So after two days of intense presentations, discussion and debate I’m sat in the BA lounge in Seattle writing up my thoughts.
Microsoft have been incredibly open. When I say Microsoft, I mean the Unified communications team. Because Microsoft, as many know, is a bunch of separate companies who happen to share the same campus. If Microsoft are going to succeed in this area they need to start behaving like one company. For mobile Office Communicator to work and be adopted by businesses they’ve got to make sure that the Windows Mobile platforms of the future can be managed like a desktop can be. For the services that Microsoft are going to offer to be adopted they’ve got to make sure that reliance, security and redundancy are all in place and can be trusted. Microsoft know this and they’ve been told this again over this last few days, lets just hope they can cut through their internal divisions and deliver.
So the Wave 14 versions of Office Communicator and Live Meeting look as though they’re going a long way to carving their niche (that’s niche without the ‘eesh’ and with an ‘itch’) just has email has. Many people have commented that their organisations pump around more IM’s than email messages. For many companies IM is something that they can’t live without.
The comments I made to Microsoft like “you need to spend money on taking features out and making this all more simple” were applauded by their UX (user experience) people, and frowned upon by those who just want to put cool features in. “Take a leaf out of 37signals book” I said. Needless to say many business cards were exchanged. Microsoft’s platform in this space looks impressive, let’s hope that their ISV partners can live up to it and can deliver quality.
So just as I’m getting over the jet lag (heaven knows how the guy who came from Melbourne coped) I’m on my way back to blighty. The trip was enlightening for me and very useful for Microsoft guys by the sounds of it. I think I’ve made some new friends…
Oh.. and for the record Mark both myself and a chap from HP made sure that PowerShell was mentioned about six times. 