues we’re looking to solve and enable the great minds in computing to solve global scale challenges (and smaller ones). A supporting website was also launched today at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss the trends, challenges and opportunities. There’s some funky new stuff there for Microsoft and in particular I like the social side of it at http://social.modelingtheworld.com/#/home

Today at our annual Financial Analyst's Meeting (FAM) we announced that The Dow Chemical Co., Hyatt Hotels Corporation and the University of Georgia have each selected Microsoft cloud solutions. If you'd like to watch any of Executive keynotes, please visit the digital site dedicated to this event.

Three Different Customers, One Common Strategy

These three customers are certainly a diverse set of businesses but they do share a common strategic direction to leverage Microsoft's cloud for the next generation of their computing needs. Ina Fried from CNET has a great summary of the customer stories in her post from today's announcement.

Momentum

These customers join over 40 million paid users' who leverage Microsoft Online services today including 500 government entities, 13 of top 20 global telecom firms, 15 of the Top 20 global banks, and 16 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies. As I previously posted, Windows Azure also has recently announced the addition of over 10,000 customers in nine months since full scale production.

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts – Check's In to BPOS

This win is another great example of a customer leaving an on premises competitive solution for Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite. Just like Codelco, Hyatt will take advantage of the full suite for "information workers" while offering a more cost effective option for 40,000 associates who do not have a need for fully dedicated suite. This is a great way to unify the entire workforce with one platform and enable a common user experience for everyone.

University of Georgia – UGA is All In

For those not familiar, the University's mascot is 'the bulldogs'. In fact, there is a real bulldog affectionately named "UGA" pictured below. His Bio is here. With teeth like that, you better believe we are excited to have them on our side!

(courtesy: georgiabulldogs.com)

Over 85,000 students, faculty and staff will take advantage of Live@Edu. The university joins other great educational institutions such as the University of Arizona, Kentucky Department of Education and New York City public school district who have recently selected Microsoft as their vendor for cloud based solutions.

Dow Chemicals – The Right Formula is Microsoft Online

Dow Chemical is moving their enterprise workforce to BPOS. Global companies such as Dow have expansive business units and a need to remain reliable and highly secure while taking advantage of the flexibility the cloud can enable. We are very excited about welcoming them to the BPOS family.

For more information on any of Microsoft's cloud solutions, please visit this website.

Authors: IBM

Authors:

IBM today announced the availability of new online software services based on the same on-premise solutions used by clients today – now delivered as a monthly subscription offering - that enables better automation and control of IT Service Desk functions. This new service adds to IBM's software-as-a-service offerings that help a...