Craig Bailey on Microsoft

I’m always intrigued when some development companies claim they can’t afford to pay the software licenses for the tools they use. That is, after agreeing to pay salaries, rent, office fit-outs, hardware and other expenses they somehow can’t stump up the cash for operating system licenses and proper developer tools. The usual recourse is to either ‘bend the rules of licensing’ or pursue an open source path. Now, I’m not saying software is cheap, but I am saying that it a much smaller proportion than wages and rent and thus shouldn’t be a major hurdle.

But, regardless of what I think, it happens all the time. Microsoft is losing many to the open source community, and coupled with the economic panic going on they’ve been forced to re-consider the situation. After donning the thinking caps here’s the result: a nice set of streamlined programs for helping the established and not-so-established companies. This is a good thing.

Following is a list of the various initiatives that Microsoft is running, some are new, some have been around for a while. There’s basically two umbrella programs, the new BizSpark initiative, and the older Partner program streams.

(Note: I’m basing the following on Australian options, other countries may differ).

Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is the newest program, and is especially created for startups. To qualify, you need to be privately held, in business for less than 3 years, and earning less than US $1M in revenue.

It’s easy to Join (you just need to find a BizSpark partner) and you get everything you’d ever need in terms of tools including Visual Studio Team Suite, MSDN Premium (includes all the Office suite), operating systems, MOSS, SQL Server, BizTalk, Dynamics CRM, the list goes on.

Oh, and it’s free. Let it never be said that Microsoft licensing costs are a hurdle for new companies!

Whilst you’re on the BizSpark site (part of the Microsoft Startup Zone) make sure you check out the resources page and various links. I can’t remember how, but one of the links took me to the PhizzPop Online Design Challenge – very cool.

Microsoft Partner Programs

The partner program has been running for decades now, but can be confusing. In fact I’ve mainly written this post as a simple summary for myself to refer back to in the future. There’s a whole site with all the details of course, but here’s a run down of the main Partner options:

• Registered Partner (which includes the Empower program and the Action Pack subscriptions)
• Certified Partner
• Gold Certified Partner

Microsoft Action Pack (Microsoft Registered Partner)

The Action Pack program has a few variations, but all essentially give you access to a range of operating system, server and office tools for internal use, for a modest price (currently AU $699 in Australia).

They also have Special editions which include a few extras:

• Special Edition Web Solutions Toolkit – which also includes Expression Studio and Visual Studio 2008
• Small Business Specialist Community Special Edition Toolkit – which includes special SBS and server training resources 

The Action Pack subscription is ideal for companies that sell, service or build solutions on Microsoft technologies. There’s no real qualifying criteria other than an online course for the Special editions. There’s also an annual assessment to ensure you are sticking to the terms of the program.

Microsoft Empower (Microsoft Registered Partner)

The Microsoft Empower program is targeted at ISVs and is a two year program (costing AU $899 per year). It includes an MSDN Premium Subscription (Office, Servers, Vista etc) and five Visual Studio 2008 Professional licenses.

There’s a few requirements to qualify (eg you need to be developing a re-saleable custom application – it’s not for internal use only) and it only runs for two years (after that you need to upgrade to one of the Certified Partner programs below).

The Empower program is especially good for companies that have been around for a while (and thus don’t qualify for BizSpark) and are moving into more of an ISV strategy.

Microsoft Certified Partner

Here’s where it starts getting serious.

Technically the previous two programs (Action Pack and Empower) confirm you as a Registered Partner.

However, as a Certified Partner you have to confirm your product or development team meet certain criteria. For example, you need to earn qualifying points in certain competencies by having Certified developers and references from projects/products delivered.

The benefits are extensive with tons of training and marketing resources, plus a full MSDN Premium Subscription and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional licenses. Certified Partners get access to Microsoft account managers and inroads to being influential in the Microsoft community.

The Certified Partner cost in the AU $ thousands

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

This is the top of the tree in terms of Microsoft programs.

The Gold Certification is a lot harder to attain (and maintain) with more qualifying points required. The benefits include all the Certified Partner stuff and then some. Savings on training and additional licenses are just some of the extras. Note, licensing can be tricky so make sure you check the fine print. For example, I’ve discovered in the past that by targeting the right competency you can end up with better Visual Studio 2008 edition licensing options.

The Gold Certified Partner membership costs in the AU $ thousands (eg $3.5K or thereabouts)

Microsoft has definitely turned around. PDC was the proof that the company is back on track. Not that it was necessarily off track – since they’ve been working on it for the last 3 years - but the lack of communication certainly wasn’t inspiring anyone.

What exactly has caused this transformation?

Answer: Ray Ozzie.

Less than a year ago (just after the MVP Summit) I was gravely concerned about how Microsoft was being lead. Ray gave the keynote speech at the Summit, and it left me bored and underwhelmed. And even though Bill Gates had handpicked him, I was pretty critical. How little I knew.

Around that time I asked a few Microsoft guys for their thoughts on Ray Ozzie. The response was usually along the lines of ‘…actually, I don’t really know much about him…’. And that of course was a big part of the problem. If you don’t know much about the man, then chances are you don’t know much about what the man is thinking.

My, how times have changed. The revolution that was showcased at PDC has put Ray firmly centre stage. Microsoft is in strong hands. But what exactly do we know about him personally? To answer that comes the perfectly timed December edition of Wired (it was actually released a week ago), with its tantalizing title:

Saving Microsoft: Can Ray Ozzie fix the house that Bill built?

It’s a fantastic piece. I actually bought the magazine today (I didn’t realise until I started writing this post that I could actually read it online for free!) and couldn’t stop reading. It explains everything I wanted to know about him, his history, what makes him tick and what scares him (I was heartened to learn he is extremely anxious when having to present). I agree with Steve Clayton when he hat tips Scoble describing Ray as ‘a change agent who is busy turning a super tanker’. He’s a determined, impressive man of vision. As he needs to be.

The article also covers little tidbits like why they wore those red shoes (you can thank Dave Cutler for that) and how the name Red Dog was arrived at (spoiler: it involves a strip club).

As I’ve said recently, I used to be a doubter, now I’m a follower. The more I learn about him, the more I’m impressed. He’s won me over. He has credibility, integrity and (regardless of whether you love or hate Notes) it has to be said that he has a highly acclaimed developer pedigree. I think I’m a believer.

I don’t usually read the papers. Or even keep up with current affairs. In general I’m pretty out of touch with what’s going on in the world.

But yesterday I bought the weekend papers. I’m on holidays, and thought it’d be nice to catch up on world events. What a mistake!

Nothing but page after page of depressing economic, political and social doom and gloom.

As I read the articles I continued on, telling myself it was important to have an understanding of what the struggles and problems facing us are. You know, reality.

But then I started wondering what actual benefit this knowledge was going to bring. Would I change any of my behaviours? Probably not. Would I be able to contribute anything more to society now that I had a more informed view? Again, I don’t think so.

Instead, I’m left feeling down, worried about our finances, concerned for people in all parts of the world, and most of all, incredibly helpless. My only change in behaviour is that I’ll probably complain to other people about it (ie this post).

So now I’m convinced that my usual strategy is better. Ignorance is bliss. I’d rather be a mis-guided optimist than an informed pessimist.

I finished up at Elcom yesterday. I’m on a week’s break, before I start my next role at nsquared on 8 Dec.

So, what will I do for the week? Well, no plans to go anywhere - I’ll be staying right here at home, relaxing and catching up on things. Here’s a few of the ‘chores’ I’ve got planned:

• Get a massage – it’s been ages since I had a massage (DONE: 29/11/08)
• Tax returns – I’ve got our personal returns and company returns to do for last financial year (DONE: 29/11/2008)
• Play Spore – Michele gave me this for my birthday back in September, but I’ve hardly played any of it
• Catch up on blogs – I’m a bit behind on my reading
• Gain weight – I’ve lost a bit of weight after my recent surgery, which also means I need to…
• Gain muscle – due to lack of exercise and training my waistline has expanded (as it always does)
• Have my final check up with the specialist – to make sure everything is as it should be (DONE: 01/12/08)
• Catch up with friends
• Read magazines – I’ve got a pile of Code, CIO and business magazines to go through (DONE: 02/12/08)
• Read weekend papers – haven’t done that in a while (DONE: 30/11/2008)
• Fire up the BBQ – it’s been too long since I fired up the Barbie! (DONE: 30/11/2008)
• Work on Michele’s web site – adding a new design and some more functionality (DONE: 05/12/08)
• Reduce my caffeine habit – get it down from 4 coffees a day to 2 (DONE: 04/12/08)
• Enter Diversity Visa lottery – missed out on it last year, try again! (DONE: 30/11/2008)
• Get ready for my new role – and I’ll blogging more about that over the coming days and weeks

There’s plenty more of course, but those are the main ones I want to cover.

It’s easy to be impressed (or horrified) by big numbers, and 1.2 billion is certainly a big number when it comes to dollars.

That’s what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. Apple by contrast spent $486M (as Lindsay Blakely reported).

But forget the actual dollars, instead focus on percentages. As Todd Bishop helpfully points out in his excellent analysis, Microsoft spend between 2% and 3% of their revenue on advertising (Apple is a little less).

Seems about right to me. For example, if I had a company pulling in $1M a year, I reckon I’d be happy to spend $20K - $30K on advertising – with the aim of course of making that back via increased revenue the following year.

I spotted this gem on MSDN tonight (yeah, slow night…).

Above the annoying flashing ad was a link titled ‘Do more with this Ad’. You got me. I clicked it.

Amazing, they’re after my feedback. They care about me. My opinion counts.

I submitted my response, refreshed the page and waited expectantly for the refreshing change it would bring to my browsing experience.

Can you guess what happened?

One of the biggest hurdles with VSTO is deployment.

As you probably know, the pre-requisites for running a VSTO app (even of the simplest Hello World variety) include:

• .NET Framework 3.5
• Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs)
• VSTO Runtime
• (Plus Office of course)

Now, packaging these isn’t the issue, since the Visual Studio team have worked hard to make the ClickOnce process a simple and seamless experience. The issue is the size of the download, plus requiring Admin privileges on the box you are installing on. For developers like you and me this doesn’t sound like much of a problem, but for an IT Manager in charge of rolling a simple VSTO app out across an enterprise this can be a significant headache (although Group policy can solve some of this).

And it doesn’t stop there, because if you have a number of VSTO add-ins going out, each of them needs to be installed separately. Finally there’s limitations with how to control post-install events (Eg copying Word or Excel templates into the proper locations).

The VSTO team have been focusing on deployment and security issues over the last 2 releases, and in the VS2008 release they made significant improvements. The recent SP1 for .NET 3.5 further eased the process.

But, it’s a process that still needs improvement.

Visual Studio 2010

So, it’s good to see that the team are making excellent progress in VS2010. As the recent PDC presentation from Saurabh Bhatia demonstrated (PowerPoint file here), there’s already key functionality increases.

[UPDATE: Removed the embedded presentation as it was preloading and sucking bandwidth – click here to view]

The main points covered are:

• Multi-project deployment (eg install an Outlook add-in, Excel add-in and Word add-in all at once)
• Post deployment custom actions (eg moving files to user directories, deleting files during uninstall)
• No-PIA installs (no need to include the PIAs – achieved via Type Embedding – a feature in CLR 4.0

This is welcome news to VSTO developers (actually probably more so for IT Managers). The pre-requisites are now down to the .NET Framework and the VSTO Runtime, and complex VSTO applications can be installed with a single install and enabled to configure itself.

It’d be so much simpler if the VSTO Runtime was automatically installed with Office or the Framework, but as we know, Microsoft are trying to reduce install sizes these days not add to them. Deployment will always have its pain points – good to see the team are getting close to an acceptable compromise.

One of the announcements at PDC was about Microsoft’s foray into the web based Office space. This was met with initial excitement, and seems to be answer to the (small I suspect) group of people wondering how Microsoft can compete with Google Docs, Zoho and other online offerings.

The demo here, with Antoine Leblond and Chris Bryant is a nice indication of how it will operate. I’ve been a sceptic of the Google Docs model for a while, and my initial thought was that this was just Microsoft’s (catch-up) version. In many respects it does seem to be just that, but there are a few important points to note. The main one is the demo focuses less on the delivery mechanism (ie web) and more the collaborative features.

This surely is the direction that needs to be explored. With unstructured data being a considerable and growing problem in the enterprise these days, the ability to work collectively on a single document (spreadsheet, slide, etc) is a key solution. Its the problem that Google, Zoho, etc have been trying to solve.

Where we interact is largely irrelevant. So whilst some will be overjoyed to be able to interact in a browser, I personally will be reluctant to give up the richness of the installed desktop application. But being able to collaborate (within my familiar tool no less!) - that’s a key benefit.

The big advantage Microsoft has of course is the 750M existing users of Office. Giving these users better collaboration, plus the option to use the web (if they must) is going to make the transition simple. It’ll be offered via Office Live, corporate licensing and other mediums.

Some will say that the sheer number of mobile phones will push the web based document model forward. I’m still a sceptic on this one too. Why? Simple. Have you actually tried working on a document on your phone? If so, then you know why it isn’t compelling.

This is no doubt a generational thing (I’m Gen X), so I fully appreciate that in time browser based mobile interaction will take over, and with the UX possibilities of Silverlight and Flex these days, I’m getting more comfortable about the transition. But let’s not pretend that web based this or mobile enabled that is the solution. Better collaboration, reduce unstructured data, and immediate feedback is the real topic.

Last weekend I presented at Office DevCon on the topic of VSTO for VBA developers.

This is an interesting use case because you essentially have a group of very experienced, highly productive developers, all extremely familiar with their technology. So my aim was to look at how Microsoft is supporting this community (as opposed to say pushing them into a new technology). I chatted about this previously.

The key is VBA / VSTO Interop, which allows VBA code to easily call VSTO code and vice versa.

The benefit of this approach is that VBA developers can (and should) continue to use their existing skill-set primarily, and easily take advantage of the .NET VSTO stuff in bite sized chunks when appropriate. There’s no either/or scenario here, it is very much one of complementing each other.

My presentation is available on my SkyDrive here, and I’ve recorded an 11 minute demo of how VBA and VSTO can call each other (its an Excel example, and is very much based on Daniel Moth’s excellent demo, which I referred to back in July). It also demos how bad my typing is :-)

I recorded this with Camtasia and left in many of the zoom-n-pan effects. Tell me if it’s too much.

I don’t know if you’ve been spending much time on stackoverflow lately, but if you are you’ll know it’s a kind of addictive experience. There’s all types of developer questions on there. The tagging structure is neat and allows you to easily keep track of certain topics.

There’s a growing list of VSTO related questions there, so along with the MSDN VSTO forums you are pretty likely to have any VSTO related question answered. stackoverflow doesn’t have any RSS feeds of their tags at this stage, but I hear it is high on the wishlist.

There’s also an RSS feed of the stackoverflow VSTO questions (although it is easy to miss, being right down the bottom of the page).

[Plus, if you subscribe to the MSDN VSTO forum feed, you’ll be happy to know that the feed format has been fixed. A little while back I was complaining about how the feed was a mess with html tags all mixed in. That was fixed about a month ago. Yay!]