TechReady (internal Microsoft field technical training conference) is rapidly approaching. For those Microsoft field friends who would like to drop by and say hi... I'm now in Building 42. Please feel free to drop by and say Hi if you are on main campus.

Y Combinator puts CRM at #6 of it's list of 30 ideas it would like to fund. It's also good to see 'Outsourced IT' at #4. I think the industry is about to experience to major paradigm shifts:

The Cloud is one of these shifts. Over the next ten years companies of all sizes will seriously question the need to have servers and infrastructure in house. Do people want their own generators or do they want to buy off the grid?

The IT Rebellion will be another. The fact that most CIOs can never become the CEO is telling. I believe that many companies will begin to radically restructure their IT arrangements. These restructures will go beyond simple outsourcing arrangements and will be synergistically tied to cloud migrations. Today these IT Rebellions are limited to regional and departmental skirmishes. Expect these to become enterprise wide.

Microsoft is well positioned as neutral party in both these paradigm shifts. We are well positioned with respect to the cloud (I wouldn't have moved from my beloved CRM team to Cloud Services if I didn't believe that). On the IT Rebellion front we are always faithfully served both business user and IT department and I believe we will continue to do so.

My new team just released R12 of BizTalk Services (the umbrella codename for Identity, Messaging and Workflow services in the Cloud).

Clemens has a detailed blog post which covers the new features.

More information about services and the SDK can be found at http://labs.biztalk.net. Anyone can sign up for an account and start using the service right away (however don't forget we are still in beta).

P.S. I know it confuses a lot of people - but the service is not actually BizTalk Server. Zero knowledge of BizTalk Server is required to us the service. The BizTalk brand was used to denote 'systems integration' functionality. I'm guessing that in the medium/long term you'll see us adopt another brand for this service.

I got my new workstation today. Dell T3400 (which appears to be the standard workhorse in our team) and a Samsung 245BW display (24" Widescreen at 1920x1200 native). I tried running the display in portrait mode (good for reading code) but it was so long my neck had to move to scan the entire screen. In it's landscape configuration the monitor is almost as wide as my desk (thanks to a rather 'snuggly' office sharing arrangement).

When installing all the drivers I discovered an interesting fact about the Dell: it has an NVIDIA 8800 GTS graphics card which "feature a powerful unified architecture that delivers an incredibly true-to-life gaming experience. Power through games at record speeds". I'm not exactly sure what kind of gaming I'm supposed to be doing at work - but hey - it runs Windows Classic Mode on Windows Server 2008 like a dream!

As a side note I switched my Lenovo T60p over to Windows Server 2008 64-bit and it's running like a dream (much better drivers are out now since I tried 64-bit last). One piece of advice: if you install Hyper-V the 'Sleep' function of your machine won't work (thanks to Michael Lu who passed on that very useful info).

Dennis Pombriant in his recent 'me-too' post regarding Vista vs Leopard decided to take a swipe at Microsoft CRM.

"In a vain effort to catch up and protect another franchise in the process, Microsoft is building Outlook into CRM or vice versa. Their contention is that people already spend the majority of their days in Outlook so it must be a perfect place for CRM users."

Let's be clear: Email, Appointments and Tasks are an incredibly important part of modern relationship processes. Outlook is Microsoft's client application which helps users manage Email, Appointments and Tasks. Wouldn't it then make sense for CRM to integrate with Outlook. Contrary to popular belief the Microsoft product teams don't sit around and say: "what features can we build to protect our sister teams?". We always ask ourselves: "What features can we build to deliver value to our customers". We also try and deliver on the promise of integrated innovation - the principle that Microsoft's products should work well together.

But - hey - maybe salespeople nowadays are just reading blogs, twittering and attending unconferences. Maybe Microsoft is totally wrong to think that Salespeople do lots of email, meet with customers and perform tasks.

Don't just listen to me. Listen to our competitors. Most of them also have Outlook Clients. Also listen to some of our partners. For example: LinkPoint360 with their awesome Lotus Notes clients for ACT!, MSCRM, Netsuite, Sage, SFDC, SalesLogix and Pivotal.

The Steve Ballmer Keynote Transcript pretty much says it all. Video highlight is here.We are serious about SaaS. As you can see Microsoft is serious about platform offerings, finished services and consumer experiences in the Cloud. Partners are increasingly seeing the vision of S+S coming together as Microsoft's cloud based products seamlessly integrate with their on-premise cousins.

Awesome article in CRM Magazine with an in depth interview with SteveB.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0708/#/22

Worth the read...

Over the last few years I've watched the awareness of CRM at Microsoft conferences like WWPC and Convergence grow from 'almost zero' to now a 'headline act'.

I'm really impressed to see CRM as a 'headline act' here at WWPC.

BTW: I was out last night and drank 'very lightly' for about six hours. I'm definitely 'out of practice' when it comes to such things. I was able to keep myself together (good for me and good for my NDA) - but I needed a little more than usual recovery time this morning. Some others looked worse (last night and this morning).

I'm here in Houston at the World Wide Partner Conference in Houston. I haven't traveled for business since the Titan (CRM 4.0) partner readiness test runs (SF and NY) because the scion has kept me at home. However thanks to the secret parachuting in of my mother-in-law (a surprise birthday gift for my wife) I am now able to travel for a few days. Keeping that a secret from my wife has honed my secrecy skills: so no amount of alcohol can dislodge my NDA (however I strongly encourage other WWPC attendees to try).

If anyone is interested in meeting up (to discuss CRM or 'Cloud Development Stuff') there are two ways to find me:

• Email me. Addresses are on the blog.
• Call Microsoft HQ. Ask for my name (there's only one of me) and my number will redirect to my mobile phone.

I'm especially interested in hearing from ISVs already in (or considering) Software as a Service offerings. If you have an NDA and my political officers marketers agree we could share...

Who said Microsoft doesn't have a sense of humour:

http://provega.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1DF190F45D534B45!1702.entry

I discovered an unusually annoying config issue today. While setting up my Lenovo T60p notebook with Windows Server 2008 64 bit I couldn't figure out why the Sleep functionality had become unavailable. Fortunately I was chatting with Michael Lu and he set me straight: if you enable Hyper V it disables Sleep.

Apart from that - Windows Server 2008 64 bit makes for an awesome notebook OS.

It's not that I didn't care - it's just that I'm not a 'morning person' and the teleconference showcasing these was at 8:00am. However Ben Riga did attend and has a nice blog post: Interesting ISV Solutions and Sessions at WPC.

Stunnware's excellent Filtered Lookup product for CRM 4.0 now supports Internet Facing Deployment (IFD). I highly recommend this product to anyone requiring Filtered Lookup functionality in CRM 4.0.

Today was my first day with the Cloud Services team. What's Cloud Services might you ask.... well - I'm not 100% sure how much I can say/blog yet.

In the next few days I'll have the "what's bloggable" discussion.

I've got a ton of email from people asking for more information regarding the team I'm joining. Not too much is public yet so I'm not in a position to espouse the grand strategy (trust me: it's awesome). There is an incubation project out in the open which showcases some of this stuff: labs.biztalk.net. Now don't get hung up on the 'biztalk' brand - I know it is a hot button issue with some people out there. Think Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) rather than Biztalk Server.

You can wire CRM up to the Connectivity service which provides a powerful means of integrating two systems regardless of network topology. I'm hoping I'll be able to publish a sample in the near future (I need to complete some other private/personal coding projects first).

Oh... another item people are asking: Yes, I am still going to WWPC. See you all there!