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Dell’s all Intel tablets and laptops targeting the evolving mobile workforce even with their most consumer specific Android tablets

October 3, 2013 8:09 am / Leave a comment

Dell is 100% committed to Intel (“for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency”) from now on which was, nevertheless, not discovered by the media. Otherwise the essence was well expressed by these Oct 2, 2013 media reports (being similar to others):

Read also: The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14-26, 2013]

BBC News: Dell‘s latest Venue tablets shun Windows RT system
PCWorld: With new Venue tablets, Dell signals its PC division is alive and kicking
TechCrunch: Dell Tries To Crack The Android Tablet Code (Again) With The Venue 7 & 8
GigaOM: New Dell Venue Pro tablets run Windows 8.1; no Windows RT in sight
CNET: Dell gives up on Windows RT “Neil Hand [VP Consumer Marketing], head of tablets at the PC maker, says Dell won’t be releasing follow-up Windows RT products because they didn’t sell well.”
VentureBeat: Dell gets serious about stealing market share with new consumer laptops and tablets “… ‘A year ago, Dell had two tablets,’ Hand said. ‘Now we have seven or eight, depending on how you count them. That shows our commitment.’ … Android is a force in tablets. With multiple Android tablets and even a modular, Windows 8-based convertible, Dell appears more like the Dell of yesterday, who was prepared to take share from its competitors.’ …”
The Verge: Dell unveils first four Venue tablets, including a Microsoft Surface competitor

Conspicuously missing from Dell’s lineup is any trace of Windows RT, the stripped-down version of Windows designed for ARM processors. Dell was the last remaining Windows RT supporter outside of Microsoft, at least until the company discontinued its XPS 10 last month. When we asked Dell’s director of tablets, Bill Gorden, he said the company’s still considering its options. “We’re very happy with the direction of Windows 8.1, and we have multiple screen sizes and capabilities there,” he said. “We’re not sure what our plans are for Windows RT at the moment.”

However, Gorden suggests that we should take the Venue launch as a sign that Dell isn’t planning to abandon the consumer market after it goes private. “I think the introduction of all these devices is really a signal of how important end-user computing is to Dell,” he toldThe Verge. “I think you’re going to start seeing Dell start being prominent in the consumer space.”

What was announced (according to Dell’s press release, available here at the very end):

The Dell Venue 7, Venue 8, Venue 8 Pro, and new XPS 15 will be available from October 18 on www.dell.com in the United States and select countries around the world. The Venue 11 Pro, XPS 11 and the updated XPS 13 with touch will be available in November. Starting prices are as follows:

Venue 7 [Android]: $149.99
Venue 8 [Android]: $179.99
Venue 8 Pro: $299.99
Venue 11 Pro: $499.99
New XPS 15: $1,499.99
XPS 11: $999.99
New XPS 13: $999.99

…

All Dell Venue tablets are based on Intel processing power for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency. The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 [Android tablets] feature Intel Atom Z2760 (“Clover Trail”) processors, while the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro [Windows 8.1 tablets] feature the new Intel Atom quad-core processors, code named “Bay Trail.” The Venue 11 Pro offers up to 4^th Generation Intel Core [”Haswell”] i3 and i5 processor options and Intel vPro for manageability.

Dell messages:

From the press release:

New Dell Venue tablets offer the ability to connect, share, and access content with ease
XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 in the world with the world’s first Quad HD display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1
XPS 15 powerhouse laptop offers the world’s first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ display for jaw-dropping visuals and the ultimate experience

…

Dell Venue tablets are designed to give people on-the-go a wide-selection of sizes and options to meet their varying needs. From 8 and 11-inch Windows-based tablets complete with keyboard and stylus options, to the 7 and 8-inch Android tablets, Dell has created a dedicated brand of tablets to meet the needs of customers who are the epitome of the evolving workforce.

For New Dell Venue 7 and 8 Tablets [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

Stay connected with Venue 7 and 8 tablets featuring fast Intel processors and easy to use Android OS.

For New Dell Venue 8 Pro Tablet [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

Connect to what you need easily, quickly and securely with the Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet [powered by Intel quad-core processor].

For New Dell Venue 11 Pro Tablet [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://www.dell.com/tablets
The no compromise tablet for those that expect more and do more [featuring Intel Core processors].

For Enabling the mobile workforce with Dell [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

Learn more about the evolving mobile workforce, bring your own device (BYOD) trends and the opportunity they present you as a Dell partner.

For Dell Venue 11 Pro Tablet for Work and Home [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

See how the Venue 11 Pro goes from your home life to work life, with no compromises.

Only here, and only inside there is a Microsoft related message (while Intel is everywhere here and especially in the above videos):

Stay connected with the Intel Core based Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet.
Keep in touch with loved ones across the globe.
Portability and performance in one device.
Chair projects with the stunning Full HD wide angle screen.
Run Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Office powered by Intel processors.
Interact like never before with near-field communication.
Present new ideas with Miracast technology.
Designed for on the go or on the couch.
Do more with the do it all Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet.

While at least one media source, CNET was much more Microsoft/Windows focussed:

The Dell Venue 8 Pro delivers full Windows 8.1 in a $299 package [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://cnet.co/19ZguLY
Dell’s Venue 8 Pro is a full Windows 8.1 tablet with an 8-inch screen.

The Dell Venue 7 and 8 mark Dell’s return to Android tablets [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://cnet.co/1bw0Mdk
Dell finally moves beyond the Streak with two new Android tablets.

Get accessorized with the Dell Venue 11 Pro [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://cnet.co/173mhOm
The 11-inch Venue 11 Pro from Dell features a removable battery and plenty of accessory options.

The Dell XPS 11 and 12 feature unique hybrid designs [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://cnet.co/1fJpImK
Both the Dell XPS 11 and 12 are take traditional hybrid design and throws it on its ear.

The Dell XPS 13 and 15 feature high-end specs and thin designs [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

http://cnet.co/1brtC1U
Dell goes ultra high-end with its XPS 13 and 15 laptops.

Press release from the company:

Dell Introduces New Line of Tablets and Updated XPS Laptops: Create, Share and Access Content from Virtually Anywhere [Oct 2, 2013]

New Dell Venue tablets offer the ability to connect, share, and access content with ease
XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 in the world with the world’s first Quad HD display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1
XPS 15 powerhouse laptop offers the world’s first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ display for jaw-dropping visuals and the ultimate experience

Dell today took a bold step in unveiling a new family of tablets and new laptops, including a 2-in-1 Ultrabook. The Dell Venue line of tablets is comprised of four new ultrathin models designed to address the changing way people live and work today. Dell’s “damned sexy” tablets, as described by leading Enderle Group analyst, Rob Enderle, deliver leading performance and quality, backed by Intel processing technology. With compact designs that make it easy to stay connected on the go, the Dell Venue tablets have an exquisite fit and finish.

In addition to the versatile new Dell Venue tablets, Dell is introducing new XPS laptops, each with breakthrough displays for a phenomenal viewing experience with vibrant, crisp images in any available screen size. The new XPS 11, the thinnest, most compact 2-in-1 in the world, also features the first Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1. The XPS 15 multimedia powerhouse boasts a stunningly thin design, and offers as an option the first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ (3200 x 1800) display in the world, which is the highest resolution available on a laptop of that size. Dell is also refreshing its award-winning XPS 13 Ultrabook with faster processors, touch Full HD (1920 x 1080) display and improved battery life. With these three laptops, Dell is leading the industry with the highest resolution displays possible.

“People today expect the best experience possible from their technology – they are counting on it to keep them connected and move with them, wherever they are,” said Sam Burd, vice president Dell Personal Computing Group. “The new Dell Venue tablets and XPS laptops give customers the stellar experience they expect from us, with performance that allows them to work how they want, when they want, in a design they’ll be proud to show off and own.”

Dell Venue Tablets: Connect, Share and Access Content with Ease
Dell Venue tablets are designed to give people on-the-go a wide-selection of sizes and options to meet their varying needs. From 8 and 11-inch Windows-based tablets complete with keyboard and stylus options, to the 7 and 8-inch Android tablets, Dell has created a dedicated brand of tablets to meet the needs of customers who are the epitome of the evolving workforce.

The Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro Windows 8.1-based tablets combine the level of performance, design and responsiveness end-users love while giving IT departments what they need – the ability to integrate into an existing corporate environment with full compatibility with current Windows applications and Microsoft Office integration. Both tablets feature optional advanced security features and services such as TPM and Dell Enterprise Services.
The lightweight Dell Venue 8 Pro runs Windows 8.1, has a bright HD IPS display, advanced connectivity options and provides long battery life so range anxiety is no longer an issue. People can also stay productive with Office 2013 Home & Student, included with the device, and the optional Dell Active Stylus.
The Dell Venue 11 Pro, also based on Windows 8.1, provides ultimate 2-in-1 flexibility with the power of an Ultrabook, convenience of a detachable keyboard and experience of a desktop. Unlike competitive tablets, it has a user removable/replaceable battery, and its large, Full HD display with wide viewing angles makes it easy to read and create content while staying mobile. It is also available with a variety of keyboard and stylus options:

Dell Active Stylus makes it easy to annotate, draw or take notes.
Dell Slim Keyboard, designed for travel, also serves as a cover for the screen when folded up.
Dell Mobile Keyboard with integrated battery provides all day productivity with a full-sized keyboard while extending the battery life.
Dell Tablet Desktop Dock delivers full productivity on a desk with USB 3.0 ports, and dual display out ports for display extension.

The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 Android-based tablets are affordable, feature-rich tablets for people who want to be constantly connected wherever they are. Both tablets have an upscale fit and finish, and are designed with longevity in mind with the right components so that customers will be just as delighted with their tablet one year from now, as they are on the day they take it out of the box.

All Dell Venue tablets are based on Intel processing power for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency. The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 feature Intel Atom Z2760 (“Clover Trail”) processors, while the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro feature the new Intel Atom quad-core processors, code named “Bay Trail.” The Venue 11 Pro offers up to 4^th Generation Intel Core i3 and i5 processor options and Intel vPro for manageability.

Dell XPS Laptops and 2-in-1: The Ultimate Experience with Gorgeous Displays
Dell’s award-winning XPS laptop line just got even better with the new XPS 15 powerhouse laptop, the introduction of the XPS 11 2-in-1, and an update to the flagship XPS 13 Ultrabook. In keeping with the XPS tradition of offering the best computing experience in any product category, the XPS laptops and 2-in-1 feature machined aluminum, carbon fiber, vibrant displays, and Corning Gorilla Glass NBT for performance, durability and the ultimate experience.

Starting at 2.5lbs[i] and just 11-15mm thin, the XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 Ultrabook available today, offering a tablet-first design with laptop functionality. It easily transitions from tablet to laptop with a 360 degree rotating hinge design, and an innovative solid surface backlit touch keyboard that provides a superb experience from lap to bag. With a Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display, the highest resolution display in an 11.6-inch 2-in-1 today, the XPS 11 has a bright, crisp viewing experience. The display also features True Color viewing powered by eeColor, which enables customers to enjoy true, rich consistent color in nearly any lighting environment.
The XPS 15 continues to be a multimedia powerhouse delivering the highest resolution in its class, and incredible power in an ultra-thin, light wedge design, starting at 4.44lbsⁱ. The XPS 15 is the first 15.6-inch laptop in the world to feature a Quad HD+ display, and also available with a touch option, boasts over 5.7 million pixels – five times the amount of standard HD – for jaw-dropping resolution. Designed for creative enthusiasts, the XPS 15 packs 4^th Generation Intel Core i5 and i7 quad core processor options and NVIDIA discrete graphics options. Every XPS 15 boots and resumes within seconds with hard drive configuration options from 500GB to 1TB[ii], both with a 32GB mSATA SSD, to a 512GB solid state drive, all including Intel Rapid Start Technology[iii].
The award-winning XPS 13, with its 13.3-inch, edge-to-edge display that innovatively fits into a footprint similar to an 11-inch laptop, is razor thin and light, starting at under 3lbsⁱ. It is now even faster with 4^thgeneration Intel Core processors, Intel HD 4400 graphics, and has longer battery life for the mobile professional who values a sleek design, responsiveness and ultimate mobility. Its Full HD display provides a brilliant viewing experience and is now even more versatile with a touch option.

“Dell appears to have its innovative mojo back,” said Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies. “These new products clearly emphasize Dell’s commitment to create innovative mobile solutions for businesses and consumers and I believe represent some of the best products they have made in many years.”

Personal and Professional Content Anytime, Anywhere
The Dell PocketCloud application is pre-installed on all XPS and Venue products, helping users build their own “personal cloud” and remotely manage personal and professional content. By combining PocketCloud with the portability of the new Venue tablets and XPS laptops, mobile workers will be able to enjoy an easy and connected experience with access to all of their apps and content from virtually anywhere.

Get the Most Out of Your Technology with Dell Services
Dell customers can get the most out of their technology with Dell Services, dedicated to keeping them connected and productive, whether they’re using their Dell Venue tablet or XPS purchase for work or home. In addition to the Dell Limited Hardware Warranty, consumers can elect to include additional protection such as Accidental Damage Service[iv], Premium Phone Support and Rapid Return for Repair after Remote Diagnosis[v], which means that their system will be repaired and returned to them within 3-5 business days after remote diagnosis. Likewise, business customers can be rest assured that their devices will fit seamlessly and securely into their corporate IT environment with Dell Enterprise Services like ProSupport[vi] on the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Venue 11 Pro tablets.

Availability and Pricing
The Dell Venue 7, Venue 8, Venue 8 Pro, and new XPS 15 will be available from October 18 on www.dell.com in the United States and select countries around the world. The Venue 11 Pro, XPS 11 and the updated XPS 13 with touch will be available in November. Starting prices are as follows:

Venue 7: $149.99
Venue 8: $179.99
Venue 8 Pro: $299.99
Venue 11 Pro: $499.99
New XPS 15: $1,499.99
XPS 11: $999.99
New XPS 13: $999.99

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com.

Dell World
Join us at Dell World 2013, Dell’s premier customer event exploring how technology solutions and services are driving business innovation. Learn more at www.dellworld.com and follow #DellWorldon Twitter.

Dell, Dell Venue and XPS are trademarks of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

[i] Weights vary depending on configuration and manufacturing variability.
[ii] Hard drives: GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will be less.
[iii] Intel Rapid Start Technology: Requires a Solid-State Drive (SSD) or properly configured HDD + SSD.
For copy of Limited Hardware Warranty, write Dell USA LP, Attn: Warranties, One Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682 or see http://www.dell.com/warranty
[iv] Accidental Damage Service excludes theft, loss and damage due to fire, flood or other acts of nature, or intentional damage. Customer may be required to return unit to Dell. For complete details, visitwww.dell.com/servicecontracts
[v] Remote Diagnosis is determination by online/phone technician of cause of issue, which may take multiple extended sessions. If issue is covered by Limited Hardware Warranty and not resolved remotely, shipping instructions will be provided. Next Business Day shipping not available in all areas, which may delay repair and return times. Other conditions apply. For complete details about Rapid Return for Repair after Remote Diagnosis Service, visit Dell.com/servicecontracts.
[vi] Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visitwww.dell.com/servicedescriptions.

Amazon’s move into overall leadership: Kindle Fire HDX with Snapdragon 800, “revolutionary on-device tech support” (Mayday), enterprise and productivity capable Fire OS 3.0 forked from Android 4.2.2 etc. PLUS a significantly enhanced, new Kindle Fire HD for a much lower, $139 price

September 27, 2013 6:10 pm / 1 Comment on Amazon’s move into overall leadership: Kindle Fire HDX with Snapdragon 800, “revolutionary on-device tech support” (Mayday), enterprise and productivity capable Fire OS 3.0 forked from Android 4.2.2 etc. PLUS a significantly enhanced, new Kindle Fire HD for a much lower, $139 price

Update about the overall strategy of Amazon:

From: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Is Like King Midas in Reverse [Slate, Oct 25, 2013]
Which is—nevertheless—missing the major point of Amazon strategy: smart investors continue to accelerate buying Amazon shares (from not so smart investors), and thus increasing the share price, because they recognize that Amazon is investing all of its profits into buying market share in commerce (generally) in a maximally possible way:

Source: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AMZN

Regarding Amazon’s devices only strategy (as a part of the overall one) there is a great quote on another picture there:

We want to make money when people use our devices,
not when they buy our devices.

End of the update.

Note that the previous (2nd gen) high-end has been available in more than 170 countries since June 13 this year! This also coincided with opening the curated Amazon Appstore for Android to 193 countries/territories! So Amazon is a global leader now in all respects, and the more it moves its overall e-commerce business to more countries/territories the more dominant it becomes against a whole range of current players! The “devices and services” players as well as all other e-commerce players!

Quite a progress even in hardware and platform terms (source: Amazon, click to enlarge)

1st gen announcement: Sept 28, 2011 …. 2nd gen announcement: Sept 6, 2012. See also:
– Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Product Brief [May 16, 2013]
– OMAP4430, OMAP4460 and OMAP4470 Application Processors [Texas Instruments]
– TI’s OMAP4460 in Samsung GALAXY Nexus with Android 4.0 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 21, 2011]

Important notes regarding pricing and global availability (including Amazon Appstore for Android):

On March 13, 2013 there was a Kindle Fire HD 8.9” availability announcement for UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. At the same time the U.S. price for Kindle Fire HD 8.9” was reduced to $269 (not shown in the above table). Then there was a Kindle Fire HD availability announcement to over 170 countries and territories through Amazon.com on May 23, 2013 with new prices there: $284 for 8.9” and $214 for 7” (this was shown in the above table). ??? Also the price of the 2nd gen Kindle Fire HD 8.9” was reduced to $269 when the 3d gen was announced this week. ???
As of Sept 27, 2013 there are 159 countries/territories (with additional 34 countries/territories not available, or available via country/language-specific Amazon sites) where you can buy Kindle Fire HD 8.9” on Amazon.com and get shipped to your country, PLUS a curated* Amazon Appstore for Android with over 100,000 apps (up 187 percent year over year) is available in 193 countries/territories. You can see the list for both towards the end of this post. And BTW this is only available since June 13, 2013 in over 170 new countries.
*Apps are tested for the Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire.
As of Sept 27, 2013 the All-New Kindle Fire HDX 7″ Tablet, All-New Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ Tablet and the All-New Kindle Fire HD 7″ Tablet seem to be not available globally (?because pre-order?)

Major messages from Amazon: The New Kindle Fires in 14 Tweets [Sept 25, 2013]

www.amazon.com/maydaytv – www.amazon.com/fireos – www.amazon.com/origami – www.amazon.com/quickpic
i.e. the links from the above slide (created by me) in order to be able to click from here as well

But this is “just” part of a much broader strategy and approach:
Amazon CEO: Focus on customer is key [CNN YouTube channel, Sept 25, 2013]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says the key to success for Amazon and The Washington Post is putting their customers first.

Competitive messages from Amazon:

Source: Compare Kindle Fire tablets on the Amazon site

SourceSource: Amazon Announces new Kindle Fire Tablets and Fire OS 3.0 [Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog, Sept 24, 2013]
NOTE THAT FOR Fire HDX THE PROCESSOR IS QUAD-CORE KRAIT 400 AND NOT A15. See Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Product Brief [May 16, 2013].

Source: Compare Small Tablets on the Amazon site

Source: Compare Large Tablets on the Amazon site

First an independent review of the announcements from The Verge on Sept 24, 2013:

Amazon has announced a host of new tablets; a 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle HDX and a refreshed Kindle HD. The devices are also running Fire 3.0, an updated version of Amazon’s tablet OS. Read more about Amazon’s new Kindles on The Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/25/4767538/amazon-kindle-fire-hdx-tablets-preview

And an interview by the same 3d party source Jeff Bezos wants to delight you [The Verge, Sept 25, 2013] from which I will quote here:

Back up in the room, Jeff Bezos sits in front of a blank whiteboard. After pleasantries are exchanged, he leaps to his feet and begins writing. He starts in on the mantras of Amazon’s e-reader and tablet business. Mantra one: premium products at non-premium prices. Mantra two: “We make money when people use our devices.” Jeff jots them down quickly on the board. “Some of this you knew already because you’ve been following us, but I’m going to lay out what a third part of our vision and strategy.”
…
Bezos draws a Venn diagram on the board. On the left side it reads “customer delight,” on the right, “deep integration throughout entire stack.” “This intersection, here, is some of the hardest to do,” he smiles, “and [where the] coolest customer delight features live.”

…

Jaw-dropping isn’t exactly how I would describe Mayday, the halo feature of the new Fire HDX — but it is impressive in many ways, particularly because of how much energy has been put into simply helping people use the device. Remember, Amazon makes money when people use the devices. But Bezos seems genuinely bummed at the idea that people wouldn’t be able to get the most out of their Fire.

“The context for this is that there’s a degree to which for many, many people these devices have become complex enough that sometimes we get them set up the way we want and then we don’t mess with them.” He swings the device around so that I can see the screen. “The settings, even features you only use once every couple of months, you forget how to. So tech support for these devices is important.” Bezos taps a Mayday button which is now part of the Quick Settings menu on the Fire. A small window pops over screen, and an Amazon-shirted tech support staffer named Dylan appears in a tiny video box. “Thanks for using Amazon Assist, I see you’ve hit the Mayday button. I’ll be your tech advisor.”
…
“This is one of the things that I think Amazon is uniquely suited for, which is that marriage of high-tech and heavy lifting. So throughout our entire corporate history, we’ve happily lived by marrying those two things together. It’s in service of customer delight, but you can only do it if you integrate that entire stack.” Okay, yes. But, should I be worried about my privacy here?

Bezos doesn’t get into details on the technical aspects of the security for Mayday, but tells me you can disable the service if it makes you uncomfortable. “Yeah, you can say you don’t want it, and set a setting to take it off your device, but you’d be disabling the greatest feature we’ve ever made!” But Mayday gives an Amazon rep unfettered access to my device, no? “It’s not unfettered,” he says, “it has to be initiated by the customer.” And it’s true. This isn’t an open node just sitting there — you have to want to use it. Needless to say, the company doesn’t sound worried about privacy and security — and maybe I’m being paranoid — but in the cold light of PRISM revelations, complete control over your tablet by a third-party may not be something every consumer feels bullish about.

Bezos has a different view — a long view. “Everything we’ve ever done people have said this. People said customer reviews were a bad idea, third-party selling is a bad idea, personalization is a bad idea,” and he does have a point. “In 1994, typing your credit card [info] on the internet is a bad idea. Every single thing that’s new is a bad idea.” And then Bezos repeats one his best rehearsed and most convincing soundbites. “Willingness to be misunderstood is one of our greatest strengths.”

Now decide for yourself regarding this Mayday innovation Jeff Bezos is so keen on:

New Amazon TV spot for Kindle Fire HDX featuring Mayday button [kindle YouTube channel, Sept 24, 2013]

Introducing the Mayday button, available exclusively on the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets. With a single tap, an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you—whatever works best. Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. See how the Mayday button works in this sneak preview of our upcoming TV commercials. http://www.amazon.com/firehdx

From: Introducing the Mayday Button—Revolutionary On-Device Tech Support [Amazon press release, Sept 25, 2013]

The Mayday button on the new Kindle Fire HDX brings your own personal tech advisor directly to your sofa or desk

Free, 24×7, 365 days a year

The National Retail Federation rated Amazon #1 in its Customer’s Choice Awards, JD Power and Associatesnamed Amazon a Customer Service Champion, and MSN Money has ranked Amazon #1 in its Customer Service Hall of Fame for four years running. Now, Amazon introduces the Mayday button, extending this world-class customer service to live, on-device tech support, right from your Kindle Fire HDX. The Mayday button is available exclusively on the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, available for pre-order at: www.amazon.com/hdx.

“With the Mayday button, our goal is to revolutionize tech support,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “With a single tap, an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you—whatever works best. Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. See it for yourself—preview our upcoming TV commercials: www.amazon.com/maydaytv.”

Details of the Mayday button:
– It’s free.
– Available 24×7, 365 days a year.
– 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal.
– You can see the tech advisor, they can’t see you.
– Simple and deeply integrated—the Mayday button lives in the Quick Settings menu, one tap away.

Some customers got a sneak peek—here’s what they had to say:
– “It’s so easy, you just press connect and boom you get hooked right up with a representative. I’ve never had a customer experience be so painless and so easy to do. I’ve never had an experience like this before. I wish all customer service experiences could be like that.” –Travis
– “With the agent on the video feed, it’s like having a teacher right in front of you. It makes a big difference.” – Ron
– “That was smooth and comfortable rather than calling on the phone or typing something in. I really was impressed with how well that went. I remember setting up my first e-mail account and always having to call friends or tech support and it would take so much longer, where this was comfortable and directed me to the right place immediately.” – Pete
– “[This] is more personable…it is nice to see his face, for him to actually be there talking to you one-on-one, it seems like you are getting personal treatment.” – Rose
– “I really hate when you have to talk to a computer for like 10 minutes before you get to a human being. So the fact that you just click and there’s a human being is much preferable.” – Nicole
– “The fact that he [Tech Advisor] can control the screen made the process very simple and I wasn’t struggling to find what he was talking about. The one-on-one experience is very positive!” – Tracy

The Mayday button is available exclusively on the new Fire HDX tablets—read the press release: www.amazon.com/kindle-pr.

And the whole high-end tablet value proposition according to:

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX review 7 and 8.9 inch [amazon store YouTube channel, Sept 26, 2013]:

Introducing Kindle Fire HDX—Powerhouse Tablets Built for Work and Play [Amazon press release, Sept 25, 2013]

All-new Kindle Fire HDX—stunning new 7″ or 8.9″ HDX display, quad-core 2.2 GHz processor with 3x the processing power, 2x more memory, 11 hours of battery life, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio

New HDX display goes beyond HD—exceptional pixel density, perfect 100% sRGB color accuracy, reduced glare, dynamic image contrast, and improved brightness for the best viewing experience indoors or out

Lightest large-screen tablet—Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ is startlingly light at 13.2 ounces, 34% lighter than the previous generation

Introducing the Mayday Button—revolutionary on-device tech support—free, 24×7, 365 days a year

Prime Instant Video movies and TV shows now available for downloading—watch anywhere, even when offline—available exclusively on Kindle Fire HDX

Stay connected and productive with updated email, calendar and Silk browser, plus seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter

Enterprise-ready with support for encryption, Kerberos Intranet, secure Wi-Fi connections and VPN integration

SEATTLE—September 25, 2013—(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today introduced the third generation of Kindle Fire—the all-new Kindle Fire HDX. The new Kindle Fire HDX tablets combine groundbreaking hardware, the latest version of Fire OS, and exclusive new features and services like X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, Prime Instant Video downloads, and the revolutionary new Mayday button. Learn more about the new Kindle Fire HDX family at www.amazon.com/hdx.

The new Kindle Fire HDX family features:

Stunning exclusive HDX display—beyond HD with exceptional pixel density ([1920×1200 resolution at] 323 ppi for 7″, [2560×1600 resolution at] 339 ppi for 8.9″), perfect 100% sRGB color accuracy, reduced glare, dynamic image contrast,and improved brightness for better viewing in any lighting conditions.

Powerful quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.2 GHz provides over 3x the processing power compared to the previous generation, plus the latest graphics engine and 2x more memory for fast and fluid performance. These are the only tablets with a processor over 2 GHz.

Startlingly light design—at just 13.2 ounces [374g], the 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX is the lightest large-screen tablet, 34% lighter than the previous generation.

Powered by the latest version of Fire OS—Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito”—with hundreds of new and upgraded features, platform updates, and Amazon-exclusive services like X-Ray for Music, Cloud Collections, Goodreads, and more.

New Mayday button delivers revolutionary live tech support—one touch connects you to an Amazon expert who can guide you remotely through any feature—24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal.

All-day battery life—up to 11 hours of mixed use and 17 hours of reading.

Updated email, calendar, and Silk browser to stay connected and productive.

New enterprise features including hardware and software-encryption, Kerberos Intranet, secure Wi-Fi connections, VPN integration, and wireless printing.

Both HDX 7″ and 8.9″ available with ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless. Available on the AT&T network, and for the first time on the Verizon Wireless network.

Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio and virtual 5.1 multi-channel surround sound—the standard in high-end audio.

Front-facing HD camera makes it easy to stay in touch with Skype, plus a new 8 megapixel wide- aperture rear-facing camera on the 8.9″ Fire HDX offers crisp photos and 1080p HD video.

Best video experience on a tablet with new Amazon-exclusive features like Prime Instant Video downloads, Second Screen, and expanded X-Ray for Movies and TV.

Deep integration with the world’s best content ecosystem—over 27 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks and magazines.

New Origami covers feature an innovative design that allows you to position Fire HDX in both portrait and landscape.

“It’s been just two years since we introduced the first Kindle Fire, and the team is innovating at an unbelievable speed,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “2.2 GHz processor, 339 ppi display, new 34% lighter design, Fire OS 3.0, and new exclusive features like the Mayday button, X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, and Prime Instant Video downloads. We’ve worked hard to pack this much hardware, innovation, and customer obsession into these prices.”

World-Class Hardware

First-Ever, Exclusive HDX Display—Beyond HD
Amazon’s exclusive HDX display brings together exceptional pixel density (1920×1200 at 323 ppi for 7″, 2560×1600 at 339 ppi for 8.9″) and perfect color accuracy (100% sRGB), resulting in images and videos that display as the photographer or videographer intended. The new display also features dynamic image contrast, a unique algorithm that adjusts the color of each pixel depending on the ambient brightness in order to maximize contrast. This makes images and videos even easier to see in any lighting conditions, including outdoors. See a video: www.amazon.com/display.

2.2 GHz, Quad-Core Processor and 2x the RAM
Kindle Fire HDX tablets are the first tablets powered by the most advanced quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor. These are the only tablets with a processor over 2 GHz—the four cores can each run at 2.2GHz, providing 28 billion instructions per second—over 3x the processing power of the previous generation Kindle Fire HD. Fire HDX also doubles the RAM to 2GB, resulting in faster app launch times, faster website load times, smoother multi-tasking, and better overall performance.

New Graphics Engine Perfect for Gaming
The new Adreno 330 graphics engine on Kindle Fire HDX delivers 4x the graphics performance of the previous generation Kindle Fire HD. This combination of a new graphics engine, HDX display, quad-core processor, and 2x the memory creates a more immersive, high-frame rate HD gaming experience.

Lightest Large-Screen Tablet—13.2 ounces, 34% Lighter
Amazon integrated the capacitive touch layer directly into the glass display on Fire HDX, leaving a lighter single layer instead of the typical 2-layer display stack. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ frame is a single-piece of machined magnesium with a blend of glass and nylon molded onto the unibody to create openings for the antennas and maximize signal strength without sacrificing sturdiness. The result is the lightest large-screen tablet—at just 13.2 ounces, it is 34% lighter than the previous generation large-screen Fire HD tablet.

11 Hours of Battery, Up to 17 Hours for Reading
Even with all this additional power, Fire HDX still delivers 11 hours of mixed use battery life. When you are reading, Fire HDX automatically powers down the CPU and any unnecessary system components and stores the displayed text in dedicated, low-power memory—the result is up to 17 hours of battery life for reading.

8MP Rear-Facing Camera for Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″
Both the 7″ and 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX feature a front-facing HD camera to help you stay in touch with friends and family with Skype. Fire HDX 8.9″ features an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera that allows for high-resolution photos and 1080p HD video, plus an LED flash, Electronic Image Stabilization, and a wide-aperture 5P f2.2 lens that lets in more light, reducing exposure times and producing sharper images. See a video: www.amazon.com/fire-camera.

New Origami Covers
New origami-style cover design provides a simple stand for both portrait and landscape positions, and attaches magnetically so it’s easy to take on and off. The cover for the 8.9″ Fire HDX features a custom slide feature that quickly exposes the rear-facing camera and automatically launches the camera application so you won’t miss a great photo opportunity. See a video: www.amazon.com/quickpic.

The Mayday Button

Revolutionary On-Device Tech Support from Amazon’s Tech Advisors
Having trouble or want to learn how to use a new feature? Simply tap the Mayday button in Quick Settings, and an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you—whatever works best. 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal. Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. See the separate press release on the Mayday button and preview three upcoming TV ads that show how the Mayday button works: www.amazon.com/mayday.

New Amazon-Exclusive Features and Services

Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito”
Kindle Fire HDX is powered by the newest version of Fire OS – Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito”, which introduces hundreds of new and upgraded features, Amazon-exclusive services, platform updates and more. Fire OS starts with Android and adds cloud services, a content-first user interface, built-in media libraries, productivity apps and low-level platform enhancements to integrate Amazon’s digital content and improve performance for Kindle Fire tablets. If an app runs on Android, it can run on Fire OS. Read more: www.amazon.com/fireos.

Download Prime Instant Videos on Kindle Fire HDX to Watch Anywhere
Prime Instant Video is the only U.S. online subscription streaming service that enables offline viewing—on a plane, on vacation, and anywhere else where you may not have Wi-Fi. Tens of thousands of Prime Instant Videos are now available for download on Fire HDX. If you are new to Prime, you get one free month of Amazon Prime when you purchase Fire HDX.

All-New X-Ray for Music
Amazon is expanding X-Ray to music by adding lyrics that let you follow along with songs. Lyrics display and scroll automatically line-by-line as the song plays. See a screenshot: www.amazon.com/x-ray.

X-Ray for Movies and TV—Now Even Better
Customer-favorite X-Ray for Movies and TV now shows the names of songs as they play as well as a list of all music in the movie or TV show, and lets you jump to the scene in which a particular song is playing. X-Ray also shows trivia items in context with the action on the screen. For example, in The Godfather when Clemenza tells his henchman to “leave the gun, take the cannoli”, X-Ray alerts you that actor Richard Castellano ad-libbed that famous line of dialog. X-Ray for TV also provides character backstories so you can easily remind yourself of the character’s history. X-Ray is offered only by Amazon and is powered by IMDb.

Second Screen Lets Others Join In
Fling TV shows and movies from your tablet to your big-screen TV using Second Screen, which turns your TV into the primary screen and frees up your Fire HDX to provide playback controls, a customized display for X-Ray, or simply a place to email, browse the web, and more while you watch a movie. Second Screen will be available starting next month for PlayStation 3 and Samsung TVs, and later this year for PlayStation 4. You can also wirelessly mirror movies, TV shows and photos from your tablets to your big-screen TV with Miracast-enabled accessories or TVs.

Stay Connected with Expanded Email, Docs, and Printing
With the new email on Fire HDX, it is easier than ever to set up your accounts, group conversations by subject, sync your email and more. Reading and managing documents on Fire HDX is simple: email them, sync them from a computer with Cloud Drive, clip them from the web with Send to Kindle, or transfer them via USB. Coming mid-November as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update—print documents, photos, emails, and calendar events directly from Kindle Fire to compatible wireless printers.

Complete Enterprise Support
Fire HDX is ready for work, with support for encryption of the user partition of the device to secure data; support for Kerberos authentication so corporate users can browse secure intranet websites; the ability to connect to secure enterprise Wi-Fi networks as well as corporate networks via a native or a 3rd party VPN client; and Mobile Device Management solutions ranging from Amazon’s Whispercast service to 3rd party vendors like AirWatch, Citrix, Fiberlink, Good Technology, and SOTI. Some of these features will be delivered as part of the Fire OS 3.1 update. See the separate press release on enterprise features: www.amazon.com/kindle-enterprise.

Cloud Collections
Organize your books, newspapers, magazines, and apps in customized collections for easy reference, and Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes the collections across your Kindle devices and reading apps so they’re available on all of your devices. Cloud Collections will be available as part of the Fire OS 3.1 update.

Goodreads on Kindle Fire
Join over 20 million other readers and see what your friends are reading, share highlights, and rate the books you read with Goodreads on Kindle, available exclusively from Amazon. Goodreads will be available as part of the Fire OS 3.1 update. See screenshots:www.amazon.com/goodreads.

Accessibility Features
Blind and visually impaired customers will discover new and improved accessibility tools such as Screen Reader, Explore by Touch, and Screen Magnifier, enabling access to the vast majority of Kindle Fire features. Screen Reader features IVONA’s award-winning natural language text-to-speech voice.

New Exclusive Deals for Kindle Fire Owners
Kindle Fire’s Special Offers are better than ever with exclusive limited-time, limited-quantity deals available directly from the lock screen. These deals are similar to Lightning Deals that run on Amazon.com, but with even greater savings. The first deal, available in the coming weeks, will be the Madden NFL 25 video game for $5 (92% off). See screenshots: www.amazon.com/offers.

All the Content
The Kindle Fire family offers the best selection of digital content—over 27 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks and magazines—including hundreds of thousands of exclusives:
– Over 150,000 movies and TV episodes—stream or download, purchase or rent.
– Tens of thousands of popular movies and TV episodes are available at no additional cost for Prime members with Prime Instant Video, the exclusive subscription streaming home to shows like Downton Abbey, Under the Dome, Justified, Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues and many more.
– The most popular apps and games. Apps are tested for the Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire.
– Millions of songs—stream, download, and store purchases for free in the cloud for access anytime, anywhere.
– Hundreds of magazines and newspapers.
– Millions of books, including hundreds of thousands of titles that are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over a million titles are $4.99 or less, over 1.7 million are $9.99 or less.
– Over 400,000 titles available for Prime members who own a Kindle to borrow for free as part of Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
– Over 150,000 professionally-narrated audiobook titles, with free samples to listen to before buying.

“Buy Once, Enjoy Everywhere” with the Best Cross-Platform Interoperability
With apps available on the largest number of devices and platforms, Amazon makes it easier than ever to access your content anytime, anywhere. Use the Kindle, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon MP3 and Amazon Appstore for Android apps to “Buy Once, Enjoy Everywhere.” No other company offers the same level of flexibility with your content.

Pricing & Availability

The 7″ Kindle Fire HDX is $229. It is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/hdx-7 and it will begin shipping October 18. The 4G version is $329—you can pre-order today to reserve your place in line at www.amazon.com/4g-hdx-7 and it will begin shipping November 14.

The 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX is $379. It is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/hdx and it will begin shipping on November 7. The 4G version is $479—you can pre-order today to reserve your place in line at www.amazon.com/4g-hdx and it will begin shipping December 10.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ Standing Leather Origami Case

Slim, form-fitting cases designed by Amazon to perfectly fit the all new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets. All Origami cases feature magnetized panels to securely stand the device in either landscape or portrait orientation and are available in either a premium natural leather or durable polyurethane. The cases for Kindle Fire HDX and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ tablets attach to the devices magnetically, making it easy to attach and remove. Furthermore, the cases redirect the sound from your Kindle Fire HDX speakers towards you, immersing you in the rich cinematic Dolby Digital Plus sound experience. Finally, an exclusive Camera-Ready feature for the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ case makes it quick and easy to take pictures so you can capture all your precious moments – simply slide the device up in the case and the camera automatically starts, allowing you to quickly snap a picture.
Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX are Enterprise-Ready [Amazon press release, Sept 25, 2013]

New features include device encryption, secure Wi-Fi connections, native VPN, Kerberos authentication for Intranet access, and integration with leading MDM providers

Today, Amazon is introducing new enterprise and productivity features in Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito,” the software platform that powers the new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets. The new Fire HD and Fire HDX are available for pre-order starting today atwww.amazon.com/hdx.

“Kindle Fire is already the second most popular tablet at work in the U.S.,” said Raghu Murthi, Vice President of Enterprise and Education,Amazon. “As employees increasingly bring their own devices to work, the new Kindle Fire tablets can be easily integrated into the workplace with the new enterprise features, including encryption, secure Wi-Fi, a native VPN client, integration with leading MDM solutions, and Kerberos support for Intranet access.”

Features that make the new Kindle Fire tablets enterprise-ready include:
– Wi-Fi networks with WPA2 support for secure access to corporate apps, documents and resources like SharePoint.
– Email that makes it even easier for business customers to set up their accounts, group conversations by subject, sync their email and more.
– Print documents and emails directly from Kindle Fire to a wireless printer.
– Built-in OfficeSuite to read documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
– Native VPN client, for instant access to corporate networks while on the road or at home.
– Secure hardware data encryption on Kindle Fire HDX.
– Kerberos authentication for single sign-on and the ability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser on Kindle Fire.
– Native SCEP (Simple Certificate Exchange Protocol) client to retrieve digital certificates for secure resources.
– Kindle-specific device management APIs that integrate with existing mobile device management (MDM) systems to make it easy for IT departments to manage Kindle Fire. Kindle Fire supports a wide range of MDM solutions including Amazon’s Whispercast service as well as third-party vendors like AirWatch, Citrix, Fiberlink, Good Technology, and SOTI.

Business customers can also take advantage of Android enterprise and productivity apps available in the Amazon Appstore. Examples of top productivity apps available for Kindle Fire include GoToMeeting, Evernote, Cisco AnyConnect, and Documents To Go.

“We work with our clients to distribute Kindle Fire to their new employees because Kindle Fire allows companies to distribute information quickly and efficiently so their employees can easily share course materials, reference documents, and their individual notes with their colleagues,” said Caroline Brant, Director, Learning Solutions at ROI Training, Inc. “Our global clients include leading technology and financial services firms and Kindle Fire has proven to make it easier for our employees to stay productive whether at work or at home.”

Some of these features will be delivered as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update in mid-November. For additional details, visit www.amazon.com/fireos.
[From which I will copy here the most important part:]

To read the separate press release for the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets visit: www.amazon.com/kindle-pr.

For additional information about the new enterprise features visit:amazon.com/kindle/business.

More information about Introducing Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito” [Amazon press release, Sept 25, 2013]

Brings hundreds of platform updates and exclusive new features, including the Mayday button, X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, 1-Tap Archive, Cloud Collections, Quiet Time, Optimizing Download Manager, and Social Integration with Goodreads and Facebook

New enterprise and productivity features—including printing, email conversation view, enterprise encryption and mobile device management—BYOD support

Apps and games built for Android are compatible with Fire OS

Fire OS 3.0 available exclusively on the all-new Kindle Fire HD & Kindle Fire HDX tablets

Amazon.com today introduced Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito,” the next generation of software and services that powers the best-selling Kindle Fire tablets, with hundreds of updates and exclusive new features to give customers a simple OS experience with Android app compatibility. Fire OS starts with Android and adds:

Low-level platform enhancements, including: the Optimizing Download Manager, re-designed graphics pipeline, Reading Mode, and improvements to touch latency for better performance.
Productivity apps with enhanced email, documents, and enterprise support with hardware and software data encryption.
Deep integration of the hardware, software and services to deliver features like X-Ray, the Mayday button, Second Screen, and more.
Built-in media libraries for instant access to music, movies, apps, and games both stored on the device or in the cloud, and automatically syncs between them.
Content-first user interface with both Carousel and Grid views.
Cloud services like Whispersync, 1-Tap Archive and Cloud Collections.

Fire OS 3.0 is available exclusively on the all-new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX—read a separate press release at:www.amazon.com/kindle-pr.

“Fire OS includes the core email and productivity apps, but we take a different approach when it comes to content,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Our content-first approach shapes the design of Fire OS—the home screen makes the most recent content items available instantly on the Carousel or Grid and customers can move between their media libraries both on the device and in the cloud with a simple tap. We’ve also deeply integrated Amazon services directly into Mojito, such as the Mayday button, Second Screen, X-Ray for Movies & TV shows, and now X-Ray for Music.”

“Fire OS lets developers offer their Android apps on Kindle Fire with little to no work,” said Mike George, Vice President, Amazon Appstore. “Developers can integrate services like Whispersync for Games, GameCircle, In-App Purchasing, and Amazon’s Mobile Associates into their apps to take advantage of the Amazon Appstore’s increased monetization and customer engagement.”

Fire OS features for Android apps and games:

Native Android App Compatibility is supported by Fire OS, so if an app runs on Android it can run on Fire OS with little to no work. Fire OS is built from the Android open source kernel and runtime libraries and is consistently tested for Android app compatibility. Amazon also offers developers an integrated ecosystem for building, monetizing and marketing their apps and games for Fire OS, which results in better customer engagement.
Support for HTML5 Apps allows developers to offer their web apps and mobile websites on Kindle Fire tablets to customers in the same, convenient way as mobile apps. As one of the only platforms to offer this level of HTML5 support, developers can submit and distribute mobile web content without using third-party software or any mobile development.
GameCircle and Whispersync for Games give developers the opportunity to allow customers to sync their game progress and scores across devices, and to quickly integrate Achievements and Leaderboards into their games.
In-App Purchasing and Mobile Associates lets developers give customers the opportunity to buy digital and physical items, such as toys, upgrades and game pieces fromAmazon.com and use their Amazon accounts to make the purchase directly from within an app.
Amazon Device Messaging gives customers a single messaging platform for all their apps built on Amazon Web Services, which developers can take advantage of to send notifications to Kindle Fire tablets.
Amazon Coins offers every new Kindle Fire customer 500 coins ($5) of virtual currency to use for purchasing apps, games, or in-app items on Kindle Fire. Amazon Coins is an easy way for customers to spend money on developers’ apps and offers another opportunity to drive traffic and app downloads increasing monetization even further.
Accessibility Tools including Screen Reader, Explore by Touch and Screen Magnifier enable access to the vast majority of Fire OS features. Text-to-Speech for book reading features natural-sounding IVONA voices for the following languages: US, British and Australian English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and French Canadian. Fire OS 3.0 supports standard Android Text-to-Speech APIs, so developers can take advantage of IVONA voices for third-party apps.

Cloud services and user interface improvements:

Carousel and Grid views let customers choose how they want to navigate their content. With a swipe, the redesigned Fire OS home screen easily switches between viewing their recent content on the Carousel or their favorites in Grid view.
Cloud Collections organizes apps, books, newspapers, and magazines, making them easier to find. Collections are automatically stored in the cloud and Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes collections across Kindle devices and apps.
1-Tap Archive frees up space on Kindle Fire tablets by identifying items that have not been used recently and provides a 1-tap option to store them in the Cloud for later retrieval.
Kindle FreeTime gives parents the ability to more easily whitelist movies, books, apps and games appropriate for their kids’ enjoyment with the new “For Kids” suggestions.
Social Integration gives customers OS-level sharing capabilities for Facebook and Twitter. With Facebook, customers also get contacts, events and photos integration.

Revolutionary Mayday Button:

The Mayday Button delivers revolutionary on-device tech support and is available 24×7, 365 days a year, for free. 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal. The Mayday button is built into Quick Settings and an Amazon expert will appear on the Fire HDX and can co-pilot a customer through any feature by drawing on the screen, walking them through how to do something themselves or doing it for them. See the separate press release and preview three upcoming TV ads that show how the Mayday button works: www.amazon.com/mayday.

Deeply-integrated content features:

Goodreads is built into the reading experience, so customers can see what friends are reading, get recommendations, share quotes, and write reviews from within the book.
X-Ray for Movies and TV now shows the names of TV theme or movie soundtrack songs as they play as well as trivia and goofs while watching a movie or TV show. Powered by IMDb, X-Ray for TV will also provide character backstories as the actor appears on screen.
X-Ray Expands to Music with synchronized lyrics that lets customers follow along line-by-line with a song. Lyrics are available even when Kindle Fire is not connected to Wi-Fi or 4G.
Second Screen allows customers to fling content from their Fire to their TV, turning the TV into the primary screen and freeing up their Fire as a second screen to email, browse the web, play a game, or follow along scene-by-scene with X-Ray. The Fire screen is not just a mirror image of the TV. Instead, when the customer flings the video to the TV, Fire syncs the video and the X-Ray data in the cloud and streams the video directly to the TV, so the quality of the video is not dependent the tablet’s processor or networking. The customer can even take their tablet to another room and leave the video playing on the TV.
Quiet Time, directly accessed from the quick settings menu, lets you mute all incoming notifications or calendar reminders. In addition, Quiet Time can be tied to a particular activity such as reading.
Quick Switch uses a global swipe gesture from anywhere in the system to go between multiple apps, and unlike standard Android, works with individual content items like different textbooks without navigating home.

Low-level platform enhancements:

Optimizing Download Manager enables parallel content downloads. Unlike standard Android, Fire OS adjusts the number of simultaneous downloads per device, so that foreground app performance is not impacted by background download activity. In addition, the Optimizing Download Manager automatically pauses ongoing content downloads when the customer starts streaming an Amazon Instant Video to maximize video quality. Customers can prioritize individual items to download first, and with progressive download they can open videos, Audible audiobooks, or magazines and start enjoying them while the download is still ongoing.
Graphics Direct Texture replaces the standard Android graphics pipeline. The Fire OS graphics system is customized to quickly load large graphical assets like the high-resolution cover art in the Fire OS home screen. Graphics Direct Texture enables the Carousel and the Fire OS media libraries to include large, detailed images and still load quickly and scroll smoothly.
Touch Responsiveness is improved by low-level changes to the way Fire OS 3.0 handles taps and swipes. For example, the system dynamically increases the CPU speed after the customer lifts their finger off the screen, to minimize touch latency in games and apps. And when a customer taps an app in the Carousel or Grid views, the system removes unnecessary OS overhead activities and drives the app start animation directly to the GPU, so that the app starts to open immediately.
Reading Mode gives customers up to 17 hours of battery life when reading. Fire OS automatically powers down unnecessary system components when customers are reading static pages, storing the text in a dedicated, low-power memory, and powering down the CPU.

New enterprise and productivity features:

Enhanced Email makes it easier to set up email accounts, and groups conversations by subject with threaded messaging and sync.
Printing support for wireless printers is now available for documents.
Enterprise Support with software data encryption on Kindle Fire HD and hardware data encryption on Kindle Fire HDX; the ability to connect to secure enterprise Wi-Fi networks and access corporate apps, documents and resources like SharePoint; native VPN client for instant access to corporate networks; a native SCEP (Simple Certificate Exchange Protocol) client to retrieve digital certificates for secure resources; and a rich set of Kindle-specific device management APIs that integrate with a wide range of existing mobile device management (MDM) systems, including Amazon’s Whispercast service and 3rd party vendors like AirWatch, Citrix, Fiberlink, Good Technology and SOTI. Fire OS 3.0 also supports Kerberos authentication, which enables seamless enterprise single sign-on and the ability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser on Kindle Fire.

Developers:

Developers consistently report how simple it is to bring their Android apps to the Fire OS platform and how they see increased monetization and engagement with their apps and games on Kindle Fire. Here’s what they have to say:

Imangi Studios is the creator of the popular game Temple Run. “We’ve integrated with Amazon’s In-App Purchasing and GameCircle APIs, which was a breeze,” says Keith Shephard, CEO of Imangi Studios. “We’ve seen significantly higher customer engagement withTemple Run since the integration, making the few, short steps worth it.”

“Since the launch of the very first Kindle Fire, Gameloft has been a strong believer in Amazon’s ability to bring a great user experience to digital gamers,” said Baudouin Corman, VP of Publishing for theAmericas, Gameloft, developers of Asphalt 8 & Despicable Me: Minon Rush. “From recommendations and reviews to GameCircle, Amazonis building the kind of strong ecosystem we want for our products.”

“Amazon continues to monetize incredibly well for us,” said Mike Sandwick, Manager of Strategic Partnerships, TinyCo, the mobile gaming developers behind Tiny Village. “Kindle Fire devices consistently deliver high LTVs across all of our titles.”

“We’re extremely happy with the per-user monetization we’ve achieved on Amazon with our games,” said Arlin Schaffel at Noodlecake Studios, publisher of Super Stickman Golf. “We regularly see more than double the per-user spend on Amazon compared to other app stores. As Amazon continues to expand worldwide, we’re excited to see our revenue grow along with them.”

Fire OS 3.0 is available exclusively on the all-new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets. Some of these features will be available mid-November as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update www.amazon.com/fireos.

Developers can learn more about Fire OS 3.0 at http://developer.amazon.com/sdk/fireos.html.

See also Amazon Announces new Kindle Fire Tablets and Fire OS 3.0 [Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog, Sept 24, 2013] from which I will quote here only:

Fire OS is based on Android 4.2.2 (API level 17), so Android compatibility is high, often requiring no additional development work. In fact, 75% of the Android tablet apps that we’ve tested run on Fire OS with no code changes.

Fire OS also includes a newly optimized, high-performance Chromium-based HTML stack, so your web apps deliver a native user experience using open web technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.

Other APIs now available include Bluetooth gamepads and joysticks as Human Interface Devices (HID), and multiple user support. Allowing multiple users makes family use easier, especially in conjunction with child-friendly Free Time.

In addition, this release opens Fire OS to a whole new class of Enterprise applications. With user partition encryption and secure connections to enterprise Wi-Fi networks, your application can better protect user data on-device and during transfer. Kerberos authentication and a native IPSec VPN client allow you to connect securely to corporate intranet websites from your app.

New customer-facing features and UI improvements enhance the user experience overall and better position your content with consumers. A redesigned Home Screen with Carousel and Grid views, for example, allows users to customize the display, while QuickSwitch gives them the ability to move between apps with a single swipe.

With Whisperplay, users can fling content from their tablet to their TV, and new download prioritization ensures data transfers in the background don’t compromise device performance, degrade playback, or interfere with the foreground application. X-Ray for Music, Movies, and TV lets customers explore their media in new ways, while Reading Mode makes books on the Kindle Fire even more enjoyable.

While from Jeff Bezos wants to delight you [The Verge, Sept 25, 2013] I will quote:

And the company’s relationship with Google? It’s a strange symbiosis, since the Fire line is based on Android and plugs deeply into the OS that Google has built — yet there are no Google services to speak of. Is there potential for a better relationship? A Google and Amazon partnership has always seemed like a union with incredible potential, but it hasn’t broken that way. “It’s the kind of thing that we’d always be extremely open to, but I don’t want to speculate on the future.” I ask if that’s something customers have asked for.

“People tend to focus on the ecosystem overall, and so when customers think about the ecosystem, they’re thinking about Prime Instant Videos, and Kindle ebooks. We have over 100,000 apps, it’s up 187 percent year over year. The platform monetizes really well for developers; [with] Fire OS, we work extremely hard to keep it compatible from a developer point of view, [it requires] almost zero work. That’s what’s making our ecosystem work.”

Multi-tasking and multi-window view used together for high performance productivity scenarios in the state-of-the-art UX environment of Microsoft Windows 8.1 – the ultimate solution not available with Apple and Android devices

September 26, 2013 4:43 pm / Leave a comment

The versions of multi-tasking and multi-window view in Windows 8.1 are already the second generations of the concept which first appeared during the preview of Windows 8 in September, 2011. Properly designed applications relying on them can not only be run simultaneously but also can manifest themselves at the same time on up to 4 independent parts of a single screen, as well as extended by using any number screens where there are additional monitors connected to the system. That capability not only enables much higher performance productivity scenarios than before with the first version (i.e. in Windows 8), but the number of possible scenarios can be significantly higher and more complex.

This is especially important as – unlike the current iPad and Android system – application developers could plan their individual apps as part of a growing society of apps (delivered usually by 3d parties) which can be used together with some companion apps simultaneously, constituting together a given scenario actually created by the user himself or herself. This is very much a workstation like environment already found in classic GUI based workstations, but now inside such a state-of-the-art UX environment as that of Microsoft Windows 8.1.

Acknowledgement: I should thank Zsolt Bátorfi from the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) unit of Microsoft Hungary for his invaluable input to this post.

The quite simplistic iPad and Android environments are mainly satisfying the entertainment scenarios only. So the 2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration) [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 24, 2013] was rightfully positioned against them as there is a growing demand on the market which is not served by any other platform. The same applies to the upcoming Windows 8.1 devices from the 3d party vendors.

There will be entry level products like the $349 ASUS Transformer Book T100 which was already shown as part of The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14, 2013] delivered by Intel. With that the growing but still unsatisfied demands could be fulfilled by starting at sufficiently competitive levels in terms of Android entertainments devices from major global vendors, even more so in terms of Samsung devices.

I put together this post in order to understand this additional (to Intel Bay Trail and Haswell SoCs) breakthrough opportunity as clearly as only possible.

Details

Windows From Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1 [by Antoine Leblond on Blogging Windows, May 30, 2013]

We’re also making improvements for using multiple apps at once in Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 brings variable, continuous size of snap views. You will have more ways to see multiple apps on the screen at the same time. You can resize apps to any size you want, share the screen between two apps, or have up to four apps on screen. If you have multiple displays connected, you can have different Windows Store apps running on all the displays at the same time and the Start Screen can stay open on one monitor. This makes multi-tasking even easier. Also in Windows 8.1, you can have multiple windows of the same app snapped together – such as two Internet Explorer windows.

Microsoft started to run this TV ad in May 2013 to communicate the concept of Windows 8: Multitasking [Windows YouTube channel, May 9, 2013] most widely

International Social Video: Like playing Piano and Ping Pong, Windows 8 lets you work and play at the same time. See more athttp://windows.com

And it was showcased last time with Windows 8.1 as Microsoft Surface 2 Halo Spartan Assault Gaming and Office Suite Multitasking Demo [HotHardware YouTube channel, Sept 25, 2013]

At Microsoft’s recent Surface 2 event in New York, Corporate VP of MS Surface, Panos Panay, demonstrated their new NVIDIA Tegra 4-powered Surface 2 tablet playing Halo Spartan Assault with running several Office applications like One Note, Word, Email and Excel all in the background or side by side at the same time.

At the same time people are even discovering undocumented (so far) capabilities like in this Modern App Multitasking in Windows 8.1 RTM [WindowsObserver YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

This video highlights what I initially thought was a bug in Windows 8.1 Preview and now believe is an undocumented UI feature when you are working with more than one Modern App on your devices screen. Update: Thanks to a Twitter follower (@awktane) for this tip which I missed. When you select that third Modern App click and hold your mouse button in the middle of the floating app. After a few seconds an opening will appear to add that app as a third snapped app on the screen. Of course this depends on your screen resolution being large enough to support 3 snapped apps. Another Twitter follower @DatabaseJase shared with me that you can drag the floating app to the top of the screen to open it in full

Compare this to the previous generation hardware and software Microsoft Surface RT – True Multitasking Demo [MyWorldOfIT YouTube channel, Nov 2, 2012] with Windows 8.0 which a common Android tablet or iPad still cannot do (except some Samsung GALAXY devices still in a limited split screen fashion, as noted a little later)

which was described in Design case study: iPad to Windows Store app [MSDN, March 21, 2012] as

Use snap view to engage your users

Windows 8 lets users multitask by “snapping” an app next to another app. The snapped view is a great way to increase the app’s time on screen and engage users for longer periods. It’s easy for a user to change the main app and the snapped app by manipulating the splitter between the two, so it is important to maintain context across resizes. We don’t want users to lose app state as a result of resizing their app.

Example: home screen snap view

Windows Store app

The snap view of the home screen is just a different view of the home page where a user can still access the same content.

In snap view, a user pans vertically to get to more content because it is more comfortable to pan along the long edge. This is different than the horizontal panning in full view, which is also optimized to pan along the long edge.

Or in a somewhat different early presentation of Windows 8 Multitasking Experience [Vectorform YouTube channel, Sept 27, 2011]

A quick look at the multitasking experience in Windows 8’s Metro UI running on a tablet.

Note that Samsung was quick to employ this single concept in its forked Android solution, first in Multiscreen – GALAXY Note 10.1 – Samsung [SAMSUNGMOBILEUK YouTube channel, Oct 12, 2012] and then later in GALAXY Note II and Note 3 phablets, and in the Note 8.0 tablet and GALAXY S4 smartphone, where it was called Multi Window (also for Note 10.1), but just for two applications at the same time for which the device screen is split into two parts. See also Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1 Has Arrived Game-Changing Device Hits U.S. Store Shelves Tomorrow [Samsung Mobile Press, Aug 15, 2012]. Not for all GALAXY devices!

Multiscreen on the Galaxy Note 10.1 makes multitasking easy – see here how cutting and pasting an image is as simple as it possibly could be. Find out more here: http://spr.ly/GN101Ytd

And here is a rare recognition of the fact that Yes, the Microsoft Surface RT tablet is much better than Android or iPad Tablets [GodGunsGutsGlory4KJV YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

I held off from buying a Microsoft Tablet and bought an Android Tablet after listening to some flawed and rather biased reviews a while back. But after being frustrated once again that Android STILL CAN’T MULTITASK while playing videos I went and looked further into the Microsoft Surface RT and bought one. There are several popular youtube videos comparing the Surface RT to Androids and iPad tablets but evidently either those people don’t know how to run a REAL tablet or they are deliberately skewing the comparisons. Because face it, the Surface RT is much more capable than the Android. And the Surface Pro of course is a full powered laptop but with less battery life and cost a pretty penny/ So for what I want in a tablet I got a Surface RT and it is great! As I said, the most of the reviews that came up in search were flawed. I was watching this pathetic one and should have known better when I saw the username… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYbCfL… But check out the comments now. LOL! The comments were more helpful than the video. They talked about some honest review by some Lisa woman so I found this video and it was great… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIOG2V… So after that I bought one and the Surface RT did what I needed and then some. Like built in Remote Desktop that works just like it did on my Windows 7 laptop so I can log into my home pc while away. And while most reviews just showed the Surface running the active tiles home screen and launched apps from there they did not demonstrate the Desktop mode which operates it in the more native Windows screen that people are used to which is where you can open windows and navigate the machine or use full Internet Explorer 10. Anyway I am ranting again… and that’s what this video is. It is more of a RANT and a warning to others to be careful with the biased reviews. I give a two thumbs up to this tablet!

I held off from buying a Microsoft Tablet and bought an Android Tablet after listening to some flawed and rather biased reviews a while back.

But after being frustrated once again that Android STILL CAN’T MULTITASK while playing videos I went and looked further into the Microsoft Surface RT and bought one.

There are several popular youtube videos comparing the Surface RT to Androids and iPad tablets but evidently either those people don’t know how to run a REAL tablet or they are deliberately skewing the comparisons. Because face it, the Surface RT is much more capable than the Android. And the Surface Pro of course is a full powered laptop but with less battery life and cost a pretty penny/ So for what I want in a tablet I got a Surface RT and it is great!

As I said, the most of the reviews that came up in search were flawed.

I was watching this pathetic one and should have known better when I saw the username… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYbCfL…

But check out the comments now. LOL! The comments were more helpful than the video.

They talked about some honest review by some Lisa woman so I found this video and it was great… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIOG2V…

So after that I bought one and the Surface RT did what I needed and then some. Like built in Remote Desktop that works just like it did on my Windows 7 laptop so I can log into my home pc while away.

And while most reviews just showed the Surface running the active tiles home screen and launched apps from there they did not demonstrate the Desktop mode which operates it in the more native Windows screen that people are used to which is where you can open windows and navigate the machine or use full Internet Explorer 10.

Anyway I am ranting again… and that’s what this video is. It is more of a RANT and a warning to others to be careful with the biased reviews. I give a two thumbs up to this tablet!

No wonder that Microsoft started to highlight the multitasking advantage in this recent video about Surface RT vs. iPad [Windows YouTube channel, Aug 7, 2013], see the part starting at [0:43] under the title “Multitask” and noting that:

One app at a time [on iPad] vs. Do multiple things at once [on Surface RT]

See how the Surface RT with Windows 8 matches up against the iPad. Check out more at http://windows.com/compare

Design, technology and business background for the above differentiation

Microsoft design principles (Windows) [MSDN, March 8, 2013]

Here are five principles for building great Windows Store apps. Use these principles when you plan your app, and always ensure that your design and development choices live up to them.

Pride in craftsmanship
Be fast and fluid
Authentically digital
Do more with less
Win as one

Work with other apps, devices, and the system to complete scenarios for people. For example, let people get content from one app and share it with another. Take advantage of what people already know, like standard touch gestures and charms, to provide a sense of familiarity, control, and confidence.

Use the UI model.
Work with other apps to complete scenarios by participating in app contracts.
Use our tools and templates to promote consistency.

Following these five Microsoft design principles will help you make the best choices when you design your app.

See also: Modern Design at Microsoft [by Steve Clayton on Microsoft News Center, June 7, 2013] – Going beyond flat design

A very important example of “Work with other apps to complete scenarios“ is the multitasking which became available in the first version of Windows 8, and had been significantly enhanced in the recent second version:

Jensen Harris on productivity and multitasking from Tami Reller: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Keynote [transcript provided by Microsoft, July 8, 2013]

The desktop in Windows is the single most powerful platform in the world. It is the only platform in which you can run Photoshop and Lightroom and AutoCAD and Visual Studio and Office all in one platform. And we really wanted to bring together the best of the modern UI and the best of the desktop UI and harmonize them in Windows 8.1.

So the first thing that you’ll notice is that we’ve made it really easy to get to the Start screen in 8.1 with the addition of the Start button. (Laughter, applause.)

So when I click this, this is not just your father’s Start button, this actually floats in the tiles on top of the desktop. So you get this beautiful look of your desktop. You don’t lose context of what you’re working on. It just comes in over top and then floats away.

And you can see we’ve done a lot of work here to make your Start screen be ultra-efficient. We’ve got the small tiles, we’ve got the groups, we’ve got the large tiles that allow you to create, together with new enterprise custom ability and control that we’re giving over the Start screen in Windows 8.1 for you to create an awesome, enterprise consumer dashboard that has all the things that you love in one place.

And of course, one other thing that you can do by default in Windows 8.1 is boot to the desktop if you want as well. And so the whole experience comes together where you have control over the PC.

So we love the desktop and we have made it a lot better. But productivity isn’t just defined by the desktop. The desktop is one way of working. Productivity is defined by robust multitasking, flexibility, efficiency, and having all the apps that you need. And what we’ve done in 8.1 is taken productivity to the next level and brought what was great about the desktop and the things that you could do there and made it even better in the modern UI and optimized it for not just 8-inch tablets, but also large screens, desktops, powerful laptops.

Let me show you some of what we’ve done. So one of the most important apps that exists is mail. This is the new version of the mail app that we have not yet made available publicly, but will be available with Windows 8.1 RTM.

And I’m going to use my mouse here. The first thing you’re going to notice is this power pane here on the left that shows me my folders, it shows me people. I can flag mails very quickly just here in the view — boom, boom, boom, boom, boom — and they’ll show up here in my flag view.

We have my favorite people, all of the mail here, and I also have them split out. Of course I control this. So if I want to put Panos in my list of favorite people, I can do that. If I want to take some people out, I can do that as well.

We’ve also integrated some awesome features to help keep your mail under control. Of course something like drag and drop is really important, and we have all your folders here that you can just directly drag and drop into using your mouse or touch.

We have brought together all of your social updates. So things from Foursquare and Facebook and LinkedIn, these sort of pseudo-spammy, but kind of interesting things and put them in one place so they’re out of your way without needing to set anything up.

And then probably my favorite view here is the newsletter view. And these are also things that sometimes you want to see. Like I love that I have these Living Social deals, but I don’t need to get eight of them a day, I really only need to see the most recent one. And so we’ve integrated a feature called Sweep into the mail app. And what this allows me to do is I can delete all of my Living Social deals. But what’s even cooler is I can say, just delete all of them except for the latest ones. I’m going to hit Sweep, and it’s going to set this up on the server. You’re going to see all of the Living Social deals have disappeared except for the top ones, and it’s always going to make sure that I only have one of these in my inbox from now on. These are some of the ways in which mail makes you more efficient. (Applause.) Thank you.

Another thing, though, that’s really important if you’re being efficient is the keyboard because I don’t know about you, but I do an awful lot with keyboard shortcuts just typing. And I showed you the new search feature, but I haven’t shown you how well it works with the keyboard and how it makes you more efficient.

This new search feature is really the command line for Windows. So I’m just going to type a single — I type “Windows plus S” to bring up search. I’m going to type a single character, “K.” And in doing so, it has brought back apps like Kindle and In the Kitchen, it’s brought back Music, it’s brought back settings like keyboard settings, it’s brought back files, local and in the cloud, it’s brought back Web suggestions, it’s brought back people on my PC. And it’s very, very powerful.

For instance, if I’m just here in mail and I just want to start playing a song, I can just type “K” it brings up the name of the song. I’m just going to hit enter, and it starts playing without even taking me out of the app. Just immediate music playback. So this is one of the examples of how the new Search box makes it possible to do things very, very fast. You will find that this becomes the stickiest feature in Windows 8.1, and you can’t imagine ever living without it.

Another thing that defines productivity is multitasking. And one of the things that I think is really cool about 8.1 is the multi-window view that we have.

So here are a few photos that are attached to a mail. And when I click one of these, notice that it opened up photos side by side with mail. This isn’t some weird preview app that only shows a few file formats or something like this. This is the actual app that is associated with the file extension. And so this could be photos, PDFs, it could be Office, it could be anything. And this happened just automatically.

Another example of this, let me pull this off the screen, and I’m going to show you a link. And when I click this, it’s going to open up IE side by side with mail. You can see that there’s no restriction anymore on just one very small snapped app and then a huge app. We can now use the window 50/50. I can move the snap point so I can make one a little bigger, I can make the other one a little bigger if I want. And it’s not just limited to two apps side by side.

So here in IE, I’m going to right click and do open link in new window. And suddenly, what I have here is two IE windows side by side. (Applause.) Yeah. Suddenly, I have something that is starting to look like a very productive work station. And I can move these windows around, I can put them where I want. We have maximize, we have resize, and all of a sudden you start to realize that there’s more than one way of doing awesome productivity. This uses all the pixels on my PC.

And on this sort of smallish monitor, I can fit three. But if I had something like a 2550 x 1440 monitor, I could show four apps on the screen at once. And all of a sudden, now you’re way more productive than you could have been on the desktop. You’ve got your Twitter feed, you’ve got your full running mail app, you’ve got multiple browser windows or multiple mails up at once.

And it gets even better. If I attach a second monitor, then suddenly I can do the same thing on multiple monitors at once. So I have any collection of apps across my monitors in any configuration I want, any size I want, blending desktop and modern apps across my screens. I can bring the Start screen up on one and just leave it, and this doesn’t just work for two monitors, it works for three, four, five, six, seven, as many as I have. And so this sort of shows the power of Windows 8.1 and the modern UI even on a desktop engineering workstation making you more productive.

And then we think about Windows starting on —

TAMI RELLER: A phone?

JENSEN HARRIS: A phone. On 8-inch tablets, also doing the same multitasking and running all the way up across all of these devices, integrated with Xbox and out to any kind of workstation. And it is pretty fantastic.

You can watch the full Tami Reller keynote about Windows 8.1 Product Enhancements [msPartner YouTube channel, July 9, 2013] presenting the complete high-end differentiation vs. the iPad and Android devices which contains the whole demo by Jensen Harris starting at [21:10] while the above part at [53:10], and the end of the demo is at [1:02:10]:

And here is an overall First look at Windows 8.1 [Windows YouTube channel, June 5, 2013] video by Jensen Harris worth to watch as well:

Jensen Harris from the Windows Team shows some highlights of what to expect in Windows 8.1 coming later this year as a free update for Windows 8 customers. http://bit.ly/10OM2Th

2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration)

September 24, 2013 2:22 pm / 2 Comments on 2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration)

Indeed that is a winning positioning as evidenced by this
Update: Delta to equip 11,000 pilots with Microsoft Surface 2 devices for their electronic flight bags [surface YouTube channel, Sept 30, 2013]

Delta Air Lines is equipping its 11,000 pilots with electronic flight bags using the Microsoft Surface 2 tablet. Device rollout to pilots flying the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 fleets will start later this year and all Delta cockpits are projected to be paperless by the end of 2014. The Surface 2 runs on the Windows RT 8.1 platform and provide flight crews real-time access to essential tools and the most up-to-date flight-related resources including key charts, reference documents and checklists while saving the airline $13 million per year in fuel and associated costs.

A recent Gartner Survey Says Entertainment Accounts for Half of Device Screen Time [press release, Sept 17, 2013]. Statista made the following conclusion out of that:

This was on the same day as the new Microsoft Surface family was announced which clearly showed that Microsoft is targeting its next-gen Surface products to the productivity market:

With this Microsoft clearly indicated its major direction for the 10.6 inch tablet devices. They are meant for the production uses and they cost consequently (much) more than either the high-end devices from Apple, Samsung and other global brands, or the top of the local brand Android tablets supplied by the extremely agile “race to the bottom” ecosystem of the so called white-box manufacturers.

From On The Record With Microsoft’s Surface Bosses Panos Panay And Brian Hall [TechCrunch, Sept 13, 2013]

WHY KEEP SELLING THE SURFACE RT FOR $349?

TechCrunch: Where does the $349 Surface RT fit into the Surface family, and who is the product aimed at?

Panos: Surface RT still brings, for its value, a lot of the qualities of being productive. Now keep in mind that it will upgrade to Windows 8.1, and it will take on Outlook, and it will give you the features of being a productive tablet.

It’s not as fast, but you are also not paying as much. Doesn’t have the second stop in the kickstand, it doesn’t have the better screen, but you are also not paying as much, so it truly is a value. If you want the most productive tablet from a value perspective what you are getting there, or from a cost perspective, I think that is what we are offering.

Hall: We do think that we’re establishing a variant of the category. To date people have thought of tablets entirely through the iPad lens. We’re doing a variant of the tablet, which is the productive tablet. And so at the iPad level, if they come in and say do you want an iPad or a productive tablet, and we have Surface 2, it is the most productive tablet at its price point.”

Surface RT $349+…….. Surface 2 $449+……….…. Surface Pro 2 $899+
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30)…..….NVIDIA Tegra 4 (T40)……..Intel Core i5-4200U

Apps (included): Mail, Calendar, People, Internet Explorer 11, Photos, Music, Video, Games, Skype, Fresh Paint, Calculator, Reading List, Reader, Scan, News, Weather, Sports, Travel, Finance, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, Help, Camera, SkyDrive, Sound Recorder and more

Meet the new Surface [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Thinner. Lighter. Faster. Say hello to Surface 2. From Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Surface event in under 4 minutes [The Verge YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

“Professional.” “Productive.” “Kickstand.” Microsoft unveiled its second generation of Surface 2 with an assortment of colors (both type and color). Here’s the full event… if the full event was just under four minutes.

Microsoft’s Surface Tablet: A $900M Do-Over? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, Sept 22, 2013]

Microsoft unveils its new tablet today, the Surface 2. What happened to the Surface 1? Unfortunately for Microsoft, not much. In spite of a massive advertising campaign promoting the product, the Surface was a flop with consumers. Bloomberg offers a by-the-numbers look at the dismal sales failure of the original Surface. (Source: Bloomberg)

First impressions of Microsoft’s Surface 2 [CNNMoney YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Microsoft unveiled the Surface 2, a revamped tablet that features improved battery life, speed and a higher resolution screen.

Microsoft Unveils New Surface at NYC Event [AssociatedPress, YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Microsoft has introduced new Surface tablets, including a professional model that allows people to use it more like a laptop or a desktop computer.

Related Associated Press articles (usually republished by a large number of media):
– Microsoft unveils new Surface, fixes shortcomings [Sept 23, 2013]
– Review: New Surface tablets make typing easy [Sept 24, 2013]

CNET News: Interview: Panos Panay [CNETTV YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

CNET’s Tim Stevens interviews Microsoft’s Panos Panay to discover the design philosophy behind the new and improved Surface 2 tablets.

Related CNET article: Surface 2 declassified: How Microsoft made Surface into the tablet the world said it wanted [CNET news, Sept 23, 2013]

Hands-on: new Surface 2 accessories add backlit keyboard, docks [CNETTV YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

A battery-pack Power Cover, a port-studded docking station and backlit keyboard covers debut for the Surface 2. We take a look in New York.

Related CNET article: Surface 2 accessories step up: Backlit Type and Touch Covers, Power Cover, Docking Station (hands-on) [CNET review, Sept 23, 2013]

Microsoft’s Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 get a boost from some useful new extras. The good news is, older Surface Pro users can take advantage, too.

How do you improve upon the Surface, Microsoft’s tablet-as-PC that debuted last year? Internal upgrades are always welcome: more battery life, a better display, amped-up graphics. But the real killer apps of the next Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets might once again be the accessories.

The Type Cover was the one part I loved the most about the last Surface Pro, for good reason: it worked great, felt small, and acted as a screen cozy. The Type Cover 2 and Touch Cover 2 make small but very important improvements: they both add backlit keyboards, and the Touch Cover 2 has far more sensors under its microfiber surface.

The $130 Type Cover 2 has four colors now (2013 is the “Year of Colorful Electronics”) — cyan, magenta, purple, and black — and a quieter click mechanism, plus the pressure-sensitive touch pad works with Windows 8 gestures. The $120 Touch Cover 2 has faster type responsiveness in addition to the backlighting and added sensors, but I imagine most people would spend the extra $10 for the Type Cover. All of these will work with older Surface Pros and new Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets. Surface RT owners, you might be out of luck.

There’s one other new cover, and it’s the one I’d buy: the Power Cover (price not available yet), a thicker Type Cover accessory that adds a battery pack, adding 50 percent more battery life, and charges the Surface (Surface 2, Surface Pro, and Surface Pro 2 — again, sorry Surface RT users) in your bag when not in use.

Besides new keyboard covers, Microsoft also debuted a $200 Docking Station, a long-awaited (and needed) way to connect your Surface easily to extra ports while on a desk. Tall, angular, and black, it’s a tiny bit bulky but slides around the Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2, locking into the side ports and offering up one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0, audio in/out, Ethernet, and a Mini DisplayPort. It’s not much different from other charging docks seen on laptops and tablets, but the Docking Station also allows users to use the Type/Touch Cover at the same time — and, you can daisy-chain extra monitors via Mini DisplayPort.

Microsoft will also be offering a Car Charger ($50) for Surface road-recharging, and a Wireless Bluetooth Adapter ($60) to enable typing covers to work when disconnected from Surface, which might be helpful for long-range operation — but, then again, you could always purchase a separate wireless keyboard for the same price.

Do these make a difference in a crowded tablet market? The dock keeps the Surface competitive with equivalent Windows 8 tablets for business markets. The keyboards continue to be excellent. But the Surface 2 and Pro 2 accessories, while refined, are hardly surprising. They are, however, undeniably useful.

Surface Pro 2

Surface Pro 2 – from Microsoft [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

It’s a laptop in the body of a tablet. Meet the brand new Surface Pro 2.

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Hands-On | Engadget [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Here it is: Microsoft’s powerhouse Surface Pro 2. As we’ve seen and heard already, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Surface Pro is thinner and considerably faster. We got our hands on a 256GB model to form some initial impressions and begin to determine whether this guy is worth the $899-and-up going rate, a $100 jump from the original Pro’s pricing scheme. Read on at Engadget:http://goo.gl/iHJ9nb

Surface Pro 2: Microsoft’s Newest Tablet PC // Hands On [Mashable YouTube channel]

The Surface Pro 2 may just be the most powerful tablet on the market. Microsoft has combined a new round of tweaks (including a wider kickstand and longer battery life) with enticing add-ons (200 GB of free cloud storage) that plays to its strengths. Would you buy one? Let us know in the comments.

Surface 2

Surface 2 – from Microsoft [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Surface 2 is so much more than a tablet. See all you can do with Surface 2.

Microsoft Surface 2 Hands-On | Engadget [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Microsoft just announced the Surface 2, the successor to the original Surface RT tablet. So of course, we did exactly what any self-respecting Engadget editors would do: we muscled our way to the front of the demo area and made sure we were the first to get our hands on it. Read on at Engadget: http://goo.gl/yH7AAu

Surface 2: hands-on with Microsoft’s new Windows RT tablet that ‘doesn’t slow down’ [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Tom Warren takes a close-up look at Microsoft’s new Surface 2 tablet running Windows 8.1 RT.

Surface Workshop at Art Center College of Design [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Three weeks before launching its new line of products, the Surface design team took a trip to Pasadena, CA, where they held a 3 day workshop with renowned design school Art Center College of Design. The group of 11 students chosen for the workshop were the first people outside of Microsoft to see a new accessory the design team has been working on: a music attachment that clicks into a Surface and allows users to easily remix music. They asked the students: what else would you want to attach to a Surface? They code named these attachments blades.

Remix Project — Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

Joe Hahn explains why the Surface Music Kit is an easy way to start remixing music the way you want. Learn more at http://www.surfaceremixproject.com.

The related Microsoft press release

Microsoft unveils Surface 2, Surface Pro 2 and new accessories [press release, Sept 23, 2013]

Note to editors: The battery life figure provided below was corrected following publication. Surface Pro provides up to 75 percent more battery life, not 60 percent more as was previously indicated.

NEW YORK — Sept. 23, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced that the Microsoft Surface family of tablets is growing. Two new Surface models — Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 — along with an expanded portfolio of new Surface accessories, will be available at Microsoft retail stores, http://www.MicrosoftStore.com and select third-party retailers and commercial resellers in 22 initial markets, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States on Oct. 22 and China in early November. Additional markets will be announced in the coming months.

Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 each benefit from significant updates, including improvements to processing power and battery life, to display and camera resolution, and to the Kickstand, now with dual angles, so it’s more comfortable for you to use your Surface on your lap or at your desk. Enhancements in Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Pro make Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 even more powerful and customizable.

Pre-order Surface

Customers can pre-order Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 starting at 8 a.m. EDT on Sept. 24, 2013, athttp://www.MicrosoftStore.com, Microsoft Stores, and Best Buy in the U.S. and Canada, as well as select retailers in most Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 launch markets.

Value-added services

To help people get the most out of Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, customers purchasing either device will receive free Skype calling to landlines in more than 60 countries for one year, unlimited Skype WiFi on their Surface 2 or Surface Pro 2 at more than 2 million hot spots worldwide for one year, and 200 GB of free SkyDrive storage for two years.

Surface 2

Surface 2 is the most productive tablet for personal use. It offers all the entertainment and gaming capabilities you expect from a tablet, along with the ability to get work done. Surface 2 is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor, making apps run faster and smoother and increasing battery life to up to 10 hours for video playback. The 10.6-inch ClearType Full HD display now renders 1080p video for enjoying shows and movies, and its full-size USB port has been upgraded to USB 3.0 for up to four times faster file transfers. Camera resolution has also increased, with a 3.5-megapixel front camera and 5-megapixel rear camera, both capable of capturing 1080p video and featuring improved low-light performance, making face-to-face conversations with your favorite people crisp and clear. Even with these and other upgrades, Surface 2 is slightly thinner and lighter than its predecessor.

Surface 2 will ship with Windows RT 8.1, bringing improvements in key areas such as personalization, search, multitasking, built-in apps, the Windows Store experience and cloud connectivity. The new Xbox Music allows you to stream millions of songs for free, and an updated Video app and great games from the Windows Store such as “Halo: Spartan Assault” will ensure that you never run out of ways to play. When it’s time to get serious, Surface 2 is pre-loaded with Office Home & Student 2013 RT and Outlook 2013 RT; simply click in a Touch or Type Cover and get to work.

Surface 2 is available in 32GB and 64GB configurations[1]; it will start at $449.

Surface Pro 2

Surface Pro 2 is the successor to Surface Pro and, like its predecessor, is a true laptop replacement, capable of running virtually all your Windows software including the full Microsoft Office suite [2], as well as apps from the Windows Store. Surface Pro 2 offers the portability and simplicity of a tablet when you want it and the power and flexibility of a laptop when you need it. It is powered by a fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor which, combined with other improvements, delivers increased performance and up to 75 percent longer battery life than Surface Pro.

Starting at $899, Surface Pro 2 will be offered in 64GB and 128GB configurations with 4 GB of RAM and 256GB and 512GB configurations with 8 GB of RAM.[1]

Full specs are available at http://www.Surface.com/pre-order.

New Accessories

Today’s announcement also includes seven new accessories that will make Surface even more flexible, more portable and more productive:

Touch Cover 2. Thinner and lighter than the original Touch Cover, measuring only 2.75 mm thin, Touch Cover 2 features backlit keys for even better readability. Touch Cover 2 is more rigid, registers keystrokes with greater accuracy and features updated sensors that support a variety of gestures across the entire keyboard. Touch Cover 2 has an estimated retail price of $119.99. It will be available for pre-order on Sept. 24 in all markets where Surface devices are available for pre-order.

Type Cover 2. Type Cover 2 features the same super-thin, lightweight design of the original Type Cover, but it’s now backlit and will be available in Cyan, Magenta, Purple and Black in the coming months. It’s also more rigid, providing a better lap-typing experience, and is designed to be noticeably quieter when striking keys. Type Cover 2 will have an estimated retail price of $129.99. It will be available for pre-order on Sept. 24 in all markets where Surface devices are available for pre-order.[3]

Power Cover. Power Cover delivers the same great typing experience you get with Type Cover while extending the battery life of your Surface 2, Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 by up to 50 percent to help you make it through that late-night meeting or the entire flight. Power Cover will have an estimated retail price of $199.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.

Docking Station for Surface Pro. The Docking Station for Surface Pro lets you quickly connect Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 to desktop PC peripherals in a single step, taking you from laptop to desktop in an instant. While Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2 is docked, it can connect with an external monitor, Ethernet, speakers and power supply. PC peripherals connect via its one USB 3.0 port and three USB 2.0 ports. The Docking Station for Surface Pro will have an estimated retail price of $199.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.

Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers. The Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers connects magnetically to any Touch or Type Cover, letting you type from anywhere in the room using Bluetooth technology, so it is even easier to connect Surface to a TV or monitor[4] and type from another location, such as the couch. Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers will have an estimated retail price of $59.99. It will be available for pre-order in the U.S. and Canada beginning Sept. 24.

Car Charger with USB. Car Charger plugs into most cars’ power or lighter ports and charges Surface without the need for an additional adapter. It also features a USB port to allow simultaneous charging of a phone or other device. Car Charger will have an estimated retail price of $49.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.

Arc Touch Mouse Surface Edition. This special-edition Arc Touch Mouse has been updated to match the look of Surface. Like other Arc Touch mice, it is designed for comfort and flattens for portability. It connects via Bluetooth 3.0, freeing Surface’s USB port for use by other devices. Arc Touch Mouse Surface Edition will have an estimated retail price of $69.99 and will be available for pre-order in the U.S. and Canada on Sept. 24. Distribution in additional markets is projected to begin in the coming months.

More information on Surface is available at http://www.Surface.com.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

The information contained in this press release relates to pre-release software products that may be substantially modified before their first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software products when first commercially released. The press release is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the press release or the information contained in it.

[1] System software uses significant storage space. Available storage is subject to change based on system software updates and apps usage. 1 GB = 1 billion bytes. See Surface.com/storage for more details. Initial quantities of Surface Pro 2 with 512 GB will be limited.

[2] Office sold separately.

[3] The Black and Purple Type Cover 2 will be available for pre-order. Other colors will be available in the coming months.

[4] Adapter required; sold separately.

For broadcast download:Visit http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/surface for b-roll clips.

Sinofsky’s ‘continuous productivity’ idea to be realised first in Box Notes

September 21, 2013 10:55 am / 1 Comment on Sinofsky’s ‘continuous productivity’ idea to be realised first in Box Notes

Box Notes brings streamlined document collaboration to Box [by Jonathan Berger on The Box blog, Sept 16, 2013]

I’m excited today to introduce Box Notes, a new way to create documents and work in real-time with others on Box.

Our work began many months ago, but the moment Box Notes first came alive for me was the first time I saw one of my team’s faces – in the form of a profile picture – pop into the Box Note and zoom down the left side of the page. There’s a lot of research about the way our brains process faces and how they have a unique way of making us happy. A smiling face, even in the form of a small profile picture, tells us someone else is there. The web is a social environment , and at the heart of it all is people.

Including people’s profile pictures in Box Notes says volumes about the product as a whole. We want you to have fun using it, we want the product to make you smile, we want the product to shine when you’re collaborating with other people, and we want to enable things that are only possible when a text editor is built on top of the web.

Introducing Box Notes [box YouTube channel, Sept 16, 2013]

Box Notes lets you create documents, take notes and share ideas in real-time with your team, all right within Box. With Box Notes, never let the best ideas get away. Learn more at: box.com/notes

Our long-term vision is to continue to build a product that makes it easier to capture and share information, but right now I’d like to zoom way in and highlight three key features in detail.

Work is Collaborative

At its core, Box Notes is about working with others. And nowhere is this more exemplified than in the profile pictures I mentioned above, which we’ve nicknamed ”note heads.” These work by displaying your profile picture in the left margin next to your cursor position. When you’re working on a note with multiple people, it’s easy to see where everyone else is working. We’ve found that it facilities activities like conference calls because you can say “look here” rather than “look at the third paragraph, line number four.”

Capturing Ideas

Whatever tool you’re using to capture ideas should fade into the background and get out of the way, but at the same time provide additional richness when you want it to. Think about how you can completely ignore the eraser on a pencil until you need it.

Our inline toolbar is built with the same principle in mind. We’re striving to keep the editor as streamlined and elegant as possible by only displaying functionality when it’s relevant. Only after highlighting some text will you see our inline toolbar appear, offering a way to annotate a document and leave feedback for others.

Simple annotations within your document and the ability to comment alongside the document are examples of ways to capture ideas and share them with others. We’ve aimed to provide the most essential tools for getting work done.

Built into Box

Finally, sharing notes with others is just as simple and secure as sharing anything else on Box, because Box Notes is built on top of Box. If you create a note in a folder where you’re already collaborating with others, you don’t have to do anything to share it. Your collaborators will already have access. And if the folder has no existing collaborators, your note isn’t shared and is as secure as anything else stored in Box.

Looking Forward

We hope you enjoy Box Notes and look forward to the many features we will be adding soon. We’ll continue to improve the editor, making it possible to create a wider variety of documents. Accessing notes from anywhere and any device is crucial, so expect to see a mobile version of Box Notes too. And we’ll continue to build features that are only possible in an online, collaborative editor.

Our belief is that existing word processors have overshot the market, building ever more complex features, many of them still related to printing documents. At the opposite end of the spectrum, social communication and messaging applications have enabled new forms of continuous productivity [by Steven Sinofsky] not previously seen in the workplace. Box Notes is a blend of these two categories. We believe innovation along the dimension of social collaboration is the future of content creation tools in the coming years.

[See also my post on Opinion Leaders and Lead Opinions: Reflections on Steven Sinofsky’s “Era of Continuous Productivity” vision [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 1, 2013] + Sinofsky’s current productivity environment is “@GaborFari @surface @alexpozin my only “PC” is my Surface RT running 8.1beta. Using an android phone right this moment.” as per Steven Sinofsky @stevesi 16 Sep]

You can sign up now to request access to our private beta—we plan to make it available to as many people as possible in the coming weeks.

3d Party reflections on this:
– Box filling out cloud-based productivity toolset with Box Notes [by Rachel King on ZDNet, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box Announces Box Notes, A Lightweight Editing Tool That Is An Opening Salso against Microsoft’s Office [TechCrunch, Sept 16, 2013]
– Why the real Box Notes target isn’t Microsoft Office [by Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box launching Notes word processor to close the gap with Google Drive [The Verge,
Sept 16, 2013]
– Box Notes takes on Google Docs with collaborative editing, available in beta now [Engadget, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box Unveils Notes, Its Google Docs-like Feature Coming In 2014 [The Next Web, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box Notes brings streamlined document collaboration to Box [PCWorld, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box Launches Box Notes, Its Own Take On Google Docs [Forbes, Sept 16, 2013]
– Box won’t say it out loud, but it’s now taking on Google and Microsoft with Box Notes [GigaOM – Tech News and Analysis, Sept 16, 2013] with the following concluding summary:

It’s not just file-share-and-sync, it’s collaboration

Box faces formidable competition in the file-sync-share-and-store landscape in Google, Microsoft, Dropbox and a dozen smaller companies, so it’s trying to distinguish itself with its business-only focus and to carve out a bigger piece of the collaboration market.

It’s worth noting (again) that Sam Schillace, a key force behind Google Docs, is now VP of engineering at Box and Steven Sinofsky, who ran Microsoft Office and Windows, is now an advisor. Both of these guys are big thinkers in enterprise collaboration software.

Prospective tire-kickers can sign up for a limited beta this week at – Box CEO Aaron Levie will announce the product at BoxWorks on Monday. General availability for the free product is year’s end.

The first release promises concurrent editing in real time; collaborator presence (the aforementioned floating heads); in-line toolbar and annotations; comments etc. Plans call for a mobile version (interesting that this wasn’t first down the chute); the ability to embed video, images and audio; version history; and (this is a big one) offline editing. As we all know not even the most ardent web surfer is online 24 X 7.

The demo was pretty cool and I saw lots of ways to use Box Notes at Gigaom. If only they’d lose those floaty heads.

The Box success story so far

Transforming industries with Box [box YouTube channel, Sept 16, 2013]

Guaranteed Rate, Tri-Counties Regional Center, Webcor Builders, and Wake Forest Medical Center all use Box to share critical information with teams, partners, contractors, and customers – making employees more productive and their businesses more competitive.

Box: Simple, Mobile, Open [box YouTube channel, Dec 29, 2010]

For too long, enterprise technology has been dominated by industry giants that grow through complexity rather than innovation. A new generation of software is disrupting this status quo – software that is simple, intuitive, open, and mobile … and sexy. Learn how Box’s unique approach to enterprise software is leading a technology revolution in the workplace. For more Box videos, visit us at http://www.youtube.com/box

Box: Simple, Secure Content Sharing & Collaboration [box YouTube channel, Jan 11, 2012]

Learn how Box makes it easy to share content and collaborate online. Simple online collaboration from Box: put your file server online, create team workspaces and replace your FTP software for a better, easier to use system. http://www.box.com For more Box videos, visit us at http://www.youtube.com/box

Box Sync: The First Cross-Platform Sync for the Enterprise [box YouTube channel, May 23, 2012]

Introducing Box Sync: the first cross-platform sync for the enterprise that scales with your business, provides the security and administrative controls that aren’t found in consumer synchronization services, and is coupled into your employees’ workflow. Learn more at http://www.box.com/sync.

Box CEO Aaron Levie Discusses BoxWorks 2013 [box YouTube channel, Sept 4, 2013]

We sat down recently with CEO Aaron Levie and asked him why he thinks you should attend this years’ BoxWorks. Don’t miss speakers like Malcolm Gladwell, Nicholas Carr, Geoffrey Moore and Gavin Newsom, as well as exciting product announcements and a rocking after party!

Box for different mobile devices

Box for Windows 8 and Windows Phone [box YouTube channel, May 12, 2013]

Box for Windows makes it easy to access content and collaborate with your team on your Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices. Learn more at http://www.box.com/mobile

Box for Android [box YouTube channel, May 23, 2012]

Box for Android makes it easy to access content and collaborate on the go. Learn more at http://www.box.com/mobile For more Box videos join us at http://www.youtube.com/box

Box for Android v2.2 – A Whole New View [box YouTube channel, Aug 13, 2013]

We’ve added new features to our Box for Android app, including new navigation and folder sorting, a revamped updates feed, new home screen widget, and the ability to switch between multiple accounts. Check it out!

Take Your Business Mobile: Box for iPad [box YouTube channel, June 4, 2012]

With more features than ever before, the new Box app for iPad comes with enterprise-grade security and an entirely new way present your Box content on the go. Watch your workforce become more productive, secure and mobile than they’ve ever been – the iPad is ready for business.

Box for iPhone [box YouTube channel, Dec 8, 2011]

Box for iPhone lets you work efficiently from the road, accessing content stored on Box, staying up-to-day on feedback and edits from colleagues, and sharing files on-the-go. Learn more at http://www.box.com/mobile

The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs?

September 14, 2013 2:06 pm / 2 Comments on The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs?

“Bay Trail” was, and still is a highly secretive project inside Intel as you could see from this latest video Update: New Atom Chip, Bay Trail: Great User Experience and Battery Life [channelintel YouTube channel, Sept 26, 2013]

An Intel engineer, speaking in anonymity, worked on the team that created new multicore system-on-a-chip processors, formerly codenamed “Bay Trail,” for tablets, 2 in 1 devices, all-in-ones, laptops and desktops. The processors are essentially, the “brain” for many of the most popular mobile devices. He describes using tablets running on the new Bay Trail processor as “amazing.” “The fluidity involved with total user experience is great,” he says. “The Bay Trail-based systems also have instant connections. Your data is never stale. And, the battery life improvements are huge.”

Coming back to the title of the post: could be very much so. Look at the first tablet:
ASUS Transformer Book T100 [the Official ASUS Facebook page, Sept 11, 2013]

The announcements just keep coming! Introducing the ASUS Transformer Book T100, the 2-in-1 Ultraportable laptop with a 10″ tablet powered by Intel’s latest Bay Trail-T quad-core [Atom] processor. Available in the US starting October 18th from only $349.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 Press Event [ASUS North America YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

On September 11, 2013 Jonney Shih, the Chairman of Asus introduced the ASUS Transformer Book T100 to the world with a perfect fit to their long articulated slogan: “We Transform”.

From ASUS Transforms Expectations for Mobile Computing with New Transformer Books at IDF 2013 [press release, Sept 12, 2013]:

“The ASUS Transformer Book T100 is the perfect transformation of the Eee PC with full compatibility, detachable touch screen, immersive entertainment and enough battery for all-day computing,” said ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih. “It is truly a game-changer for our mobile lifestyle.”

Transformer Book T100— high-mobility notebook and tablet combined

ASUS Transformer Book T100 is a 10.1-inch ultraportable with an Intel® Atom™ ‘Bay Trail’ quad-core processor and detachable HD display than can be used as a standalone Windows 8.1 tablet. Featuring a sleek design and durable finish, Transformer Book T100 is not only one of the lightest ultraportables currently available at just 1.07kg, but also one of the lightest 10-inch tablets around, at 550g.

Transformer Book T100 features the new Intel® Atom™ Bay Trail-T Z3740 [2M Cache, 1.33 GHz, up to 1.86 GHz] quad-core processor for smooth multi-tasking performance and incredible energy efficiency that can last up to 11 hours on battery power. The lightweight keyboard dock features precision-engineered keys designed for comfortable extended use, a multi-touch touchpad with full Windows 8.1 gesture support and USB 3.0. Just 10.5mm thin, Transformer Book T100 features a brilliant HD 10.1-inch tablet IPS multi-touch display with wide 178-degree viewing angles and razor-sharp images. Transformer Book T100 is also pre-installed with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 with full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, the perfect productivity solution for both school and work.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

ASUS Transformer Book T100 – Intel Bay Trail Quad-Core Tablet / Notebook 2-in-1 Hands On Preview [TechnologyGuide YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

We take a hands-on look at the new ASUS Transformer Book T100 Hybrid 2-in-1 Laptop/Tablet PC, running Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system. Specifications: -1.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Bay Trail Processor -2GB RAM -32GB / 64GB SSD -USB 3.0 -11-hour Battery life

From Intel we learned the same day that smaller 8” or even 7” tablets without detachable keyboards will come for as low as $199. There will be certainly higher priced versions as well, with higher resolution than that of the T100’s 1366×768 (which has an IPS screen nevertheless), 11” screen instead of the 10” T100, and most importantly using the higher-end Z3770 SoC with up to 2.4 GHz in burst mode (when thermal and other conditions allow it) instead of T100’s Z3740 SoC with up to 1.8 GHz only. In fact there will be notebook and desktop SoC products as well, code named Bay-Trail-M and Bay-Trail-D, respectively.

#5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#47 slide of the same SPCS004 presentation as above

This is pretty good as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and NVIDIA Tegra 4 are the current leaders among quad-core ARM SoCs. And a very important point here is that Intel went down very significantly with the recommended customer price of just $37 in volume (1K TRAY) for Z3770. Its “little brother” the Z3740 has even lower $32 price in volume (1K TRAY) while the same clock frequency Clover Trail Z2760 launched a year ago had $41 price (1K TRAY) but significantly less performance as you will see below. And remember that the non-tablet but netbook Atoms, the N470 and N475, launched 2 and a half year ago had even $75 (1K TRAY) price, and were inferior in all regards even to the Z2760. Intel has definitely decided to compete with ARM quadcores not only in performance but in price as well.

UPDATE as of Sept 20, 2013: By the time of publishing my analysis of The manufacturing side of the “Race to the Bottom” Ecosystem [‘USD 99 Allwinner’, Sept 19, 2013] the pricing information for the announced Bay Trail-T SoCs as well as the earlier generation Clover Trail (Z3770, Z3740 and Z2760) disappeared from subsequent ark.intel.com specification pages. I cannot think any other reason than the indicative pricing information became a public blunder for Intel when people were asking questions similar to the two opening ones in my above indicated post:

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

Update as of Oct 14, 2013:
Intel plans cheap Bay Trail CPUs for 2Q14 [DIGITIMES, Oct 14, 2013]

Intel is planning to release entry-level Bay Trail-based processors for the Android platform in the second quarter of 2014, according to sources from tablet players.

The sources expect the CPUs to be priced between US$15-20, about US$12 lower than the current models.

Although Intel has already offered subsidies for its Bay Trail-T processors including Atom Z3740 and Z3770 at US$32 and US$37 and another 10% off for bulk purchase, they are still less competitive in pricing compared to ARM-based quad-core processors.

With the new entry-level processors, the sources expect Intel to gain an equal footing against players such as Mediatek, Qualcomm and Nvidia.

Let’s see then the great video decoding capability of Z3770:
Bay Trail playing 4K video 100Mb/s on a 2560×1440 sreen [of Intel Z3770 based Reference Design] [Francois Piednoel YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

then a recent game with 3D graphics: Torchlight II on Intel’s Bay Trail Tablet at IDF13 [HardwareZoneMY YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

An Intel representative demonstrating Torchlight II on a reference design Bay Trail unit.

No wonder as relative to the previous generation Clover Trail Atom Z2760 introduced last September, which had the Imagination PowerVR SGX545 GPU @533 MHz, the Bay Trail Atom Z3770 has the Intel HD Graphics (Gen 7 with 4EU) @313 MHz. Measured at the same 13×7 resolution the improvement is not less than 6.42 times according to benchmarking run by Intel. It is also significantly better than the contemporary (Sept’12) leaders of quad-core ARM SoCs from NVIDIA and Qualcomm, by 4.4 and 3 times, respectively:

#52 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

This comparison is speaking for itself:
Intel Bay Trail demo (tablet on the right) vs. Clover Trail (tablet on the left) [zzopmusic YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013] i.e. the previous generation Atom

Note that relative to the current quadcore SoC leaders from ARM the GPU performance of Bay Trail Z3770 is still lagging somewhat:

#49 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

It is important here to compare the Bay Trail Z3770 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 only because only they are at the same 19×10 resolution while NVIDIA Tegra 4 is at the much higher 25×16 resolution.

This current lag in GPU performance may be overcome in the future as the Bay Trail-T GPU had been announced by much higher clock frequency possibilities, as given on #15 slide of the above presentation:

Intel HD Graphics architecture
– Graphics turbo supported with CPU-GPU power sharing
– DirextX 11, OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics core
– Support for high-resolution displays (up to 25×16)
– Programmable in-order multi-threaded
– 4EUs, 8 threads each, SIMD32
– >= 667MHz

High-quality, high-performance, low power HD H.264 encoder
– High profile support, fast transcode
– Separate 3D and media power wells
– Video and display post-processing support

Power
– Autonomously hardware detects Idle condition, save state and power gate
– Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

No wonder why at IDF 2013: Intel demos Bay Trail tablet with virtual shopping app [Computerworld YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

On Wednesday at IDF in San Francisco Intel launched Bay Trail, the next-generation Atom Z3000 chip that gives tablets PC-like performance.

That was meant to be the supposedly most convincing demo at the full IDF 2013 San Francisco Dr. Hermann Eul Keynote [karan YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Dr. Hermann Eul, Vice President & General Manager, Mobile and Communications Group

Also read the relevant part of the from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript, from which I will quote here just the following:

[4:14] The platform from soups to nuts. What does that mean? First, we start with a fantastic CPU, then we add the gorgeous imaging processing, and we have a stunning graphics coming to this. And around this, of course we will always be connected. We want to have fast, robust, reliable connectivity, cellular connectivity, short range connectivity. We put this on this platform as well, and then we add much more stuff: I/Os, audio, display, and so on and so forth.

Last but not least, we dovetail very sophisticated security into this and a highly specialized, optimized power management. That is the crown jewel of the platform. On this, we put software, a protocol stack, hardened in more than 100 countries and operators around the globe, a very proven stack around all the connectivity connections, and of course a highly optimized software operating system load that runs best on our architecture. And this we call the platform, from A to Z. All these elements are important. They form this platform.

For the user-facing part, the application system, it all starts with a great CPU. A leadership CPU is necessary to do this. And we all know, all cores are not created equal. That compares very much to our brains. So to speak, the analogy is that the core is the brain of that system. And so, our brains are all not equal.

And for our platform, it just starts with an extraordinary brain. The Silvermont core. It’s a flexible, multi-core architecture, has 64 bits, it is leading in performance per watt efficiency. And the good thing is, it spans an ultra-wide dynamic range from very low power to extremely high performance that we need. And we are supporting with this the broadest range of devices and market segments. And needless to say, it comes with the advanced 22-nanometer tri-gate transistor technology.

#9 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

And having said this, we have the capabilities, and we know the secret sauce on matchmaking: this stunning architecture and this very advanced process technology manufacturing. That is what I call in that slide here magic. This is our secret sauce. And this is what, exactly what we have done.

And all that leads me to today’s announcement, the introduction of the Bay Trail platform.

Bay Trail is architected for the best mobile computing experience. In more detail, it has leading performance and outstanding battery life. It comes with the next generation of Intel multi-core technology. It provides immersive experiences with Intel HD graphics, and it has ample performance on demand, with the Intel Burst technology 2.0. And of course, it comes with advanced imaging capabilities, and with our next-gen programmable ISP. [8:54]

Intel Bay Trail the Newest Intel Atom Processor, Tech News Interview [Santa Barbara Arts TV YouTube Partner Global News YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Intel Executives and Developers talk about Bay Trail, the Newest Intel Atom Processor 22 nanometer, quad-core system-on-a-chip technology Intel Bay Trail the Newest Intel Atom Processor Tech News Interviews.

Dr. Hermann Eul, Vice President & General Manager for Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group: [1:33] “If you look at the Windows tablets I think it is amazing to see what you can do on these lightweight tablets. What you did years back with a heavy weight computer everything now works on those tablets: from office applications, from productivity work to what’s gaming, everything runs on it. They are just compatible PERIOD.” [1:57] – says

“Bay Trail is an amazing platform we’ve developed for tablets,” says Ticky Thakkar, Chief Platform Architect for Intel’s Mobile and Communication’s Group. [2:46] “Well, Bay Trail will give you the same performance as the previous generation of our core at about 5x less power. So that gives you some perspective of how much hard work we did on power.” [3:03] “You’re going to get awesome performance delivered in the thinnest, lightest tablet.” Thakkar led the development of the latest Atom processor, which is based on 22 nanometer, quad-core system-on-a-chip technology. Essentially, the technological achievement has resulted in a chip that outperforms laptops of just a few years ago.

Tami Reller from Microsoft talks Windows 8.1 at IDF 2013 Keynote [camwilmot YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Microsoft’s Tami Reller took the stage at this year’s IDF to talk about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8.1 update. The Redmond giant recently released the update to manufacturer and posted it on MSDN for download, which Reller suggested was well received.

Intel Launches New Multicore, Low-Power SoCs for Tablets, 2 in 1s and Other Computing Devices [press release, Sept 11, 2013]

Scalable 22nm Silvermont Microarchitecture Delivers Flexibility for a Range of Designs, Price Points

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

Built on its leading 22nm tri-gate technology and the new “Silvermont” microarchitecture, Intel launched three new multicore SoCs, formerly codenamed “Bay Trail,” for tablets, 2 in 1 devices, all-in-ones, laptops and desktops.
The multi-core Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Series, Intel’s most powerful SoC for tablets to-date, delivers an ideal balance of performance, battery life, graphics and features for consumers and businesses, on both Android* and full Windows 8* operating systems.
Leading OEMs will offer a wide range of Bay Trail-powered devices at a variety of prices starting in the fourth quarter of 2013.

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 11, 2013 –Intel Corporation today launched its latest family of low-power systems-on-a-chip (SoC), codenamed “Bay Trail,” that will fuel a wave of highly powerful and energy efficient tablets, 2 in 1s and other mobile devices to market for consumers and business users in the fourth quarter of this year from leading OEMs including AAVA*, Acer*, ASUS*, Dell*, Lenovo* and Toshiba*.

The “Bay Trail” family of processors is based on Intel’s low-power, high-performance microarchitecture “Silvermont,” announced in May 2013. The Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) is the company’s first mobile multi-core SoC and its most powerful offering¹ to date for tablets and other sleek mobile designs. It delivers a fast and fluid experience and a powerful balance of performance, battery life, graphics and rich features.

The flexibility of the new microarchitecture allows for variants of the SoC to serve multiple market segments, including new Intel® Pentium® and Celeron® processors (“Bay Trail”-M and -D) for entry 2 in 1s, laptops, desktops and all-in-one systems.

The family of “Bay Trail” SoCs provides a wide range of options for Intel’s customers by enabling one hardware configuration that supports both Windows 8* and Android*, ultimately offering people broader choice of form factors at a range of price points that meet the varied needs of consumers and business users.

“What we have delivered with our Bay Trail platform is an incredibly powerful SoC that delivers outstanding performance, long battery life, and a great experience for the way people use these devices today. It’s an incredible leap forward,” said Hermann Eul, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group. “With Bay Trail as the foundation, our OEM partners are bringing a wide variety of designs at a range of prices to delight consumers, business users and IT managers.”

To bring this level of performance to a processor aimed at mobile devices, Intel developed a new platform that solves the contemporary technology challenges people have today, including the ability to multitask, the need for prolonged battery life and enhanced graphics, and the ability to have a more productive, enjoyable mobile experience. Video content and B-roll featuring Intel executives and developers on the making of Bay Trail and supporting images are available at intel.synapticdigital.com.

More Powerful Tablets, 2 in 1s with Intel Atom Z3000 Processor Series

The Intel Atom Z3000 Processor series delivers leading performance with all-day battery life. It is Intel’s most capable, best-performing platform to-date for tablets and other sleek mobile devices. It offers a smaller footprint and lower power usage while also enabling double the compute performance and triple the graphics performance compared to the previous-generation Intel Atom processor. The low-power SoC platform enables over 10 hours of active battery life² and three weeks of standby with an always-connected mobile experience.

The Intel Atom Z3000 Processor series also includes Intel® Burst Technology 2.0 with four cores, four threads and 2MB L2 cache. This performance allows users to multi-task, consume and create content, and enjoy a rich experience across either Android or Windows 8. People will also have a choice of form factors between tablets and 2 in 1s, with thin-and-light devices ranging from 8mm to 1 pound, and screen sizes ranging from 7-11.6 inches.* Tablets based on this latest Intel Atom SoC will be available at prices starting as low as $199.

The Intel Atom Z3000 series also enables business-ready tablets that deliver the experiences and designs people want with the protection for the enterprise that IT requires. With robust security features, including McAfee® DeepSAFE* Technology, AES hardware full disk encryption, Intel® Platform Trust Technology, Intel® Identity Protection Technology and Intel Data Protection Technology, the platform offers a more secure computing environment. It also supports Microsoft Windows 8 Pro Domain Join and Group Policy, and delivers full application and peripheral compatibility.

Intel has been working with top application developers to ensure the best experience is available for Intel® architecture platforms on both Windows and Android. Work with Cyberlink, Skype-HD and Netflix-HD, PhiSix, Arcsoft, Tieto, Gameloft, and many line of business apps are a few examples where Intel has focused on optimizing imaging, graphics, and overall performance that will ultimately improve the experience for consumers. Intel has a long history of optimizations for Windows and Andorid operating systems.

Intel will introduce 64-bit support for tablets in early 2014, delivering even greater value to IT managers. Devices built on this version of the SoC will offer enterprise-class applications and security, and with Intel® Identity Protection Technology (IPT) with PKI, will not require a VPN password when used with systems optimized for IPT and PKI.

Bay Trail Processors to Power Entry 2 in 1s, Notebooks, Desktops and All-in-Ones

The “Bay Trail M” line will be available in four SKUs: Intel Pentium N3510 and Intel Celeron N2910, N2810 and N2805 processors. This series will power a number of innovative 2 in 1 devices in addition to notebooks enabled with touch capabilities, bringing them to new audiences at lower price points.

With the microarchitecture flexibility and graphics improvements across all of the “Bay Trail” SKUs, the Pentium N3000 Processor and Celeron N2000 Processor series also boast two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks³. Designs powered by these processors can be fanless, can measure less than 11 mm thick and weigh just 2.2 lbs. Intel expects the systems to start at $199 for a clamshell device, $250 for a notebook with touch and $349 for a 2 in 1 device.

The “Bay Trail D” line will be available in three SKUs: Intel Pentium J2850, Intel Celeron J1850 and Intel Celeron J1750. These offerings are Intel’s smallest-ever packages for desktop processors, making them ideal for fanless and smaller form factor systems for entry level desktop computing. The processors are also ideal for vertical uses, including intelligent digital displays, with the power savings and up to three times faster performance than similar products from Intel just three years ago³. Full systems based on these SKUs are expected to start at $199.

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … its most powerful offering¹ to date for tablets and other sleek mobile designs
1 Based on the geometric mean of a variety of power and performance measurements across various benchmarks. Benchmarks included in this geomean are measurements on browsing benchmarks and workloads including SunSpider* and page load tests on Internet Explorer*, FireFox*, & Chrome*; Dhrystone*; EEMBC* workloads including CoreMark*; Android* workloads including CaffineMark*, AnTutu*, Linpack* and Quadrant* as well as measured estimates on SPECint* rate_base2000 & SPECfp* rate_base2000; on Silvermont preproduction systems compared to Atom processor Z2580. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to: www.intel.com/performance

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … over 10 hours of active battery life²2 Battery life is measured 1080p,10″, 31Whr 13×7 OEM System; FFRD on 38.5 Whr 25×14, 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Windows 8 only.

The “Bay Trail M” line … two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks³

The “Bay Trail D” line … up to three times faster performance than similar products from Intel just three years ago³3 Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to www.intel.com/performance

Intel Baytrail SOC Explained [minipcpro YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

More information: Intel’s Bay Trail Fact Sheet (PDF) [Intel, Sept 11, 2013]
as well as from: http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/55844/Bay-Trail
……………………….………………….. Z3740 ……… Z3770 ……. Z3770D ….. Z3740D

UPDATE as of Sept 20, 2013: By the time of publishing my analysis of The manufacturing side of the “Race to the Bottom” Ecosystem [‘USD 99 Allwinner’, Sept 19, 2013] the pricing information for the announced Bay Trail-T SoCs as well as the earlier generation Clover Trail (Z3770, Z3740 and Z2760) disappeared from subsequent ark.intel.com specification pages. I cannot think any other reason than the indicative pricing information became a public blunder for Intel when people were asking questions similar to the two opening ones in my above indicated post:

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

The complete set of Z3000 Series SKUs from here (with all other Bay Trail SKUs as well):

According to #5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation the 2-core Z3600 Series (Z3680, Z3680D) is targeting only the Android tablets:

4th Generation Intel® Atom™ Processor-Based Tablet Overview [Intel Developer Zone article, Sept 11, 2013]

Introducing the next generation Intel® Atom™ Processor
(Code named “Bay Trail”)

Abstract

Intel has launched its latest Intel® Atom™ processor, code named “Bay Trail”. It is the first Intel Atom processor based on 22-nm technology. This article discusses the key features of the platform like extended battery life, Intel® Gen7 graphics architecture, advanced imaging and video, improved performance, security, and more.

Platform Overview

The new processor offers Intel level performance for apps, games, photos, videos, and web browsing in the new thinnest/lightest/coolest form factors. The Intel Atom processor is optimized for tablets and 2 in 1 devices. Tablets based on the new Intel Atom processor support multiple cameras with excellent camera quality and feature integrated image signal processing for both still and video image capture. The table below shows the “Bay Trail” improvements.

Comparison of Clover Trail vs Bay Trail features

Intel Atom processor feature highlights

First-ever 22-nm Intel Atom processor

The new first-ever, 22-nm Intel Atom processor is a quad-core system on chip (SOC) with 4 cores/4 threads. With the CPU, graphics, and memory in one package, this modular design provides the flexibility to package a high-performance processor and graphics solution for multiple form factors.

Enhanced battery life

The new processor offers active battery life of more than 10 hours and standby performance of approximately 30 days³.

Graphics and Media Performance

The latest Intel Atom processor includes a 7th generation Intel® GPU with burst technology to provide a stunning graphics and media experience. The new processor supports high resolution displays up to 2560X1600 @ 60HZ and supports Intel® Wireless (Intel® WiDi) technology through Miracast. Seamless video playback is supported by a high performance and low power hardware acceleration of media encode and decode. The table below compares the two processors’ graphics features.

Intel Burst Technology 2.0

Automatically allows processor cores to run faster than the base operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits.

Graphics Feature Comparison

Advanced Imaging and video

The new Intel Atom processor comes with an integrated image signal processor and supports excellent camera quality. It supports video capture at 1080p with full HD playback. Superior multi axis Document Image Solution (DIS) and image alignment extend High Dynamic Range (HDR) to moving devices hence removing the moving blur. Ghost removal is also extended from HDR to moving scenes.

Security Features

With people carrying their devices with them almost everywhere they go, they are more likely to lose their tablet or laptop. And even if they don’t lose them, devices are susceptible to the growing number of viruses and malware threats. Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT)⁴ can help businesses keep their critical information secure and protect against malware. Intel® IPT helps prevent unauthorized access to personal and business accounts by using hardware-based authentication.

New business-class tablets built with the Intel Atom processor Z3700 Series are specifically designed for the needs of business and the enterprise. Hardware-enhanced Intel® security technologies and support for software from McAfee offer robust security capabilities.

Intel® Wireless Display benefits on Intel Atom processor

Intel® WiDi enables content-protected HD streaming and interactive usages between tablets and TVs. It supports full 1080p video and low latency gaming, and is Miracast compliant Intel® WiDi can be used to link health indicators as well. A few of the capabilities of Miracast-enabled apps are:

– Share & Enjoy: use a big screen HDTV to enjoy and share media with family and friends
– Wireless: quickly and securely connect with standard Wi-Fi to a TV without cables
– Easy Set-up: simple user interface makes it easy to connect; no additional remote controls
– Portable: adapter is small and light, so solution can move with you

Resources for Developers

Below are links to some resources for programming on Windows 8 that can help you take advantage of the new Intel Atom processor features.

1: Optimize apps for touch: The latest devices with Intel Atom processors include touch screens. To learn more on how about UX/UI guidelines and how optimize app design for touch, see:
– Ultrabook™ Device and Tablet Windows* Touch Developer Guide
– Handling touch input in Windows* 8 Applications

2: Optimize apps with sensors: Intel Atom processor-based platforms come with several sensors: GPS, Compass, Gyroscope, Accelerometer, and Ambient Light. These sensor recommendations are aligned with the Microsoft standard for Windows 8. Use the Windows sensor APIs, and your code will run on all Ultrabook™ and tablet systems running Windows 8. For more information, see:
– Ultrabook™ and Tablet Windows* 8 Sensors Development Guide
– Detecting Ultrabook sensors on Windows 8

3: Optimize apps with Intel platform features: Take advantage of the security features such as Intel Anti-Theft Technology⁴ and Intel Identity Protection Technology with HD Graphics. Please refer to resources below for more information on each. For more information, see:
– Intel® Anti-Theft Technology
– Intel® Identity Protection Technology

4: Optimize for visible performance differentiation: Intel® Quick Sync Video encode and post-processing for media and visual intensive applications. For more information, see:
– Intel® Media SDK
– Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions
– Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer Manuals
– Graphics Developers Guide

5: Optimize app performance with Intel® tools: Check out the Intel® Composer XE 2013 and Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE 2013 for Windows. These suites provide compilers, Intel® Performance Primitives, and Intel® Threaded Building Blocks that help boost application performance. You can also optimize and future-proof media and graphics workloads on all IA platforms with the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 2013 and Intel Media SDK. For more information, see:
– intel.com/software/products
– http://software.intel.com/en-us/windows-tool-suites/
– http://software.intel.com/en-us/vcsource/tools

¹ Claims for Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (up to 2.40GHz, 4T4C Silvermont, 2MB L2 Cache) are based on an internal Intel® Reference design tablet which is not available for purchase: 10” screen with 25×14 resolution, Intel Gen 7 HD Graphics, pre-production graphics driver, 2GB (2x1GB) LPDDR3-1067, 64GB eMMC solid state storage, 38.5 Whr battery. Based on TouchXPRT, WebXPRT and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel Atom Processor Z2760. Individual results will vary. Commercial systems may be available after future Windows updates. Consult your system manufacturer for more details. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to http://www.intel.com/performance.

² Claims for Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (up to 2.40GHz, 4T4C Silvermont, 2MB L2 Cache) are based on an internal Intel® Reference design tablet which is not available for purchase: 10” screen with 25×14 resolution, Intel Gen 7 HD Graphics, pre-production graphics driver, 2GB (2x1GB) LPDDR3-1067, 64GB eMMC solid state storage, 38.5 Whr battery. Measured using 3DMark* Ice Storm—a 3D graphics benchmark that measures 3D gaming performance compared to Intel Atom Processor Z2760. Find out more at http://www.futuremark.com. Individual results will vary. Commercial systems may be available after future Windows updates. Consult your system manufacturer for more details. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go tohttp://www.intel.com/performance.

³ Based on a 30W Hour battery on 19×10 resolution on 10.1” display. Higher resolution will require larger battery. Active use measured as 1080/30 fps local video playback. Battery life may differ based on SKU and SoC performance.

⁴ No computer system can provide absolute security. Requires an Intel® Identity Protection Technology-enabled system, including an enabled Intel® processor, enabled chipset, firmware, software, and Intel integrated graphics (in some cases) and participating website/service. Intel assumes no liability for lost or stolen data and/or systems or any resulting damages. For more information, visit http://ipt.intel.com/. Consult your system manufacturer and/or software vendor for more information.

Tablet Performance: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 [Intel Infographic]

System Configurations – Performance

Latest Generation: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (4T4C, up to 2.4 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on Intel® Reference Design 1.4.1: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 2560×1440; Battery size: 38.5 WHr; Storage: 64 GB
Prior generation / existing tablet: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z2760 (4T2C, up to 1.8 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache) measured on Acer* Iconia* W510: Memory: 2 GB; OS Microsoft* Windows* 8; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver: 9.14.3.1082; Display size: 10.1”; Display Resolution: 1366×768; Battery size: 26.6 WHr; Storage: 64 GB

System Configurations – Battery life

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (4T4C, up to 2.4 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on Intel® Reference Design 1.4.1: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 2560×1440; Battery size: 38.5 WHr; Storage: 64 GB
Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3740 (4T4C, up to 1.86 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on OEM pre-production system: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 1366×768; Battery size: 31 WHr; Storage: 64 GB

Product and Performance Information

1. Based on TouchXPRT, WebXPRT, and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel® Atom™ processor Z2560. Individual results will vary.

2. Measured by TouchXPRT* 2013 overall score and Convert video for sharing sub score. TouchXPRT 2013 is a benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of your Windows* 8 and Windows RT devices. TouchXPRT 2013 runs tests based on five user scenarios (beautify photo album, prepare photos for sharing, convert videos for sharing, export podcast to MP3, and create slideshow from photos) and produces results for each of the five test scenarios plus an overall score. Find out more at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/touchxprt/.

3. Measured by WebXPRT* 2013. WebXPRT 2013 uses scenarios created to mirror the tasks you do every day to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device. It contains four HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads: Photo Effects, Face Detect, Stocks Dashboard, and Offline Notes. Find out more at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/webxprt/. File transfer workload measures time transferring a 423 MB playlist from a PC to a tablet.

4. Measured by SYSmark* 2012 Lite overall score and TabletMark. SYSmark 2012 Lite is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, data/financial analysis, system management, and web development. SYSmark 2012 Lite features popular applications from each of their respective fields. Find out more at http://bapco.com/products/sysmark-2012-lite. TabletMark is targeted specifically for touch-enabled devices. With support for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT, TabletMark measures performance for two different usage scenarios: Web & Email and Photo & Video sharing. Find out more at http://bapco.com/products/tabletmark.

5. Measured using 3DMark* Ice Storm, a 3-D graphics benchmark that measures 3-D gaming performance. Find out more at http://www.futuremark.com.

6. Display resolution is an OEM feature selection. Consult your system manufacturer for more details.

7. Battery life is measured using a 1080p 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Configuration: In the device settings, disable all radios except Wi-Fi. Disable Intel® Display Power Saving Technology (Intel® DPST), set up the system to ~200 nits screen brightness using a full screen white background, and re-enable Intel DPST. Turn OFF the adaptive brightness setting under Power Options in Control Panel. Set “Dim the display” to never on both battery and AC. Set “Put the computer to sleep” to never on both battery and AC. Wait 15 minutes after boot. Launch the default Windows* 8.1 Style UI video player, start the workload video in a loop, and disconnect the AC plug to start the test. Measure the time until battery is exhausted.

8. Requires an Intel® Wireless Display-enabled system, compatible adapter, and TV with 1080p and Blu-ray* or other protected content playback, a compatible adapter and media player supporting Intel® WiDi software, and graphics driver installed. Consult your tablet manufacturer. For more information, see http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-wireless-display.html. 

9. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations, and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information, go to http://www.intel.com/performance.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 [the Official ASUS Facebook page, Sept 11, 2013]

The announcements just keep coming! Introducing the ASUS Transformer Book T100, the 2-in-1 Ultraportable laptop with a 10″ tablet powered by Intel’s latest Bay Trail-T quad-core processor. Available in the US starting October 18th from only $349.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 Press Event [ASUS North America YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

on September 11, 2013 we [via Jonney Shih, the Chairman of Asus] introduced the ASUS Transformer Book T100 to the world. We Transform.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

Jerry Shen, CEO, ASUS (from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript):

The machine in my hand, T100, which features the incredible Bay Trail quad-core processor, and incredible 11 hours of battery life. With SD IPS display and stereo audios. And the detachable keyboard back features precisely keyboard and touchpad. It’s perfect for productivity. We are very proud of this machine, and very excited about the Bay Trail quad-core promise. It’s perfect, it’s a perfect two-in-one device in the market.

Dell shows off new Venue tablet during IDF 2013 Keynote [camwilmot YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Intel invited Dell up to the stage in order to show off its new Venue tablet that is powered by Intel’s new Bay Trail architecture. In addition to previewing this new Venue tablet, Dell also informed us that they are creating a new family of tablets that will be known by the Venue name. We should know more about these in early October.

Neil Hand, VP Product Marketing, Dell (from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript):

I am really excited to be here at the Bay Trail launch to talk about some of the new platforms that Dell can actually innovate from some of the Bay Trail technologies that Intel is bringing out.

And what I want to show you today is, firstly, one of our new Windows 8 eight-inch tablets we’ll be introducing very soon. This system is part of a new family that we’re introducing that are going to really innovate and drive new capabilities into very small new form factors.

The whole family will offer several key benefits.

Firstly, quality, quality Dell is renowned for, products that last a long time but have great performance on the screen and usability. Secondly, battery life. Anybody worry about range anxiety? Am I going to be able to turn it on and be able to use it? This really fixes that.

Security, making sure you’re connecting to a business, or you’re connecting to your home. That data is secure in transit and on the device.

And lastly, to make sure that there is connectivity, a range of 4G and LTE connectivity, so wherever you happen to be, you’ll be able to connect to the wells.

So great features in the products. But more importantly, we think, is actually being able to have fun and easy to-use products.

So with this introduction, I’m actually pleased to announce here at IDF that we’ll be branding our new family of tablets, Venue, the Dell Venue family. Venue means the place where things happen. And to us, this really is the place that things happen and becomes the center of the universe.

So you can actually carry your entire life with you, connect back, use Dell pocket clouds to be able to access content, be able to use your files and applications wherever you happen to be, really excited about them.

And October 2 in New York City, we’ll be announcing the entire range of products.

Microsoft reorg for delivering/supporting high-value experiences/activities

July 11, 2013 7:27 pm / 6 Comments on Microsoft reorg for delivering/supporting high-value experiences/activities

Too elevated and abstract formulation? Not at all, as just 3 days ago we’ve seen a really great example of such an experience/activity at the WPC 2013:
Power BI Demo [msPartner YouTube channel, July 8, 2013]

Even the title of the post reporting on the WPC 2013 was Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 10, 2013]

Still find too elevated and abstract the high-value experiences/activities formulation now put into the center of what Microsoft does? Watch this Nokia’s Lumia 1020 event recap in 5 minutes [TheVerge YouTube channel, July 11, 2013] video from Nokia showing how a major innovation partner could join Microsoft in all that (in this case with incredible camera experience):

Need to catch up on Nokia’s Lumia 1020 event? We’ve got you covered with this 5-minute recap!

It is not by chance that the Lumia 1020 event was synchonized with Microsoft reorg announcement of July 11.

Have doubts how such high-value experiences/activities could be presented to everyday customers? Watch this video:

See how the Dell XPS 10 with Windows RT stacks up against the iPad. Check out more at http://windows.com/compare

This is a month-old ad for Dell Tablet vs. iPad [WindowsVideos YouTube channel, June 13, 2013] showing how much it is possible, and more importantly it is possible exactly because of such value focus:

Now it is time to show the scope of such high values Microsoft found it could and should focus on. In Transforming Our Company [Microsoft memo, July 11, 2013] the following high-value activities based on devices and services delivery were defined:

Reinventing expression and documents. People love and need to express themselves in new ways. Documents are going from being printed to being experienced. There are many high-value needs for personal creative expression — some just for fun, others at work or at school. We will reinvent the tools and form of expressing oneself (and expressing things as a group) from paper and slides to online. We will ensure that the tools handle multimedia (photos, videos, text, charts and slides) in an integrated way and natively online. These documents/websites will be easily sharable and easily included in meetings. They will offer complex options such as imbedded logic and yet be easy to author, search and view. These documents will be readable from a browser, but the experience will be infinitely better if read, annotated or presented with our tools.

Next-generation decision-making and task completion. Our machine learning infrastructure will understand people’s needs and what is available in the world, and will provide information and assistance. We will be great at anticipating needs in people’s daily routines and providing insight and assistance when they need it. When it comes to life’s most important tasks and events, we will pay extra attention. The research done, the data collected and analyzed, the meetings and discussions had, and the money spent are all amplified for people during life’s big moments. We will provide the tools people need to capture their own data and organize and analyze it in conjunction with the massive amount of data available over the Web. Bing, Excel and our InfoNav innovations are all important here. Decision-making and tasks mean different things in personal versus professional lives, yet they are important in both places.

Social communication (meetings, events, gathering, sharing and communicating). Social communications are time-intensive, high-value scenarios that are ripe for digital re-imagination. Such innovation will include new ways to participate in work meetings, PTA and nonprofit activities, family and social gatherings, and more. We can reimagine email and other communication vehicles as the lines between these vehicles grow fuzzy, and the amount of people’s digital or digitally assisted interaction continues to grow. We can create new ways to interact through hardware, software and new services. Next-gen documents and expression are an important part of online social communications. We will not focus on becoming another social network for people to participate in casually, though some may use these products and services that way.

Serious fun. This expression may sound like an oxymoron, yet it encapsulates an important point of differentiation for us. There are many things people do for light fun, for example play solitaire, spend three minutes on a word game or surf the TV. Although we will enable these activities effectively, our biggest opportunity is in creating the fun people feel most intensely, such as playing a game that lasts hours and takes real concentration, or immersing them in live events and entertainment (including sports, concerts, education and fitness) while allowing interactive participation. Interactivity takes engagement and makes things serious; it really requires differentiated hardware, apps and services. People want to participate at home and on the go, and in gatherings with others. We see a unique opportunity to make experiencing events with others more exciting with interactivity. We also see opportunity in fitness and health because, for many, this is serious fun much more than it is a task.

The rationale behind is best represented by following excerpts from:
[1] One Microsoft: Company realigns to enable innovation at greater speed, efficiency
[2] Transforming Our Company

[2] we realized our strengths are in high-value activities, powering devices and enterprise services.

[2] The bedrock of our new strategy is innovation in deep, rich, high-value experiences and activities. It’s the starting point for differentiated devices integrated with services. It’s at the core of how we will inspire ourselves all to do our best work and bring to our customers the very things that will make a difference in their lives.

[1] We will plan across the company, so we can better deliver compelling integrated devices and services for the high-value experiences and core technologies around which we organize. This new planning approach will look at both the short-term deliverables and long-term initiatives needed to meet the shipment cadences of both Microsoft and third-party devices and our services.

[1] services core technologies in productivity, communication, search and other information categories [within Applications and Services Engineering Group]

[1] We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.

[1] We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities.

[1] Our focus on high-value activities — serious fun, meetings, tasks, research, information assurance and IT/Dev workloads — also will get top-level championship.

[2] people also turn to technology for more important tasks in their lives — and we will focus our energies on creating new, memorable and even extraordinary experiences across our family of devices and services. Think of the student stuck on that term paper looking to display all his creativity in ways that will get him an A+; the family that’s getting together for a reunion and wants the delightful memories to last forever online; the gamer who is taking his fantasy team to the playoffs; or any of us who could be faced with a tough medical decision and needs to plan care and finances.

Such high-value activities include the full breadth and depth of areas like personal expression, decision-making and tasks, social communication, and serious fun — and we have both the drive and the capacity to reinvent these experiences for people across the globe.

[2] Our devices must support the same high-value activities in ways that are meaningful across different device types.

[2] We will be on a new path centered around delivering high-value activities on a family of devices with integrated services.

[2] We will engage enterprise on all sides — investing in more high-value activities for enterprise users to do their jobs; empowering people to be productive independent of their enterprise; and building new and innovative solutions for IT professionals and developers.

[2] Building upon Windows, Xbox and our growing suite of consumer and enterprise services, we will design, create and deliver through us and through third parties a complete family of Windows-powered devices — devices that can help people just as much in their work life as they do after hours. Devices that help people do more and play harder.

[1] The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution.

[1] Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces.

[1] As devices become further integrated into everyday life, we will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for our customers on these devices. We are going to focus on completely reinventing experiences like creating or viewing a creative document and what it means to communicate socially at home or in meetings at work. We are going to immerse people in deep entertainment experiences that let them have serious fun in ways so intense and delightful that they will blur the line between reality and fantasy. And as we develop these new experiences, we will also support our developers with the simplest ways to develop apps or cloud services and integrate with our products. We will help businesses that find themselves in a new world of ever-mounting information to manage that information through greater enterprise information assurance. We will make these high-value activities priorities in our strategy.

Media completely missed the above essence of Microsoft reorg, as quite well evidenced even with the Microsoft’s New Management: Too Little, Too Late? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, July 11, 2013] video

July 11 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft, playing catch-up in mobile computing, is reorganizing into fewer units and shuffling senior management roles to speed development of hardware and Web-based services. Paul Kedrosky speaks with Sara Eisen on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg)

from such a prestigous source. Absolutely amazing how much they miss the whole point of this reorg.

Whether you come from the understanding of the overall change of attitude towards a complete high-value focus, or you see this as a kind of catch-up play in terms of the devices and services approach announced a year ago, you will arrive at talking about the following functional organization as per [2] which is replacing the previous divisional organization:

Business Development and Evangelism Group. Tony Bates will focus on key partnerships especially our innovation partners (OEMs, silicon vendors, key developers, Yahoo, Nokia, etc.) and our broad work on evangelism and developer outreach. DPE, Corporate Strategy and the business development efforts formerly in the BGs will become part of this new group. OEM will remain in SMSG with Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Tony who will work closely with Nick Parker on key OEM relationships.

Operating Systems Engineering Group. Terry Myerson will lead this group, and it will span all our OS work for console, to mobile device, to PC, to back-end systems. The core cloud services for the operating system will be in this group.	Devices and Studios Engineering Group. Julie Larson-Green will lead this group and will have all hardware development and supply chain from the smallest to the largest devices we build. Julie will also take responsibility for our studios experiences including all games, music, video and other entertainment.	Applications and Services Engineering Group. Qi Lu will lead broad applications and services core technologies in productivity, communication, search and other information categories.
Cloud and Enterprise Engineering Group. Satya Nadella will lead development of our back-end technologies like datacenter, database and our specific technologies for enterprise IT scenarios and development tools. He will lead datacenter development, construction and operation.		Dynamics. Kirill Tatarinov will continue to run Dynamics as is, but his product leaders will dotted line report to Qi Lu, his marketing leader will dotted line report to Tami Reller and his sales leader will dotted line report to the COO group.
Advanced Strategy and Research Group. Eric Rudder will lead Research, Trustworthy Computing, teams focused on the intersection of technology and policy, and will drive our cross-company looks at key new technology trends.	COO. Kevin Turner will continue leading our worldwide sales, field marketing, services, support, and stores as well as IT, licensing and commercial operations.	Marketing Group. Tami Reller will lead all marketing with the field relationship as is today. Mark Penn will take a broad view of marketing strategy and will lead with Tami the newly centralized advertising and media functions.
HR Group. Lisa Brummel will lead Human Resources and map her team to the new organization.	Finance Group. Amy Hood will centralize all product group finance organizations. SMSG finance, which is geographically diffuse, will report to Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Amy.	Legal and Corporate Affairs Group. Brad Smith will continue as General Counsel with responsibility for the company’s legal and corporate affairs and will map his team to the new organization.

From Steve Ballmer and Microsoft Senior Leadership Team: One Microsoft Conference Call [Microsoft News Center, July 11, 2013]

ADRIANNE JEFFRIES, The Verge: Hi, thanks so much. My question is, Steve, with Julie and Terry leading separate software and hardware teams, how do you feel you can bring devices to the market in a way that Apple and other competitors do? Will they work closely enough and collaboratively enough to compete with Apple?

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I think it’s a perfect way for us to approach it. Terry and I have worked together for a long time. We both have worked on the operating system side. I’ve worked on the hardware side, and it’s a good blending of our skills and our teams to deliver things together. So the structure that we’re putting in place for the whole company is about working across the different disciplines and having product champions. So Terry and I will be working to lead delivery to market of our first-party and third-party devices.

STEVE BALLMER: Yes, and maybe just also have Tony Bates add a little bit. Tony is going to have a critical role running business development evangelism, our role with our hardware innovation partners, our OEMs.

TONY BATES: Yes, I would just add to that. Julie alluded to this — first party, there’s also a third party — and I think having a single interface to our key innovation partners, but two bringing together the way we think about offers with our partners is going to be absolutely critical. So when we think about how we work together, I think of going back to one strategy, one team. So we’re all going to be part of that. It’s going to be critical that we have that interface going forward.

ADRIANNE JEFFRIES: And is Terry there?

TERRY MYERSON: Yes. I thought Julie and Tony had it very well said. We’ve got innovative ideas coming from our OEM partners, and Julie’s team has some very innovative ideas. And the platform needs to span from the PPI whiteboard that Tony talked about to Xbox, to our phone, and beyond. So it’s exciting to have all these hardware partners in the Windows ecosystem, or in the Microsoft ecosystem, and all the innovative ideas and to bring it to market together.

Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform

July 10, 2013 12:15 pm / 5 Comments on Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform

… even non-Microsoft devices are supported as Android and Apple phones are embraced as well

Preliminary information from this same ‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog:
– Windows Embedded is an enterprise business now, like the whole Windows business, with Handheld and Compact versions to lead in the overall Internet of Things market as well [June 8, 2013]
– Proper Oracle Java, Database and WebLogic support in Windows Azure including pay-per-use licensing via Microsoft + the same Oracle software supported on Microsoft Hyper-V as well [June 25, 2013]
– Windows 8.1: Mind boggling opportunities, finally some appreciation by the media [June 27, 2013]
– Windows Azure becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market [June 28, 2013] Important note: Samsung was complete missing from device OEM roundup of Day 1 keynote despite of its leadership ATIV Q, ATIV Tab 3 and ATIV One 5 Style devices. It is not by accident as according to Intel’s tablet challenge: How Israel helped lay the foundations of its Samsung-led fightback [ZDNet, July 9, 2013]:

Intel, along with Samsung and other companies, are betting that the public is going to go for a new breed of device — two in one devices, which be switched between tablet and laptop mode, running both Android (when separated from the keyboard/base) and Windows 8 Pro (when attached).

Brief subject summary:

industry megatrends:
– [MS leading the enterprise cloud era] cloud,
– [MS has unmatched offerings, unmatched insight] big data,
– [MS solution is woved in, not forced] enterprise social, and
– [MS has best devices for doers, best tools to manage] mobility
Partners going ‘cloud first’ with Windows Azure
Microsoft unique point of view: delivering high-value experiences through our software value-added devices and experiences
support non-Microsoft devices: embrace Android and Apple phones
new user experience design [partner] competency [to be launched in January]
Windows 8.1:
– one modern and complete experience across the devices that matter today
– the best of the modern UI and the best of the desktop UI brought together in a harmonized way
– multitasking on one or any number of screens to increase productivity in a workstation like way
Windows 8/8.1 devices:
– Windows Embedded 8
– large-format touch, or the all-in-one (also as a desktop replacement)
– ultimately thin and light ultrabook
– tablet with touch, and convertible form factors
– docking tablet (also as a desktop replacement)
– waterproof tablet
– tablet with ink/stylus
– ruggedized tablet
– “one-handed Windows”
– thinnest and lightest tablet with ARM
– phones
– innovation: in hinge, in screen quality, in combined desktop replacement/home device/flat tablet mode
Self-service BI with Power BI for Office 365 Preview: next giant leap via building into Excel and SharePoint data discovery, data navigation, visualization, collaboration, and enterprise features around auditability
Application development: sea change with Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the development platform
– “A platform that is capable of both infrastructure as a service and platform as a services (IaaS + PaaS)”
– “That means any mission-critical Web application you want to build, any mobile front-end you want to build, where you’re automating a business process with a mobile front-end; any cloud service you want to build, you want to have this rich capability of both infrastructure as a service and a platform as a service”
– “And you want to be able to deliver that, by the way, in both Windows Azure, as well as on Windows Server. So that symmetry of development runtime is also very important, and that’s what we’re building out.”
– Visual Studio 2013 Preview availability announcement
– SQL Services, or SQL Database Premium Services for Windows Azure announcement: “unique already with the fact that we have a PaaS-based SQL Service”
Cloud infrastructure: “No one else in the industry, neither Amazon nor VMware can promise or deliver this level of consistency, this level of mission-critical readiness because of the battle testing of all the diverse set of first-party workloads.”

From: Jon Roskill: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Introduction [Speech transcript, July 8, 2013]

JON ROSKILL: Now let’s turn our attention and look forward, because while WPC is about celebrating, it’s also about us coming together to build our business plans together for the next year and kick off the fiscal year. That’s what WPC is all about.

And we’ve made a few changes in WPC, some of which you’ve already noticed as you look at things we’ve done in MPN today, but changes based on your feedback.

One of the key ones we’ve made is in the keynotes. You guys told us that you needed to have all of the product strategy upfront in order to be able to go and build your business plans over the remaining days. And so we’ve taken the day two keynote and the day one keynotes, and we’ve combined them together into a WPC day one supersession. So that’s what we’re going to do this morning.

Then you have day two fully open to go and do networking, go to sessions, and build out those business plans.

And then on day three we’ll come back together here with me, Kevin Turner. And then Wednesday night we will celebrate. And boy, are we going to have an amazing celebration. And by Wednesday night I’m going to be so excited to go crowd surfing with you guys.

We’ve also made this year ‘s WPC, we’ve built it around a customer-centric notion, customers at the center of WPC. And we’ve done that by basing WPC around these four industry megatrends: mobility, enterprise social, cloud, and big data. These are trends that are relevant every day to customers, and they’re driving demand for all of our solutions. So you’re going to see these four trends reflected not just in the keynotes and the sessions, but also in the expo across the commons, in the BG areas, et cetera.

Windows 8 takes center stage at Worldwide Partner Conference [Blogging Windows blog, July 8, 2013]

At Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston, Texas, executives discussed the company’s approach to services and devices. Tami Reller, Windows chief marketing officer and chief financial officer, announced that Windows 8.1 release to manufacturing (RTM) will be available for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners in late August, so they can prepare Windows 8.1 devices just in time for the holidays.

New Power BI solution for Office 365 delivers self-service business intelligence on nearly any device [The Fire Hose blog from Microsoft]

Today, at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced a new offering: Power BI for Office 365 – a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution that enables customers to easily gain insights from their data, working within Excel to analyze and visualize the data in a self-service way.

Developments from Worldwide Partner Conference: Partners can go ‘cloud first’ with Windows Azure [Windows Azure blog, July 8, 2013]

At Day 1 of the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft made several announcements that highlight new ways for our partners and customers to embrace cloud computing using the Windows Azure platform.

Partners in the cloud for modern business [The Official Microsoft Blog, July 8, 2013]

From the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston, Texas, Microsoft President of Server and Tools Business Satya Nadella announced new programs and services that are designed to help Microsoft partners and customers embrace the challenges and opportunities associated with cloud computing and big data. One such program, Cloud OS Accelerate, brings together Microsoft and key partners – Cisco, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems, HP and Dell – who will invest more than $100 million to help put thousands of new private and hybrid cloud solutions into the hands of customers.

Partners: Want higher profits and faster growth? Sell cloud solutions, new IDC study says [Microsoft press release, July 8, 2013]

Today from the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Microsoft released a new study from IDC that shows partners selling cloud-based solutions benefit from higher gross profit, more new customers, higher revenue per employee and faster overall business growth. The study also revealed customer buying preferences that highlight the importance of the role of partners in the overall industry cloud transition.

Microsoft survey reveals SMB and enterprise opportunities for partners [Microsoft press release, July 9, 2013]

IPSOS study released at Worldwide Partner Conference highlights utilization of social tools and showcases opportunities for partners.

Windows Embedded partners to join Microsoft Partner Network [Microsoft feature story, July 9, 2013]

Resources will strengthen opportunities in rapidly growing intelligent systems market.

Details

Steve Ballmer at the Day 1 Keynote [msPartner YouTube channel, July 8, 2013]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer provided opening remarks at the WPC 2013 Day 1 keynote.

From: Steve Ballmer: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Keynote [Speech transcript, July 8, 2013]

… There’s 15,000 of you here in the room today, and to all of you I want to start with a simple message of thanks. Thanks for your support, thanks for your good work, and thank you every day for taking care of our customers. (Applause.) We have a total of 750,000 partners around the world, but about 90 percent of the revenue that we do is actually represented in some way, shape or form with the partners who are here today: systems integration partners, resale partners, hardware partners, development partners, software partners, cloud partners, framing partners, distribution partners. The range in breadth of the activities in which you engage are amazing. This year, our partners in aggregate had really quite a good year. Growth in the businesses from our partners was about 6.5 percent year over year, but on a base of $650 billion. That’s the total revenue of our partner network, $650 billion, and you still manage to grow at 6.5 percent. Congratulations everybody. (Applause.) …

…

We spend a lot of time as a leadership team thinking about the remaking of Microsoft. About a year ago in our annual report, we talked about the move from being a “software company” to a “devices and services company.” What that really means? It means that the world, and I’ve been saying this at our partner conferences here for a while, the world we grew up in was a world of software. When I dropped out of school and joined Microsoft, I had to explain to my mother and father what software was and why I was joining a software company. That was a long time ago.

And software development, I believe, is still the most valuable skill that anybody on the planet can possibly have. And yet the way in which software innovation gets really packaged and presented now is through a set of devices that include the software, and through a set of cloud services that deliver that software.

Just about six or seven years ago, I started talking about the cloud here at WPC. And it was highly unpopular the first time I talked about it, because it looked like an end around. And yet I think today everybody understands that this is the future of innovation. Even Windows, if you think about it, has really always been much more of a device than a piece of software.

Windows defined a class of devices called the PC. And we are certainly incredibly determined to have Windows define new classes of devices, tablets, phones, two-in-ones, living room devices, defined by Windows as a piece of software, but purchased and implemented by our partners as tested software. So we’re in the transformation from delivering our software value one way to delivering it in a new form, and we need our partners to come with us on that journey, whether you design and build computers, whether you deliver systems integration services, whether you provide custom development, there’s a place in this journey for all of us.

At Microsoft we say, what’s our unique point of view. Our unique point of view is on delivering high-value experiences through our software value-added devices and experiences. We think we understand the tools, the technologies that it takes to help people get work done better than anybody else on the planet, whether you are an employee, whether you are a customer or a trading partner, whether you are an IT person or a developer, we build experience that help people get stuff done. You need to do a piece of analysis, we’re going to have the best tools, the best devices and services for helping people do analysis. You want to participate in a virtual meeting, nobody is going to give you a better experience to participate in a virtual meeting than Microsoft does. You want to ensure information integrity in your customer, because no matter what happens with consumerization, it’s still the IT department that has to protect the integrity and value of corporate information. We together understand these things, and we together, Microsoft and our partners, will deliver the devices and services that really bring these things alive when people want to be productive.

Now, we have another side of ourselves at Microsoft, too. That’s the fun side. I refer to it as serious fun, because unless you’re hardcore about fun, the Xbox probably hasn’t been the product for you. But when it’s serious fun, or serious business, we’re going to make sure that we provide the core experiences through our devices and services, and through the value add of people in this room to really bring that alive. That’s not easy. It takes a lot of core technology investment in operating systems, in user interface, and particularly now natural user interface, in machine learning, in cloud infrastructure.

…

So what is on our customer’s mind? These are the four big trends that I think in particular our IT customers, but businesses in general, want to speak with us about every day. They come to us and they say, what about the cloud? They say it to you. They say it to us. They say, hey, I hear about big data, or I understand big data, or I’m afraid I’m missing out on big data, how are you going to help me get there, they’ll say to the two of us.

Social, part of the consumerization theme of the day is how do we apply techniques and software services that people get to know in their personal lives, how do we apply those to enable business productivity? And we’re going to show you a lot today of what we’re doing with social so that people can come together in what I would call human ways to do superhuman tasks at their work.

And last, but certainly not least, is mobility. I get to do something that the rest of you don’t do, because I sit on the stage, I get to count the number of mobile devices that go up for pictures and various other things during my speech. We’re at about 25 percent would be my gauge this year. I’m sure everybody has got a mobile device with them, but what it says is that the range of applications of mobility just continues to increase. And I want you to really understand just how rich our mobile offering has become, both in terms of the Windows devices that you can use as part of your solution, and the work that we are doing to support some non-Windows devices. So let me dive into each of these in turn.

First is the cloud, the cloud remains a little bit of an amorphous thing. But, at the end of the day, the task of the cloud probably means, and it might be 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, it is really a path that leads for almost all companies to the public cloud. And that puts a lot of pressure on providers, whether it’s Microsoft, folks we compete with, our service provider partners, it puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we have world-class scaled, low-cost, low latency, high-bandwidth cloud infrastructure across the world. How do we, from a public cloud application, deliver with incredibly low-latency and with exactly the right data security and privacy and protection? How do we deliver information, whether it’s in the U.S., or Australia, or China, or Malaysia, or any place else in the world? And we are investing in that infrastructure.

We actually started the investment process in that infrastructure in order to support our own applications, to support Bing, to support Office 365. And what we would tell you is that our cloud infrastructure, Azure, is being proven out, is being battle tested, and is being advanced on the backbone of our own first-party applications, but then that infrastructure, that Azure infrastructure, is there for all of you to use, to deliver solutions to your customers.

I claim there really are almost no companies in the world, just a handful, that are really investing in scaled public cloud infrastructure. We have something over a million servers in our datacenter infrastructure. Google is bigger than we are. Amazon is a little bit smaller. You get Yahoo! and Facebook, and then everybody else is 100,000 units probably or less. So the number of companies that really understand the network topology, the datacenter construction, the server requirements to build this public cloud infrastructure is very, very small, very small. And the number of companies that are at the same time seriously investing in the private cloud, which is not going away, and in these hybrid clouds is really just one and that’s us. We are building in a compatible way private cloud infrastructure based on Windows Server, and public cloud infrastructure based on Windows Azure, and we will talk to you about that today.

Sixty-three percent of customers surveyed will say they really want a single vendor who can provide them both public cloud and private cloud. We think we are the only solution and certainly the best solution for customers who want that. We continue to advance with our cloud applications, our Bing search service has made progress each and every month, improving not only its market-share and its quality, but also the speed and performance with which we deliver our results, which should be a key indication to you on just how rich our cloud infrastructure is.

Through your good work our Office 365 service has literally exploded. For the last few years we were saying SharePoint was the No. 1 fastest growing product at Microsoft. Then it was Lync, the No. 1 fastest growing product at Microsoft. Through your good work it’s Office 365. And what all of that means is our mutual customers are ready for the cloud, and our product line is ready for the cloud. People want full, familiar, world-class productivity tools in the cloud. Only we give people those tools that really let you get work done. There are pretenders who come from the consumer world, but there’s only one set of tools for your business customers who really need a productive, high-security, high-reliability, infrastructure in the cloud for their applications.

No. 2, big data, big data is I think one of the areas that is still very, very early actually in its exploitation. Big data means a lot of things to a lot of people, and it’s very important that we continue to push forward on these big data themes. You’re going to see demonstrations today of some of our tools, some of the work that we’ve done with Excel, and SQL Server, I guarantee you for people who have a lot of data, there is no question that the No. 1 sort of most familiar, easy-to-use toolset to get insight out of data comes from Excel and SQL Server.

Ninety percent, literally, of the world’s data, this is a very interesting fact, ninety percent of the world’s data has actually been created in the last two years, 90 percent of all of the online data in the world in the last two years. What it says is there’s an explosion in this data. And so tools that let people mine it, get insights from it, and understanding from it are essential. We’re going to show you a demonstration of some of the things that you can do with our big data and BI suite later on today that I think will absolutely blow your mind.

But, we’re also providing you with the infrastructure that lets you build out automated solutions for your customers, because over time most of the value in big data will actually be in having the data learn from itself and take automated actions on our joint customers behalf. We’re building out our Hadoop infrastructure on Azure, so that you can do a mix of things with structured and unstructured data. We are certainly doing a lot of work on SQL Azure, so that you can access the structured data in the cloud. Because of our investment in Bing, we know we have a lot of data. We are putting that data in a structured form, where you can use it as part of the applications you deliver.

One of the key things that we showed at our developer conference a couple of weeks ago in Windows 8.1 is the way we’re starting to take entities that Bing understands and make them part of a platform for you to use as developers in your applications.

Last but not least is the Azure Data Marketplace. There is going to be a lot of data that people are going to want to use inside their applications that don’t actually live inside the enterprises you serve. If you want to write a forecasting application for one of your customers that forecasts how many raincoats they need in each of their retail stores, I guarantee you the weather data is a helpful input. And yet most of our joint customers don’t keep the weather data in their enterprise systems. And so we want to let you mix and match public data and private data. We want you to be able to bring that data together in structured and unstructured ways. We want to bring it together in ways in which humans get the insights, and we want to give you the machine-learning infrastructure so that the computers themselves can actually help your customers respond to their customers in real time. The work we’re doing here you’ll hear about throughout the morning, and particularly the demonstrations you’ll see I think will really bring these things alive.

Social. Some people think social is one product. I don’t. Social is a way of working. How do four of us come together and collaborate on a project? How do we collaborate if we work in the same company? How do we collaborate if we work in different companies? How do I reach you if you are in my customer base and I want to do a seminar for you? Or I want to put on and have an event where we communicate real time? All of these are social activities that are involved in business. So it’s people to people, it’s people to businesses, it’s employees to employees, it’s all of the constituents, consumers, employees, customers, and partners. How do you bring them together naturally? Sometimes you want to do that on a real-time basis, and sometimes you want to be able to do that in a way in which people can participate asynchronously.

I’m glad to have 15,000 people here today, but many more people will watch the video of this section in our partner community around the world. And it’s part of, if you will, the social infrastructure, letting people participate the way they want when they want. And we’ve woven this into the fabric of everything we do. Windows devices come from the get-go with integrated communications and social capabilities like Skype. Skype and Lync are being brought together to allow the consumer and the businessperson to interact together in real time.

We continue to push forward in Outlook, adding more social capabilities directly into the e-mail client that is the base station from which most of us would communicate with other people. We acquired Yammer over a year ago, and you’ll see the way we’re using Yammer both inside companies and now enabling it to stretch between companies and their partners to involve real-time communication that feels very much like what somebody would do on Twitter or Facebook, but in a productivity context. We continue to push SharePoint social capabilities forward, and even in our Dynamics product line, even when we’re talking about line of business process, it is very important to collect the information from the social realm, and to be able to let people in formal line of business processes actually connect to social environments. And we’re going to show you some of that later on in the demonstration.

Last but not least is mobility. This is an area where we’ve made huge strides in the last year. I had a chance to beat my chest a little bit, get excited about Windows Phone, but we’re also going to show you today what we’ve done with Windows 8.1, and what our hardware partners have done with Windows devices. You can buy beautiful Windows devices today in so many different shapes and forms. Windows PCs, everybody has a notion of what we mean by a Windows PC. But we’re going to show you small Windows tablets. They’re still all Windows all the time, but they’re hard to mistake for a PC.

We’ll show you Windows two-in-ones, devices, which depending on how you configure them at any time will feel like a PC or can feel like a tablet. I happen to think this will be the most popular configuration for business people because they’ll want the ability to seamlessly go back and forth between their productive life, their consumptive life, and their personal life.

I talked about Windows Phone. You’re going to get a chance to see the Surface. Hopefully many of you will choose to pick one up, but what we’re doing with Surface I think is also amazing. We’re trying to really lead the way on products like Surface Pro, and the use of the pen, which I think is pretty fundamental in mobility.

While we’re making these investments in sort of Windows mobile form factors, if you will, we also continue to do work to support non-Microsoft devices. You’ve seen us certainly move with SkyDrive, with Lync, with OneNote, with a number of our offerings to embrace Android and Apple phones. We’re going to show you some technology today for managing mobile devices that apply outside the Microsoft sphere. So our mobility strategy, as centered as it may feel in our Windows devices, and they are beautiful, and they are the most productive, for those people who just don’t happen to have one, we’ll also show you a little bit of some of the technology that we’ll give you so you can stay well anchored in Windows and Active Directory as the center point for managing devices of all shapes, sizes and forms.

At the end of the day we may see ourselves focusing on high-value experiences, and our customers may ask us collectively about cloud, and big data, and mobility, and social, but at the end of the day we deliver to you some products. And with those products in hand you turn around and try to serve our joint customers.

Windows, we’ll show you 8.1 and I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress. Windows Phone, if you haven’t checked it out recently you must. Surface, I hope you get the opportunity to delve in and really explore at the partner conference. Office 365, including Yammer, and Skype, and Lync, and SharePoint and Excel, and BI, and all of these phenomenal capabilities, the footprint of what you can do with Office is continuously expanding. And when you leave here, we want to make sure you leave here understanding completely the breadth of footprint that Office is embracing. Windows Azure, and when I say Azure today I include Windows Server, and the full on-premise product line. Your ability to go out and articulate a hybrid cloud story with Windows Server, SQL Server, and Windows Azure is incredibly important to us. So we are going to try to equip you to do that by the time you’re done today.

And then last, but not least, is Dynamics. Dynamics continues to evolve in its footprint, in its embrace of the cloud. Dynamics is an amazing business for Microsoft. I’ll bet we get less PR on the business that is billions of dollars for Microsoft, and where we probably have the most loyal committed partner base in the world, and the most loyal committed customer base. And for those of you who have not come back and looked recently at the amazing work that we’re doing in business applications I hope you’ll feel enthused to go do that by the end of the day.

We will only succeed as a company if we arm you to go approach these challenges. You need to see these products. You need to understand their potential. You need to believe that they can help you serve our joint customers. You need to know each other. Some of you are experts in hardware. Some of you are experts in systems integration, some are developers, some are resellers. Bringing you all together and equipping you with the common base, so you understand where we’re going, what we’re doing, and collectively how we can serve our joint customers that’s what WPC is all about, and if we take advantage of this opportunity and certainly with the phenomenal product lineup that we have today, and we’ll roll out over the next month, we know absolutely that we can succeed together.

Thank you all very much and enjoy WPC.

Windows 8.1 Product Enhancements [msPartner YouTube channel, July 9, 2013]

Tami Reller, CVP and CFO, Windows and Windows Live, provided updates and demos of Windows 8.1.

See also: Windows at WPC 2013 [Blogging Windows, July 8, 2013]
From: Tami Reller: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Keynote [Speech transcript, July 8, 2013]

Tami Reller: … everything that we are talking about today is anchored by this idea that we can do something that no other company can. And that is one modern and complete experience across the devices that matter today. Your experience, your data, everything can travel with you. And it’s connected through this trusted foundation of Windows. This is one experience that is unique to Windows, but it’s also uniquely yours.

I mean, we know that when a customer chooses an Apple product, they get a device that reflects Apple. When you choose an Android device, you get a device that reflects a dizzying number of points of view. But when you choose a Windows device, you get a device that reflects you.

Start a Word document from your laptop, then easily finish it on a Windows Phone. You get music, video, and games from Xbox. The best of the Web with Internet Explorer. The best cloud storage in SkyDrive. And of course the best way to stay connected, Skype. And the absolute best in productivity with Office. All of this across every device providing the most complete experience from the start.

Well, we’re believers, continue to be believers that user experience and the design is going to continue to be an important differentiator for Microsoft, and it’s also going to continue to be an important differentiator for the experiences that you are building for customers.

What we’re finding is that businesses are seeking trusted partners who can not only write great code, that’s critical of course, but they can also design beautiful and engaging experiences for customers.

Apps that are better designed, they absolutely achieve better ratings in the Windows store, and even equally as important, they are more engaging for customers, and they deliver greater monetization opportunities.

So to support all of this, I’m excited to announce that in January we will be launching a new [partner] competency: The user experience design competency. And the whole idea behind this competency is to give you the best way to train your designers and to get recognized for your expertise with the Microsoft design language and user experience for app building.

This competency will provide your designers with training and certification and gives your firm a head start in building great apps, and we think will help you recruit the best people. So I hope you’re as excited about this as we are, look for this in January.

So we’ve been talking about devices and services for about a year now. And while so much of the opportunity that we see for us and that we see for you is still ahead, there’s a lot of great momentum to talk about.

…

Let’s take, for example, Windows Phone, which Steve did such a great job talking about. Our sales are growing six times faster than the overall smartphone market. Safe to say that we are now officially the third ecosystem in mobility. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you.

Windows. We are moving forward. Steve did a great job talking about that. We’re moving forward, and you heard us talk about 100 million licenses. I can also report that we have over 20 million enterprise evaluations. So great in consumer and a lot of enterprise traction starting.

And Windows 8, so far, has logged 60 billion hours of use. And our new customer activation continues at a consistent pace.

Office. It’s a great example of a product that is used multiple times every day and it is known and loved by more than a billion people. The new Office is our fastest-selling release in history. Worldwide, one copy is sold every second.

Additionally, one out of four enterprise customers are already on Office 365. And I love this next statistic. Partners lead three out of four enterprise Office 365 deployments, three out of four, great opportunity. Thank you so much for your role in moving businesses to the cloud. (Applause.)

Amazing momentum on Skype. More than 300 million people use Skype each month. And that’s a service that can see up to two billion minutes of use per day on some peak days.

So how our products come together really starts with the experience. And people are using our products as part of everyday life. Important parts of their life. And Steve talked about this as well.

So I have this short video that I think does a great job of showing what we mean by this. Take a look.

(Break for video segment.) [6:40 … 7:10 essentially for Office 365]

… [Office 365: complete Office in the cloud … this is the Office enhancement … +extension to the Open program … +investment in partner enablement]

… [Windows Phone: Lumias … suitable to build end-to-end enterprise solutions … tools to build enterprise solutions]

… [xBox: … newest xBox One …]

… [Surface and Surface Pro: … hand down more productive than iPad … better with Windows 8.1 …]

… [Windows: … mobility is top for CIOs … Windows 8 tablets are best for the business … SkyDrive … destination for developers … more than 100,000 apps … LOB customers need partners … 2 out of 3 enterprise enterprise organizations are investing today in mobile applications … great UI enhancements, great usability functionality … migration from XP opportunity … Windows Accelerate program continued … new Touch Win program incentives directly to authorized distributors as well as reseller partners …]

… [Windows 8.1: … 900 continuous improvements and hundreds of updates to our inbox apps … represents responsiveness, it represents rapid timeframe … feel natural on everything from a small tablet to a large work station …]

[21:18 Jensen Harris showing Windows 8.1 via a jam-packed demo here for the next few minutes, including some things that we have never publicly shown before]

… [Nokia Lumia 925 … 8-inch Acer Iconia W3 … in landscape games and productivity … +optimized Windows 8.1 specifically for portrait for working great on these small tablets e.g. Reading List, ergonomics … ]

Now I’m going to move over here to a Surface and I’m going to show you one of the most important near features in 8.1. Every month, 20 billion searches are performed just in the United States on Windows PCs — 20 billion searches every month. We looked at this as an opportunity to say if we made search better in this product, we would be making 20 billion things every month better for people. And so we’ve introduced search in 8.1.

… [search hero: … curated, built-on-the-fly app that brings together information from Bing, information from your PC, files from the cloud, things from the Web, and puts it all together in one view … integrated with Maps functionality…]

… [xBoxMusic app: … redesigned totally to make it fast, to make it efficient, and to focus on your collection of music …]

[Dell all-in-one, 27 inches with touch … the world’s best Skype device, a Windows 8.1 PC … Start screen changes: all the things that you love on one screen … new personalization options … multiselect … Reading List … SkyDrive … picture editing built-in … a lot of new [built-in] apps: e.g. Food & Drink … hands-free mode … Windows Store big-big update: e.g. recommendation engine built one Bing … … OneNote syncing with SkyDrive …]

[Surface Pro: “play to Xbox One” … Miracast built-in … OneNote
Windows Phone: OneNote syncing with SkyDrive ]

… [desktop PC: … doesn’t need touch …bring together the best of the modern UI and the best of the desktop UI and harmonize them in Windows 8.1 … Start button .. enterprise cosumer dashboard … productivity (… multitasking) taken to next level: e.g. new version of Outlook … ]

Suddenly, I have something that is starting to look like a very productive work station. And I can move these windows around, I can put them where I want. We have maximize, we have resize, and all of a sudden you start to realize that there’s more than one way of doing awesome productivity. This uses all the pixels on my PC.

And on this sort of smallish monitor, I can fit three. But if I had something like a 2550 x 1440 monitor, I could show four apps on the screen at once. And all of a sudden, now you’re way more productive than you could have been on the desktop. You’ve got your Twitter feed, you’ve got your full running mail app, you’ve got multiple browser windows or multiple mails up at once.

And it gets even better. If I attach a second monitor, then suddenly I can do the same thing on multiple monitors at once. So I have any collection of apps across my monitors in any configuration I want, any size I want, blending desktop and modern apps across my screens. I can bring the Start screen up on one and just leave it, and this doesn’t just work for two monitors, it works for three, four, five, six, seven, as many as I have. And so this sort of shows the power of Windows 8.1 and the modern UI even on a desktop engineering workstation making you more productive.

[1:02:06]

Tami Reller: … I’m also quite happy to be able to confirm today that Windows 8.1 will be available for our OEM partners in late August. Meaning that holiday devices, many of them will have Windows 8.1. So late August available to OEMs. So very pleased to confirm that today.

What better timing to talk about our OEM devices? We’d like to do that. Please help me welcome to the stage Nick Parker. To do that, I’d like to open with a little video, a commercial we have on air that shows just why Windows 8 tablets are so special.

(Windows tablet commercial video.) [1:04:05 … 1:04:35 essentially iPad 32 GB $599 vs. Windows Tablet $299 (Dell XPS 10 32GB) Limited time offer at Dell.com]

Dell Tablet vs. iPad [WindowsVideos YouTube channel, June 13, 2013] here the limited time offer at the end stands at $399

See how the Dell XPS 10 with Windows RT stacks up against the iPad. Check out more at http://windows.com/compare

Nick Parker:

… Windows Storage Server: e.g. Western Digital Sentinel, a 16-terabyte small business server … Windows Embedded 8: e.g. IEI [?Institute for Emerging Issues?] display panel … large-format touch, or the all-in-one: e.g. Dell XPS 18 also as a desktop replacement … ultrabook: e.g. the world’s thinnest and lightest one Sony VAIO Pro 13 … tablets with touch, and convertible form factors: e.g. Lenovo Helix … tablet with stylus … docking tablet, also as a desktop replacement: e.g. Latitude 10 … Fujitsu Arrows Tab waterproof tablet … Hewlett Packard ElitePad 900 the choice of Emirates Air for their in-flight device, also with a very innovative sleeve … Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 , not just a small app running a stylus capability, but ink immersed as part of your input mechanism … Panasonic FZ-G1, the Panasonic Toughpad ruggedized computer … Acer W3 one-handed Windows … thinnest and the lightest tablet that you can get, as well as having all-day battery and integrated 4G, and those are capabilities built on the ARM platform: Asus VivoTab RT … phones: Nokia 925 and Nokia 520 … innovation: Acer Aspire R7 with innovation in hinge, Toshiba KIRAbook a 221-pixels-per-inch device, HP Rove the 20-inch IPS all-in-one for both desktop replacements as well as great home devices + complete flat tabletop mode for using an application that’s maybe multi-orientational …

[1:22:24]

Note that Samsung was complete missing from this device OEM roundup despite of its leadership ATIV Q, ATIV Tab 3 and ATIV One 5 Style devices, as you could read in 20 years of Samsung “New Management” as manifested by the latest, June 20th GALAXY & ATIV innovations [‘Experiencing the Cloud, July 2-5, 2013]

Satya Nadella about Platform, Infrastructure, and Applications [msPartner YouTube channel, July 8, 2013]

Satya Nadella, President of Server and Tools, speaks about the enterprise.

From: Satya Nadella: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Keynote [Speech transcript, July 8, 2013]

… <before that: how to enable dynamic business … demoed across Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online Windows Intune, and System Center Configuration Manager, and Azure Active Directory … >

[30:08] When you think about having lots of data and having lots of rich processing capabilities, the next step is to be able to empower your end users with the best tools to drive insights. This is where we collectively have really created one of the most amazing phenomena when it comes to BI with self-service BI. We took the most ubiquitous tool around data in Excel, combined it with the power of SQL Analysis Services, and started the self-service BI revolution, and especially in combination with SharePoint, we really have done a fantastic job of driving insight at the edge of all data, big or small.

Today I’m really pleased to announce the next giant leap, if you will, when it comes to self-service BI. We are announcing Power BI for Office 365 Preview. It takes all of the rich capabilities around data discovery, data navigation, visualization, collaboration, enterprise features around auditability, taking all of that, building it right into Excel and SharePoint, so that every user has friction-free access to it. They’re also delivering all of the rich cloud capabilities that power this natively in Azure. So that means all of the SQL analysis capabilities that power this experience are all there natively in the cloud.

So to show you a glimpse of what this new solution, Power BI for Office 365, can do I wanted to invite up on stage Amir Netz.

Amir.

Power BI Demo [msPartner YouTube channel, July 8, 2013] for those who want to watch only this part, watch especially from [8:10] on especially (incredible demo/performance)

Amir Netz demonstrates the new Power BI

AMIR NETZ: Thank you, Satya.

Power BI brings self-service analytics to the cloud and the power of the cloud directly into Excel. It opens amazing new ways for users to connect with data. So let’s take a look. We have here on the screen our Excel 2013. And I want to create a report about our datacenters. I don’t have the data. With Power BI we can actually go and find the data that we need. You see here online search, I am going to use it to go and find the data for my report.

I’m going to type in my search query and just here within Excel Power BI is searching for millions of public data tables, and finding the data that I might need. It comes from Wikipedia, it comes from the marketplace, it comes from Bing, but because I’m a Microsoft employee I’m also getting data not just from the public data sources, I’m also getting data from my enterprise data assets. Those were mapped into the catalogue of Power BI. So here we see a table from my data warehouse, and I can go and add that table to my Excel, and just like that Power BI connects and aligns the data directly to my sheet just like that. It’s so easy.

Now I want to create my report. I’m going to go and use PowerView. It’s also integrated into Excel 2013. So let’s go and create a nice report here. We’re going to take a look at the let’s take the location of the datacenter, the square footage of the datacenter, let’s make it a bit larger. It’s Excel 2013 so we can just convert it immediately to a map. We can go and categorize my datacenters by generation. Just with a few clicks, a beautiful report and it’s not the only report I have here in my workbook. I have a couple more.

So this report here shows me the storage of Azure, just an amazing explanation of the growth in the business. This one here shows me the subscriber’s growth in the business. You see almost 200 percent in just over a year. I mean I can slice and dice and look at segments of users, and see the growth there. So I have this beautiful report, interactive, and I want to share it with other people and to do that I go to the file menu, I do a save as and I’m saving it to the Power BI side in Office 365.

And now what does this site look like? Let’s see how this site looks like in SharePoint Online. This is it. You can see how well organized it is. You see my Azure report, my Office 365 report. It’s clean. It’s crisp. It’s beautiful. I want to go and take a look at one of those reports. I click and of course, because the reports are all created inside Excel, Excel is the application used to be able to browse the reports in my browser. So you can see here the explanation of growth you see in the compute resources of Azure, you can go and look at the other reports of that, the database growth, and of course the whole thing is fully interactive. So I can go select different time slices and in the browser get the full interrogation of the data.

It’s very easy to share, very easy to explore, but it’s more than that, it’s a full enterprise offering. So let’s take a look and see all the options that we have here. So see this menu here, take a look at what we have. I can share with other people, I can protect the data, I can schedule data refresh, where Power BI will reach back from the cloud to the enterprise, go to the original data sources, bring the data on the regular basis up to the cloud, up to the report that we have here. I can track the data usage by my users. And one more thing I can do here, I can add that report to my mobile favorites. And you can see this mobile star here, now that report is here and it’s showing up on my mobile device. It’s a beautiful application Power BI. It’s fully interactive as you use it. And it’s not just this report. I have a full gallery of reports that I can use here. You can see I can browse through that. It’s just the best way you can have to consume reports on the go.

So you’re seeing what kind of a gorgeous, great offering we have here. But, there’s one more thing, one more capability that I think you need to see, because in my opinion it’s the true game changer. So for this I’m going to take a look at another Power BI slide. Look at this one here, and make it a bit larger. This one Power BI slide is for a media company. And you see it has these reports that we created in Excel. But, there’s another role here, we call it “Featured Answers.” And these are the most common questions my users ask about the data. For example, show our sales pipeline. I’m clicking on it and now Power BI connects automatically to the sales pipeline data source and shows me the results. Now it looks like a comp report, but it is not. It is the beginning of a conversation with Power BI.

So I can compute that, show our sales pipeline only with opportunity size greater than $20,000. And as I type I immediately get the answer. You can see that there are six opportunities greater than $20,000. It’s very easy, right. (Applause.) Now one of those opportunities is this rock-themed event series. And I want to continue the line of interrogation I want to ask questions about that, so I can go and ask maybe the top rock classics. And notice I’m using, something magical happens. As I was typing the questions the results came up and I actually realized I’m asking about songs. So I moved away from the pipeline data set, automatically it connects me to a different one. This one is the historical data set for all the music charts in the United States. So I can see that “Bohemian Rhapsody” here, by the way my favorite song of all time, is the top rock classic. And I know it’s right, because Power BI tells me what it understood from me.

Look at that. It tells me that when I said rock I meant rock songs. And when I said classic, I meant a certain period of time, the ’70s and the ’80s. It is not the oldies from the ’50s. And when I said top it said you probably want to rank it by something, so you rank it by the number of weeks it stayed on the charts. So I like that interpretation, but not exactly. And again, Power BI comes to help me. It says, hey, I know what you mean now. So how about instead of ranking by weeks on the chart, I offer other options, rank it by the weeks the song stayed at No. 1. And I can see that “I Love Rock and Roll” is showing at No. 1. And every other part of the sentence is understood with Power BI.

So you say, maybe you don’t want to look at songs, you might want to look at artists or albums. Maybe not rock, here’s other genres. How about pop? Let’s go with pop. And see “Physical,” Olivia Newton John, the top pop classic from that era. It’s just an easy and fun way to interrogate the data. Let’s take this for example; let’s ask for songs about true love. And I can see immediately five different songs, one of them by Bing Crosby, another by Elton John, all called “True Love” showing up on the charts. I can ask questions about people that I know. Songs about Bill Gates, and you’d be surprised there’s actually a song called Bill Gates showing up on the charts, three years ago. Yes, by Lil Wayne, one week on the charts. I looked at the lyrics. It actually is truly not a love song.

We can ask more business questions like number of songs. You can see we have 2,600 songs in the database. Let’s list it by year. And now notice how the system automatically detects what I’m asking, giving me a much better visualization. This is a better way to look at it as a chart, automatically. I don’t have to say anything. And you can see this very interesting chart. It shows how many songs showed up on the music charts every year. And you can see in the late ’60s and early ’70s over 700 different songs on the charts. And then we go to the new millennium you see how it’s kind of dropping gradually and it’s less than half of that when you get to the new millennium. And then there is some recovery. But, when you turn on the radio and it seems like it’s the same song playing again, and again, and again, well now you know, we actually do listen you have the proof. We do listen to way less songs than people in the ’60s and ’70s listened to, very interesting.

Now the picture is even more interesting when you look at it by genre. And again, the system just changed the visualization for me on the fly, and look at that, this is the pop genre. And you see the peak that we saw before, the decline, and some of the recovery. Rock starts the same way, peak, decline, but it doesn’t recover. Something is going on here. And look at that hip-hop. From the mid-’80s hip-hop is growing and growing, and growing and it’s not taking from pop, it’s taking all the market share from rock. So you can see how the data is telling you this fascinating story of the music industry just like that.

[8:10] Now, of course you might want to know other questions. For example, what is the best song of all time? And you can see that we have here Jason Mraz with “I’m Yours.” The first time I saw that I said, who the heck is Jason Mraz? But I had to go look at the data three times and unfortunately it is Jason Mraz, scientifically speaking, it’s the best song of all times, over a year and a half on the chart, like no other song. It’s amazing. And of course, the age old question, who is the best artist? And now we get here, again, a different visualization, and you can see here that you have Mariah Carey, you have The Beatles, we have Usher, we have Elvis, really fantastic artists that we have here. But, these are very different periods of time and it’s really hard to compare The Beatles from the ’60s to Mariah Carey from now. So maybe other visualizations can help me. And with Power BI we can switch the visualization. Look at that, I have a whole list of visualizations. I can change it to a table, for example. It doesn’t help me to explain it. But, there’s one more visualization here that we call the king of the hill. And this one is just specifically designed to explain changes over time.

Now we can see here, let me just explain how it works. It’s kind of a bubble chart. In the middle we have the biggest bubble, it will be the artist that has the most weeks at No. 1 on the chart is the king, right. It’s going to be the center big bubble, around it will be the contenders, the people who want to take the center position from it, the other artists with less weeks on the charts. And we’re going to animate over the time dimension.

So we start with 1955, Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, and we’ll see the Motown area, so we’re going to see here the Platters joining in. But, in 1957 something amazing happened, Elvis Presley breaks through with “All Shook Up,” and he is the king. This is Elvis in the center. He is going to have over 100 different songs on the Billboard 100. It’s just dominating. But, in the ’60s come and so over the pond the greatest band in the history of music, The Beatles are showing up. And they would have 26 No. 1 hits. They’re going to have eight consecutive ones. They just dominated the rest of the decade into the ’70s, and they’re breaking up. And this is kind of a weird condition. Look at that, Three Dog Night, never heard about them? Forget about them, because the next one is going to be Elton John, he’s a legend. Candle in the Wind is still the No. 1 selling single of all time. This is also the disco era. So we have the Bee Gees, I danced to their songs with my first girlfriend. And of course, it was Olivia Newton John, a giant mega-star in the early ’80s.

And now look at that, what do you have in the ’80s, Paul McCartney, going to be followed by Michael Jackson, going to be followed up by Madonna, going to be followed up by Whitney Houston. This is a parade of the greats we had in the ’80s, George Michael, Paula Abdul, I have no idea what she is doing here. Now, we’re seeing Mariah Carey, she is going to dominate the ’90s. She’s going to have a fight with Boys To Men. But, look at it, she’s in that fight and she’s pushing them out. She is going to continue with 79 weeks at No. 1. She is going to dominate the ’90s. But, the ’90s are coming to an end. Santana is taking over. He is going to take over and then it’s the hip-hop and rap, with Nelly, Kid Rock I cannot stand, and then Usher he is a genius, wonderful, wonderful. But, look at that, it’s Mariah. She’s over here again. She’s looking for a fight in the 2000s, and she’s pushing them out. And now we are getting ready for the era of the divas. Rihanna, look at it she’s taking over. Katy Perry is trying. Adele is trying. But, no Rihanna is here to stay. Thank you, Rihanna. Thank you Power BI.

Thank you all. [43:30]

SATYA NADELLA: Thank you, Amir.

Hopefully you got a good feel for the power of Power BI in Office 365, and now just imagine if you can sort of replace all of the pop data and music data with your business data and your customer data. Mix it up, in fact, with some of the public data inside of Bing, and doing these kinds of demos where people are able to get insights from all of the data that they have inside their organization, and doing a join of that with, in fact, information that’s available publicly. We think that this is the next big leap when it comes to BI and insight around big data. [44:16]

So let’s switch gears and talk about application development. I know many of you in the room have lots of projects that you’re doing application development for. This is something that we have historically done very well together with Visual Studio and .NET. And, in fact, all of our client and server runtime platform. But this is going through a sea change. And, therefore, we are building and retooling for the sea change a few apps that you want to build.

It all starts by having a platform that is capable of both infrastructure as a service and platform as a services. So that’s IaaS plus PaaS. And that means any mission-critical Web application you want to build, any mobile front-end you want to build, where you’re automating a business process with a mobile front-end; any cloud service you want to build, you want to have this rich capability of both infrastructure as a service and a platform as a service. And you want to be able to deliver that, by the way, in both Windows Azure, as well as on Windows Server. So that symmetry of development runtime is also very important, and that’s what we’re building out.

Since you’re building applications for enterprise customers, you’ll want to have real richness of business logic. And this is where we are making some changes, and innovations, which are going to fundamentally change the economics and the repeatability of your business application development, or mission-critical application development. From identity, you saw Azure AD already from an IT perspective, but from a developer perspective now you have a fully programmable identity management solution where you can handle multiple identities, consumer identities as well as enterprise identities.

We have BizTalk services in the cloud now where you can use that to be able to automate your enterprise application integration, or even B-to-B integration. We have all the richness of the data platform I talked about previously that now you can incorporate as part of your solutions without having to really build that all on your own, whereas you now will be able to make API calls.

And, lastly, perhaps most interestingly, is you can, in fact, incorporate all of Office 365 as part of your solution. Office 365 has a very modern API surface area across the entire length and breadth, both on the client side as well as on the server side, that you can now program as part of your solution. Think about all the document workflows within the enterprise business application context that you can incorporate.

Of course, at the end of the day, what matters to you as well as your customers is productivity. And that’s where we’ve always led with the fantastic tooling in Visual Studio. We’re taking that a step further to make rapid application development, especially with the Lightswitch features inside of Visual Studio 2013, we’re making it possible for you to build your Web applications or business applications with Web fronts that much more simple for you to do rapid application development, especially in combination with Office. So the combination of Visual Studio, Lightswitch, the services that go with Visual Studio, either on TFS or on Azure with source code control, project management, build, test, all of those services come together to really improve your productivity.

And we have many, many customers and partners who are taking advantage of this. The one I wanted to highlight was a solution built by .NET Solutions for IT, a financial services company in the UK. And it’s a very cool solution in the sense that they were able to take a very innovative approach to doing codes where they were monitoring the in-car telematics getting back information to Azure, then rendezvousing that with a code system which was on premise to be able to do real-time codes, and do custom codes for their customers. So that’s a pretty innovative way to think about mobile applications, Web tier, as well as being able to service relay back to data inside of your enterprise. And that richness of both tooling and capabilities in the runtime are unparalleled and unique to what we do with the combination of Windows Server and Windows Azure.

So I’m really pleased to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2013 Preview. I really encourage those of you who have .NET practices, Visual Studio expertise, now you can take the tooling coming out, the runtimes that are coming out as part of Windows Server, Windows Azure, as well as Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone, and really build this next generation of mobile applications as well as Web applications, and cloud services.

I’m also pleased to announce SQL Services, or SQL Database Premium Services for Windows Azure. Windows Azure has been going through significant growth, and particularly there’s not a solution that’s built in Windows Azure that does not use SQL Azure. And we are now introducing some capabilities that allow you to make those reservations. That means you can bring your most mission-critical applications over to the cloud. This is, again, something that we are going to be very unique. We are unique already with the fact that we have a PaaS-based SQL Service. And now we are making it much more ready for mission-critical applications.

[49:28] So the last piece of the presentation today is cloud infrastructure. Now all of the things that we talked about rely on cloud infrastructure. And our goal has been to build the most robust cloud infrastructure. And to live the cloud lifestyle we build Windows Azure using our server software. So when we sort of say we are serving millions of virtual machines on Windows Azure, it runs, in fact, on Windows Server 2012 hypervisor. So that’s an amazing feedback cycle. Not just that, but all of our first-party workloads, from Office 365 to Bing to Xbox Live, are all running on Windows Azure capabilities. So that this reinforcing feedback cycle is what battle tests our cloud infrastructure.

We are, again, unique in that we take that same cloud infrastructure that we are using on a day-in and day-out basis inside of Azure as well as our first-party applications, and making it available as part of Windows Server and System Center for others to be able to build their own cloud. And that’s what really gives us the ability to deliver a true boundary-less datacenter infrastructure with consistency to our customers.

We think that that is very, very important to be able to really service the needs that enterprise customers have around infrastructure and support of their applications, and this is something that we believe we are setting the pace, and no one else in the industry, neither Amazon nor VMware can promise or deliver this level of consistency, this level of mission-critical readiness because of the battle testing of all the diverse set of first-party workloads.

We have lots and lots of partners who are already taking advantage of it. One example that I wanted to highlight today is what Skyline Technologies did for Trek Bicycles. They really took advantage of all of the capabilities of this boundary-less datacenter. They built out a private cloud solution. They, in fact, used the IaaS capabilities inside of Azure to be able to deploy the retail management solution. They even built a PaaS solution on Azure to be able to automate all of the partner management. So again, you can see how having this consistency gives you the flexibility to be able to take advantage of all the resources in your datacenter, in your partner datacenter, and in Windows Azure, but still have the one consistent virtualization and management pane of glass from an IT perspective.

So now to really show you this boundary-less datacenter in action, I wanted to invite up on stage Jeff Woolsey from our team. Jeff. [52:08]

Related post: Partners in the cloud for modern business [Satya Nadella on The Official Microsoft Blog, July 8, 2013]

Today, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), I am excited to announce new programs and services that are designed to help our partners and customers embrace the challenges and opportunities associated with cloud computing and big data.

The first new program we are announcing is Cloud OS Accelerate. As part of this new program, Microsoft and key partners – Cisco, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems, HP and Dell – will invest more than $100 million to help put thousands of new private and hybrid cloud solutions into the hands of customers. We are also announcing a new Windows Intune offer, effective Oct. 1, that will help connect partners and customers with the latest in cloud connected management at a 30 percent discount. These new programs, and others you will hear about throughout the Worldwide Partner Conference, are designed to help our partners realize the opportunities in cloud computing – today.

We are also announcing previews of new technologies– including:

· Power BI for Office 365 – our new self-service business intelligence (BI) solution that combines the data analysis and visualization capabilities of Excel with the power of collaboration, scale and trusted cloud environment of Office 365. This new solution will help partners deliver powerful BI solutions to small and medium businesses everywhere. Customers and partners can sign up here.

· New Windows Azure Active Directory capabilities that will make it possible for ISVs, CSVs and other third parties to leverage Windows Azure’s directory to enable a single sign-on (SSO) experience for their users, at no cost. Customers can sign up here.

· A Premium offer for Windows Azure SQL Database, which delivers reserved capacity for more powerful and predictable performance. This will allow partners to raise the bar on the types of services and products they can offer to customers. A limited preview will be available in a few weeks, so sign up today so we can notify you when it’s ready.

This news wraps up a wave of new enterprise cloud announcements from the Server and Tools Division, including: new versions of Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014 and Windows Intune at TechEd North America and TechEd Europe; the general availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services and Windows Azure Web Sites at Build 2013; and a new strategic partnership with Oracle to improve customer flexibility and choice.

The technology to help our partners realize the opportunities in cloud computing and big data is here and the time to collectively help our customers embrace these mega trends is now. Together, Microsoft and our partners helped customers successfully navigate the client-server and enterprise IT technology transformations. Going forward, we’re committed to doing that again for enterprise cloud.

Windows Azure becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market

June 28, 2013 2:40 pm / 4 Comments on Windows Azure becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market

Almost a year ago, when –among others– the Windows Azure Mobile Services Preview came out, it became evident that Microsoft has a quite old heritage in cloud computing as it is the case that The cloud experience vision of .NET by Microsoft 12 years ago and its delivery now with Windows Azure, Windows 8/RT, Windows Phone, iOS and Android among others [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 16-20, 2012]. Next, with Windows Azure Media Services, an interesting question came up: Windows Azure Media Services OR Intel & Microsoft going together in the consumer space (again)? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 13, 2013]. Then just in the beginning of this month it was possible to conclude that “Cloud first” from Microsoft is ready to change enterprise computing in all of its facets [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 4, 2013]. The understanding of importance of the cloud for the company was further enhanced by finding a few days later that Windows Embedded is an enterprise business now, like the whole Windows business, with Handheld and Compact versions to lead in the overall Internet of Things market as well [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 8, 2013]. Finally we had a quite vivid example of the fact that Windows Azure is a huge ecosystem effort as well with: Proper Oracle Java, Database and WebLogic support in Windows Azure including pay-per-use licensing via Microsoft + the same Oracle software supported on Microsoft Hyper-V as well [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 20, 2013].

Now we have general availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services, Windows Azure Web Sites, as well as previews of improved auto-scaling, alerting and notifications, and tooling support for Windows Azure through Visual Studio. This made me conclude that Windows Azure is becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market.

Let’s see now the details which I will base not only on the Microsoft materials but on the first media reactions (also in order to have consistency with my post of yesterday on Windows 8.1: Mind boggling opportunities, finally some appreciation by the media [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 27, 2013]) as well:

Media reactions in the first 15 hours:

Specific reactions:

Windows Azure Mobile Services, Windows Azure Web Sites – general availability:

Microsoft makes Windows Azure services generally available [by Mary Jo Foley on CNET, June 27, 2013 at 1:13 PM PDT, also on the ZDNET] “Microsoft is moving more of its Windows Azure products from preview to general availability. The latest: Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites.”
Windows Azure Web Sites, Mobile Services Now Generally Available [TechCrunch, June 27, 2013]
Windows Azure Mobile Services and Web Sites now generally available [Neowin.net, June 27, 2013]
Microsoft’s Azure Mobile Services & Azure Web Sites hit general availability [VentureBeat, June 27, 2013 9:45 AM]
Microsoft Build 2013: Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites become generally available [Computing News, June 27, 2013]
Microsoft Launches Azure Mobile Services and Azure Web Sites [Virtualization Review, June 27, 2013]

Using Azure Mobile Services and Web Sites for a Mobile Contest pt. 1 [windowsazure YouTube channel, June 27, 2013]

This 2-part video is a walk-through of a Mobile Contest project. It demonstrates how to Azure Mobile Services and Web Sites can be used to create a consistent set of services used as a back-end for an iOS mobile app and a .NET web admin portal. Part 1 covers: Using multiple authentication providers, Reading/Writing data with tables and Interacting with Azure storage for BLOBs

Using Azure Mobile Services and Web Sites for a Mobile Contest pt. 2 [windowsazure YouTube channel, June 27, 2013]

Part 2 covers: Using Azure Web Sites for the admin portal, Integrating with Custom API with cross-platform Push notifications and using Scheduler with 3rd Party add-ons for scripting admin tasks.

Partner support:

Microsoft Adds Engine Yard to its Azure Cloud [SiliconANGLE, June 27, 2013]
Windows Azure: Microsoft Receives Support From RightScale, EngineYard [Talkin’ Cloud, June 27, 2013]
Box releasing new SDK that enable developers to integrate Box into their Windows Phone apps with ease [WPSuperfanboy, June 27, 2013 at 20:56]

Xamarin with Craig Dunn [windowsazure YouTube channel, June 27, 2013]

Xamarin provides a frameword that lets developers buildiOS and Android applicatinos in C#. With Windows Azure Mobile Services, developers can connect those mobile apps by hosting the backend in Window Azure. Mobile Services provides a turnkey way to store data in the cloud, authenticate users and send push notifications. Get started at http://www.windowsazure.com/mobile

Building a Comprehensive Enterprise Cloud Ecosystem [Windows Azure blog, June 20, 2013]

Over the past two decades, Microsoft has worked with OEMs, Systems Integrators, ISVs, CSVs, Distributors and VARs to build one of the largest enterprise partner ecosystems in the world. We’ve done this because customers – and the industry – need solutions that just work together. With our partners we built the most comprehensive enterprise technology ecosystem – and, now, we’re focused on the enterprise cloud.

That’s why you’ve seen us work with Amazon, to bring Windows Server, SQL Server and the entire Microsoft stack to Amazon Web Services, and with EMC who owns VMware and Pivotal – key competitors in their respective areas. We also work with innovative companies like Emotive, with Systems Integrators like Accenture and Capgemini and a host of other partners – large, small and non-commercial – around the world and across the industry.

The need for diverse technologies and companies to work together is clear – and that means competitors are often partners. To many in the industry that is a given – and it really should be. The need for technologies to work together is particularly clear in cloud computing – where platforms and services are so incredibly connected they must work together to deliver cloud computing benefits when and how customers want it.

So, it should not be a surprise when we partner with technology leaders who are also competitors. We partner with these companies (and plan to partner with more) to bring our products & services to as many customers as possible. We will continue to work across the industry to ensure our products & services work with the many platforms, business apps, services and clouds our customers use.

As you may have heard me say, it’s been an exciting year for Windows Azure – and we are just 6 months in. Stay tuned – there’s more to come!

Steven Martin
General Manager
Windows Azure

All other:

Microsoft Adds Auto Scaling To Windows Azure [TechCrunch, June 27, 2013]
Microsoft Tweaks Windows Azure With Autoscaling, More [eWeek, June 27, 2013]
Microsoft adds mobile services, auto-scaling to Azure [iTnews.com.au, June 28, 2013 at 6:31 AM]
Microsoft Gives Virtual Machines in Windows Azure a Security Boost [Virtualization Review, June 27, 2013]
Windows Azure To Gain Auto-Scaling, Single Sign-On Improvements [Virtualization Review, June 27, 2013]

Overall reactions:

Windows Azure Now Stores 8.5 Trillion Data Objects, Manages 900K Transactions Per Second [TechCrunch, June 27, 2013]

Microsoft announced at the Build conference today that Windows Azure now has 8.5 trillion objects stored on its infrastructure.

The company also announced the following:

Customers do 900,000 storage transactions per second.
The service is doubling its compute and storage every six months.
3.2 million organizations have Active Directory accounts with 68 million users.
More than 50 percent of the world’s Fortune 500 companies are using Windows Azure.

In comparison, Amazon Web Services said at its AWS Summit in New York earlier this year that its S3 storage service now holds more than 2 trillion objects. According to a post by Frederic Lardinois, that’s up from 1 trillion last June and 1.3 trillion in November, when the company last updated these numbers at its re:Invent conference.

So what accounts for the differene between Azure and AWS? It all has to do with how each company counts the objects it stores. With that in consideration, it’s likely Azure’s numbers are far different if the same metrics were used as AWS.

Nevertheless, the news highlights the importance of Windows Azure for Microsoft, especially as the enterprise moves its infrastructure, shedding data centers to consolidate and reduce their costs.

Microsoft Beefs Up Azure Cloud Platform at Build [PCMag.com, June 27, 2013 02:09pm EST]
Microsoft exec on the Valley’s bias against Azure: It’s ‘running out of excuses’ [VentureBeat, June 27, 2013 6:13 PM]
Microsoft boosts mobile app development and brings Unity3D to Xbox One [Ars Technica, June 27 2013, 11:41pm CEDT] “Build iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps (and websites) on Windows Azure.”
Microsoft tunes Windows Azure cloud for developers [InfoWorld, June 28, 2013] “At Build conference, company debuts Azure Mobile Services for mobile back-end app capabilities, Azure Web Sites for ‘business-grade’ Web apps”
Microsoft server unit shows off full plate of results [The Seattle Times, June 28, 2013 at 03:30 a.m.]
Microsoft adds 1,000 businesses to its Azure cloud daily – expands focus on mobile apps [Siliconrepublic.com]

Build 2013 Keynote Day 2 Highlights [InfoQ, June 27, 2013]

Server & Tools Business President Satya Nadella opened the keynote this morning with some statistics about Windows Azure and the major Microsoft cloud services.

Windows Azure

– 50% of Fortune 500 companies are using Windows Azure
– 3.2 Million organizations with active directory accounts
– 2 X compute + storage every 6 months
– 100+ major service releases since Build 2012 to Windows Azure

Major Microsoft Cloud Services

– XBox Live 48 million subscribers
– Skype 299 Million connected users
– Outlook.com 1 million users gained in 24 hours
– Office 365 Nearly 50 million Office web apps users
– SkyDriver 250 million accounts
– Bing 1 billion mobile notifications a month
– XBox Live 1.5 Billion games of Halo

Nadella noted the wide variety of first party cloud services that Microsoft supports, and says it is important that they support them as well as provides good learning experience. In his words, “We build for the first party and make available for the third party.”

Scott Hanselman arrived on stage to discuss the latest for ASP.NET on VS2013. A big change is the simplification of starting an ASP.NET application in VS2013. The project types have been reduced to one, “ASP.NET”, and from there the new project wizard lets developers customize their project based on what they would like to create: web forms, MVC, etc.

VS2013 will ship with Twitter’s open source project Bootstrap, and it will be Microsoft supported just like jQuery is now.

An important debugging achievement was demonstrated where browsers can be associated with Visual Studio, allowing for real-time debugging and developing. Edit code in VS2013, and the browser(s) will reflect the updates. In this case the demo showed Hanselman editing cshtml, and via SignalR the updates were shown on the his selected web browsers of IE and Chorme.

In another example, Hanselman went to www.bootswatch.com to obtain a new CSS template which he used to overwrite his current file. Pressing CTRL-ENTER, the browsers reflected this update.

Then Hansleman opened a CSS file to show some new editor tricks. Hovering over CSS statements, VS has a hover window appear that indicates which browser a particular statement applies to. Another ability allows VS to trace and view live streaming trace logs from Azure.

Then Hanselman demonstrated his sample website producing a QR Code of a deep link. He then scanned this on his phone which allowed him to jump into his existing authenticated session, moving from his desktop session to the same screen on his phone.

Satya returned to the stage to announce the general availability of Windows Azure Web Sites, which habe been in preview since Build 2012. Now it is available with full SLA and enterprise support.

Josh Twist from Microsoft’s Mobile Services came on stage to demonstrate using a Mac to add Azure support to an iOS app. Twist noted that developers looking to explore Azure can now create a free 20 meg SQL database which in addition to the 10 free web services allowed.

In Twist’s demo, Azure was used to create a custom XCode project that was preloaded with the appropriate Azure URLs for the project being worked on. This simplifies getting up to speed with Azure development on Mac. Related to this convenience, Windows Azure Mobile Services now enables git source control so that you do not need to edit code on the web portal. So if you would rather develop with a locally (VS, Sublime, etc) you can do by pulling the files down from Azure and the push them back when edits are complete. Twist demonstrated this functionality using Sublime to edit a JavaScript file, and then using a Git push back into Azure.

VS2013 has a new Server Explorer, which is used to browse all of the Mobile Services on Windows Azure for your site/installation. A new wizard has been added which simplifies adding Push Notification for Windows Store based applications.

Satya Returns to Introduce Scott Guthrie.

The big news is the new auto-scaling on Windows Azure for billing. Developers can manage the instance count, target CPU, VMs, No billing when a machine is stopped (only pay when the machine is working.)

Per minute billing has been added, for greater granularity. Preview of Windows Azure AutoScale is now live

Windows Azure

– Active Directory for the Cloud
– Integrate with on-premises Active Directory
– Enable single sign-on within your cloud Apps
– Supports SAML, WS-Fed, and OAuth 2.0

Applications tab shows all apps registered with the current Active directory. Manage Application to integrate (external) app with Active Directory. For example, developers can Use Windows Azure AD to enable user access to Amazon Web Services.

Satya describes Office 365 as “…a programmable surface area”

Jay Schmelzer to demonstrated the changes being made to allow/promote Office 365 as a platform.

– Rich Office Model
– Use Web APIs to access
– Extend with Azure
– First class tools support in VS2013
– Office 365 Apps + Windows Azure

Increasing promotion of Windows Azure, MSDN subscribers receive greater discounts and incentives to use the Azure platform.

1. Use your MSDN Dev/Test licenses on Windows Azure
2. Reduced rates for Dev/test licenses up to 97% discounts
3. No Credit card required for MSDN members

Microsoft showcases developer opportunity on Windows Azure, Windows devices [press release, June 27, 2013]

…

Increasing importance of cloud services

Developers today are building multidevice, multiscreen, cloud-connected experiences. Windows Azure spans infrastructure and platform capabilities to provide them with a comprehensive set of services to easily and quickly build modern applications, using the tools and languages familiar to them.

“Developers are increasingly demanding a flexible, comprehensive platform that helps them build and manage apps in a cloud- and mobile-driven world,” [Satya] Nadella [, president, Server and Tools Business] said. “To meet these demands, Microsoft has been doubling down on Windows Azure. Nearly 1,000 new businesses are betting on Windows Azure daily, and as momentum for Azure grows, so too does the developer opportunity to build applications that power modern businesses.”

Delivering on its commitment to provide developers with the most comprehensive cloud platform, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services enables developers building Windows, Windows Phone, iOS and Android apps to store data in the cloud, authenticate users and send push notifications. TalkTalk Business, a leading business telecommunications provider in the United Kingdom, chose Windows Azure Mobile Services to create new ways to engage with its customers and serve demand for mobile access.

Microsoft also announced the general availability of Windows Azure Web Sites, which allows developers to create websites on a flexible, secure and scalable platform to reach new customers. With the investments Microsoft has made in ASP.NET and Web tools, Web developers can now create scalable experiences easier than ever. Dutch brewer Heineken is using Windows Azure to power a social pinball game for the UEFA Champions League Road to the Final campaign, with the expectations of millions of interactions scaled on Windows Azure. Heineken exceeded its usage metrics by a wide margin yet experienced no scalability issues with Windows Azure.

[Scott] Guthrie[, Corporate Vice President, Windows Azure] also highlighted Microsoft’s continued enterprise cloud momentum by demonstrating several platform advancements, including previews of improved auto-scaling, alerting and notifications, and tooling support for Windows Azure through Visual Studio. In addition, he previewed how Windows Azure Active Directory provides organizations and ISVs, such as Box, with a single sign-on experience to access cloud-based applications.

Developers can go to the Windows Azure site today for a free trial:http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/?WT.mc_id=AE37323DE.

…

Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN [ScottGu’s Blog, June 27, 2013 at 10:41 AM]

This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure. These updates included:

Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA
Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA
Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines
Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines)
MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview). Below are more details about them.

…

Windows Azure: Major Updates for Mobile Backend Development [ScottGu’s Blog, June 14, 2013]

This week we released some great updates to Windows Azure that make it significantly easier to develop mobile applications that use the cloud. These new capabilities include:

– Mobile Services: Custom API support
– Mobile Services: Git Source Control support
– Mobile Services: Node.js NPM Module support
– Mobile Services: A .NET API via NuGet
– Mobile Services and Web Sites: Free 20MB SQL Database Option for Mobile Services and Web Sites
– Mobile Notification Hubs: Android Broadcast Push Notification Support

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview). Below are more details about them.

Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing [ScottGu’s Blog, June 3, 2013]

This morning we released some fantastic enhancements to Windows Azure:

Dev/Test in the Cloud: MSDN Use Rights, Unbeatable MSDN Discount Rates, MSDN Monetary Credits
BizTalk Services: Great new service for Windows Azure that enables EDI and EAI integration in the cloud
Per-Minute Billing and No Charge for Stopped VMs: Now only get charged for the exact minutes of compute you use, no compute charges for stopped VMs
SSL Support with Web Sites: Support for both IP Address and SNI based SSL bindings on custom web-site domains
Active Directory: Updated directory sync utility, ability to manage Office 365 directory tenants from Windows Azure Management Portal
Free Trial: More flexible Free Trial offer

There are so many improvements that I’m going to have to write multiple blog posts to cover all of them! Below is a quick summary of today’s updates at a high-level:

…

From Announcing LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2013 Preview [Visual Studio LightSwitch Team Blog, June 27, 2013]

…

Sneak Peek into the Future

At this point, I’d like to shift focus and provide a glimpse of a key part of our future roadmap. During this morning’s Build 2013 Day 2 keynote in San Francisco, an early preview was provided into how Visual Studio will enable the next generation of line-of-business applications in the cloud (you can check out the recording via Channel 9). A sample app was built during the keynote that highlighted some of the capabilities of what it means to be a modern business application; applications that run in the cloud, that are available to a myriad of devices, that aggregate data and services from in and out of an enterprise, that integrate user identities and social graphs, that are powered by a breadth of collaboration capabilities, and that continuously integrate with operations.

Folks familiar with LightSwitch will quickly notice that the demo was deeply anchored in LightSwitch’s unique RAD experience and took advantage of the rich platform capabilities exposed by Windows Azure and Office 365. We believe this platform+tools combination will take productivity to a whole new level and will best help developers meet the rising challenges and expectations for building and managing modern business applications. If you’re using LightSwitch today, you will be well positioned to take advantage of these future enhancements and leverage your existing skills to quickly create the next generation of business applications across Office 365 and Windows Azure. You can read more about this on Soma’s blog.

…

Additional information:
– Announcing the General Availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services, Web Sites and continued Service innovation [Windows Azure blog, June 27, 2013]
– 50 Percent of Fortune 500 Using Windows Azure [Windows Azure blog, June 14, 2013]
– Azure WebSites is now Generally Available [Enabling Digital Society blog of Microsoft, June 27, 2013]
– New features for Windows Azure Mobile Services [Enabling Digital Society blog of Microsoft, June 14, 2013]
– Lots of Azure Goodness Revealed [Enabling Digital Society blog of Microsoft, June 3, 2013]
– BizTalk Services is LIVE! [To BizTalk and Beyond! blog of Microsoft, June 3, 2013]
– Hello Windows Azure BizTalk Services! [BizTalk Server Team Blog, June 4, 2013]
– Windows Azure BizTalk Services – Preview [The Enterprise Integration Space blog of Microsoft, June 4, 2013]
– Business Apps, Cloud Apps, and More at Build 2013 [Somasegar’s blog, June 27, 2013]

Day 2 Keynote [Channel 9 video, June 27, 2013] Windows Azure related part up to [01:31:12], click on the link or the image to watch the video

Speech transcript: Satya Nadella and Scott Guthrie: Build 2013 Keynote

Remarks by Satya Nadella, President, Server & Tools Business; and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, Windows Azure; San Francisco, Calif., June 27, 2013

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome President, Server and Tools Business, Satya Nadella. (Applause.)

SATYA NADELLA: Good morning. Good morning, and welcome back to day two of Build. Hope all of you had a fantastic time yesterday. From what I gather, there were half a trillion megabytes of downloads as far as the show goes in terms of show net, so we really saturated the show net with all the downloads of Windows 8.1. So that’s just tremendous to see that all of you took Steve’s guidance and said, “Let’s just download it now and play with it.” Hopefully you had fun with it, also had a chance to get Visual Studio and maybe hack some of those Bing controls last night after the party.

But welcome back today, and we have some fantastic stuff to show. There’s going to be a lot more code onscreen as part of this keynote.

Yesterday, we talked about our devices, and we’re going to switch gears this morning to talk about the backend.

The context for the backend is the apps, the technology, as well as the devices, experiences that all of us collectively are building. We’re for sure well and truly into the world of devices and services. There is not an embedded system, not a sensor, not a device experience that’s not connected back to our cloud service. And that’s what we’re going to talk about.

And we see this momentum today in how we are seeing the backend evolve. If you look at Windows Azure, we have over 50 percent of the Fortune 500 companies already using Windows Azure. We have over 250,000 customers. We’re adding 1,000 customers a day.

We have 3.2 million distinct organizations inside of Azure AD representing something like 65 million users active. That’s a fantastic opportunity, and we’ll come back to that a couple of different times during this keynote.

Our storage and compute resources are doubling every six months. Our storage, in fact, is 8.5 trillion storage objects today, doing around 900K transactions per second. Something like 2 trillion transactions a month.

The last point, which is around the hypervisor growth, where we’re seeing tremendous hypervisor share growth is interesting. Because we are unique in that we not only are building an at-scale public cloud service, but we’re also taking all of the software technology that is underneath our public cloud service and making it available as part of our server products for service providers and enterprises to stand up their own cloud. That’s something pretty unique to us.

Given that, we’re seeing tremendous growth for the high-end servers that people are buying and the high-end server software people are buying from us to deploy their own cloud infrastructure in support of the applications that you all are building.

Now, of course at the end of the day, all that momentum has to be backed up by some product. And in that case, Steve talked a lot about our cadence and increased cadence across our devices. But when it comes to Windows Azure and our public cloud service, that cadence takes on a different hyper drive, if you will, because we are every day, every week, every month doing major updates. We’ve done over 100-plus major updates to our services from the last Build to now.

In fact, this is even translating into a much faster cadence for our server. We now have the R2 updates to our 2012 that were made available yesterday. So all around, when it comes to server technology and cloud technology, we have some of the fastest cadences, but very targeted on the new scenarios and applications and technologies that you’re building to run these cloud services.

Now, one of the other things that drives us and is at play for us on a daily basis is the feedback cycle of our first-party workloads. We have perhaps the most diverse set of first-party workloads at Microsoft. You know, these are SaaS applications that we run ourselves.

Now, these applications keep us honest, especially if you’re in the infrastructure business, you’ve got to live this live site availability day in and day out. And the diversity also keeps us honest because you build out your storage compute network, the application containers, to meet the needs of the diversity these applications represent.

Take Xbox. When they started Xbox Live in 2002, they had around 500 servers. Now, they use something like 300,000 servers, which are all part of our public cloud to be able to really drive their experiences. Halo itself has had over a billion games played, and something like 270 million hours of gameplay. And Halo uses the cloud in very interesting ways for pre-production, rendering support, gameplay, post-production analytics, the amount of real-time analytics that’s driving the continuous programming of Halo is pretty stunning.

Take SkyDrive. We have over 250 million accounts. You combine SkyDrive with the usage of Office Web Apps, where we have more than 50 million users of Office Web Apps, you can see a very different set of things that are happening with storage, collaboration, productivity.

Skype is re-architecting their core architecture to take advantage of the cloud for their 190-plus million users.

Bing apps that you saw many of them yesterday as part of Windows 8.1 are using the Azure backend to do a lot of things like notifications, which is one of the core scenarios for any mobile apps. And it’s going to send something like a billion notifications a month.

So all of these diverse needs that we have been building infrastructure for, we have this one simple mantra where “first party equals third party.” That means we build for our first party and make all of that available for our third party. And that feedback cycle is a fantastic cycle for us.

Now, when you put it all together, you put what we’re building, what you’re building, we see the activity on Azure, we listen to our customers, and you sort of distill it and say, “What are the key patterns of the modern business for cloud? What are the applications people are building?”

Three things emerge: People are building Web-centric applications. People are building mobile-centric applications. And what we call cloud-scale and enterprise-grade applications. So the rest of the presentation is all about getting into the depth of each of these patterns.

Now, in support of these applications, we’re building a very robust Windows Azure app model. Now, of course, at the bottom of the app model is our infrastructure. We run 18-plus datacenters on our own, 100-plus co-locations. We have an edge network. And so that is the physical plant. But the key thing is it’s the fabric, the operating system that we build to manage all of those resources.

At the compute-storage-network level, at the datacenter scale and multi-datacenter scale. And that really is the operating system that is Windows at the backend, at this point, which in fact shipped even in Windows Server for a different scale unit.

But that infrastructure management or resource management is one part of the operating system.

Then about that, you have all the application containers. And we’re unique in providing a complete IaaS plus PaaS, which is infrastructure as a service and platform as a service capability when it comes to application containers. Everything from virtual machines with full persistence to websites to mobile to media services to cloud services. So that capability is what allows you to build these rich applications and very capable applications.

Now, beyond that, we also believe that we can completely change the economics of what complex applications have needed in the past. We can take both productivity around development and continuous deployment and cycling through your code of any complex application and reduce it by orders of magnitude.

Take identity. We are going to change the nature of how people set up your applications to be able to accept multiple identities, have strong authentication and authorization, how to have a directory with rich people schema underneath it that you can use for authorization.

Integration, take all of the complex business-to-business or EI type of project that you have to write a lot of setup before you even write the core logic; we want to change the very nature of how you go about that with our integration services.

And when it comes to data, there is not a single application now that doesn’t have a diverse set of needs when it comes to the data from everything from SQL to NoSQL, all types of processing from transactional to streaming to interactive BI to MapReduce. And we have a full portfolio of storage technologies all provided as platform services so that your application development can be that much richer and that much easier.

Now, obviously, the story will not be complete without great tooling and great programming model. What we are doing with Visual Studio, we will see a lot of it throughout the demos. .NET, as well as our support for some of the cloud services around continuous development — everything from source code control, project management, build, monitoring — all of that technology pulled together, really take everything underneath it to a next level from an application development perspective.

But also supporting all the other frameworks. In fact, just this week we announced with Oracle that we will have even more first-class support for Java on Windows Azure. And so we have support for node, we have support for PHP and so on. So we have a fantastic set of language bindings to all of our platform support and a first-class support for Visual Studio .NET, as well as TFS with Git when it comes to application development.

So that’s really the app model. And the rest of the presentation is really for us to see a lot of this in action.

Let me just start with our IaaS and PaaS and virtual machines. We launched our IaaS service just in April. In fact, we have tremendous momentum. Something like 20 percent of all of Azure compute already is IaaS capacity. So that’s tremendous growth.

The gallery of images is constantly improving and increasing in size, in depth, breadth, and variety. In fact, if you want to spin up Windows Server 2012 R2, I would encourage you to go off to the Azure gallery and spin it up because it’s available as of yesterday there, and so that will be a fantastic use of the Azure IaaS, and test that out.

So what I want to talk about is websites. We’ve made a lot of investments in websites. And when we say “websites” we mean enterprise-grade Web infrastructure for your most mission-critical applications. Because if you think about it, your website is your front door to your business. It could be a SaaS business, it could be an enterprise business, but it’s the front door to your business. And you want the most robust enterprise-scale infrastructure for it. And we’ve invested to build the best Web stack with the best performance, load balancing built in, elasticity built in, and from a development perspective, integrated all the way into Visual Studio.

So we think that what we have in our website technology is the best-in-class Web for the enterprise-grade applications you want to build.

Now, you can also start up for free, and you can scale up. So maybe even the starting process with our Web, very, very easy.

Now, of course having Web technology is one, but it’s also very important for us to have a lot of framework support. And we have a lot of frameworks. But the one framework that we hold close and dear to our heart is ASP.NET. This is something that we have continued to innovate in significant ways. One of the things that we’ve done with the new version of ASP.NET, which is in preview as part of .NET 4.5.1. is the one ASP.NET. Which means that you can have one project where you can bring all of the technologies from Web forms to MVCs to Web APIs to signal all together.

We also improved our tooling from a scaffolding perspective across all of these frameworks.

You’re all building even these rich Web applications. So these single-page Web applications. And for that, you need new frameworks. We have Bootstrap. You also want to be able to call into the server side, we made that easy with OLAP support, we made it easy with Web APIs. So this makes it much easier for you now to be able to build these rich Web apps.

And Entity Framework. We’ve now plumbed async all the way back into the server. So now, you can imagine if you’re building one of those social media applications with lots of operations on the client, as well as needing the same async capabilities on the backend, you now have async end to end.

So a lot of this innovation is, I think, in combination with our Web is going to completely change how you could go about building your Web applications and your Web technologies.

To show you some of this in action, I wanted to invite up onstage Scott Hanselman from our Web team. Scott? (Applause.)

SCOTT HANSELMAN: Hello, friends. I’m going to show you some of the great, new stuff that we’ve got in ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2013.

I’m going to go here and hit file, new, project. And you’ll notice right off the bat that we’ve got just one ASP.NET Web application choice. This is delivering on that promise of one ASP.NET. (Applause.)

Awesome, I’m glad you dig that. And this is not the final dialog, but there is no MVC project or Web forms project anymore. I can go and say I want MVC with Web API or I want Web forms plus MVC. But there is, at its core, just one ASP.NET.

We’ve got an all-new authentication system. I can go in here and pick organizational accounts, use Active Directory or Azure Active Directory, do Windows auth.

For this application, I’m going to use an individual user account. I’m going to make a geek trivia app. So I’ll hit create project.

Now, of course when you’re targeting for the Web, it’s not realistic to target just one browser. We’re not going to use just Internet Explorer; we’re going to use every browser and try to make this have as much reach as possible.

So up here, I’m going to click “browse with” and then pick both Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and set them both as the default browser. (Applause.)

Now, we’ll go ahead and run our application. And I’ll snap Visual Studio off to the side here. You notice Visual Studio just launched IE and Chrome.

You can see that we’re using Twitter Bootstrap. We’re shipping Bootstrap with ASP.NET; you get a nice, responsive template. We’ve got the great icons, grid system, works on mobile. And that’s going to ship just like we shipped jQuery, as a fully supported item within ASP.NET, even though it’s open source.

I’m going to open up my index.cs HTML over here. You can see we’ve got ASP.NET as my H1. Notice next to multiple browsers, we’ve got a new present for you. You see this button right here? We’re running SignalR in process inside of Visual Studio, and there’s now a real-time connection between Visual Studio and any number of browsers that are running.

So now I can type in the new geek quiz application and hit this button. And using Web standards and Web sockets, we’ve just talked to any number of browsers. (Applause.)

Now, this is just scratching the surface of what we’re going to be able to do. What’s important isn’t the live reload example I’ve just shown you, but rather the idea that there’s a fundamental two-directional link now between any browser, including mobile browsers or browser simulators and Visual Studio.

Now, this is using the Bootstrap default template, which is kind of default. So I’m going to go up to Bootswatch, which is a great website that saves us from the tyranny of the default template.

And I’m going to pick — this looks appropriately garish. I’m going to pick this one here. And I’m going to just right click and say “save target as” and then download a different CSS, and I’m going to save that right over the top of the one that came with ASP.NET.

And then I’ll come back over here and use the hotkey control/alt/enter and update the linked browsers. And you’ll see that right there, the hotdog theme is back today, and this is the kind of high-quality design and attention to — I can’t do that with a straight face — attention to detail and design that you’ve come to expect from us at Microsoft. That’s beautiful, isn’t it? You’ve got to feel good about that, everybody.

I’m going to head over into Azure. And I’m going to say “new website.” You know, creating websites is really, really easy from within the portal. I’ll say geek quiz. Blah, blah, blah, and I’m going to make a new website.

And this is going to fire up in the cloud right now. You can see it’s going and creating that. And that’s going to be ready and waiting to go when it’s time for me to publish from Visual Studio.

Now, I’m going to fast forward in time here and close down this application and then do a little Julia Child action and switch into an application that’s a little bit farther along.

So we’re going to write a geek quiz or a geek trivia app. And it’s going to have Model View Controller and Web API on the server. And it’s going to send JSON across the wire over to the client side. This trivia controller, which is ASP.NET, Web API is going to be feeding that.

This is code that I’m not really familiar with. I can spend a lot of time scrolling around, or I could right click on the scroll bar, hit scroll bar options, and some of you fans may remember this guy. It’s back. And now you’ve got map mode inside of the scroll bar. I can move around, find my code really, really easily. Here is the GET method. Notice that this GET method is going to return the trivia questions into my application here. And it’s marked as async. We’ve got async and await all the way through. So this asynchronous Web API method is then going to call this service call, next question async.

Now, I could right click and say “go to definition.” But I could also say “peek definition.” And without actually opening the source code, see what’s going on in that file. (Applause.)

I could promote that if I wanted to. You notice, of course, I’m using Entity Framework 6, I’ve got async and await from clients to servers to services all the way down into the database non-blocking I/O, async and await all the way down. I just hit escape to drop out of there. So it makes it really, really easy to move around my code.

So this is going to serve the trivial questions. I’m just going to hit control comma, go get my index.cs HTML.

Now, in this HTML editor that’s been completely rewritten in Visual Studio 2013, you notice that I’ve got a couple of things you may not have seen before in an ASP.NET app. I’ve got Handlebars, which is a templating engine, and I’ve got Ember. So we’ve got model view controller on the server and model view controller on the client. So we can start making those rich, single-page applications.

Now, this Ember application here has some JavaScript. And on the client, we’ve got a next question method. This is going to go and get that next question, and I’ve got that Web API call. So this is how the trivia app is going to get its information. And then when I answer the question, I’m going to go and send that and post that same RESTful service. So you’ve got really nice experience for front-end Web developers. That’s the Ember stuff.

Here, I’ve got the Handlebars. This is a client-side template. You can see right off the bat that I’ve got syntax highlighting for my Handlebars or my Moustache templating. And I’m going to go ahead and fire this up, and I’ll put IE off to the side there, and I’ll put VS over here.

And I’m going to log into my geek quiz app. See if I can type my own name a few times here, friends. There we go. And this is going to go and fetch a trivia question. See, it said, “loading question.” And then it says, “How many Scotts work on the Azure team?” Which is a lot, believe me.

You’ll see that that’s coming from this bound question tile. So we’ve got client-side data binding right there.

Now, I need to figure out what the buttons are going to look like. I’ve got the question, but I don’t have the buttons. I could start typing the HTML; that’s kind of boring. But I could use Visual Studio Web Essentials, which takes the extensibility points in Visual Studio and extends them even further.

And I could say something like hash fu dot bar and hit tab. And now I’ve got Zen Coding, also known as Emmet, built in with Web Essentials.

So that means I could go and say, you know, I need a button. And button has a button trivia class, but I need four of those buttons.

And then, again, I hit — you like that, kids? (Applause.) Then I hit refresh, and you’ll notice that my browser is updating as I’m going.

But that’s not really good. I need more information. I really want the text there that says “answer,” and I want to have answer one, answer two, answer three. So I’ll go like that. And then hit refresh, and then we’re seeing it automatically update.

So that looks like what I want it to look like. But I want to do that client-side data binding. So I’m going to take this here, and I’m going to spin through that JSON that came across the wire. So I’m going to go open Moustache, and I’m going to say for each, and again, syntax highlighting, great experience for the client-side developer.

I’m going to say for each option, and then we’ll close up each here. And answer one, just like question title is going to be bound. So I’m going to open that up, and I’m going to say option.title. And then when a user clicks on that button, we’re going to have an Ember action. I’m going to say the action is call that send answer passing in the question and then passing in the option that the user chose.

I just did an update with the hotkey, how many Scotts work on Azure? 42. How old is Guthrie? He is zero XFF because he’s quite old. What color is his favorite polo? Goldenrod, in fact, is my — no? I’m sorry, Goldenrod is the next version of Windows, Windows Goldenrod. So my mistake there.

That’s a pretty nice flip animation. Let’s take a look at that. I’m going to go ahead and hit control comma again and type in “flip.” Go right into the flip CSS. You’ll see that that animation actually used no JavaScript at all. That, in fact, was done entirely in CSS, which can sometimes be hard to figure out, but with Web Essentials, I can actually hover over a rule, and it’ll tell me which version of which browser which vendor prefix supports. (Applause.)

So that’s pretty hot. I’m going to go ahead and right click and hit publish. And because I’ve got the Azure SDK installed, I can do my publish directly from Visual Studio. We’re going to go and load our Azure website. Hit OK. It brings the publish settings right down into Visual Studio. And I can go and publish directly from here.

So now I’m doing a live publish out to Azure directly from Visual Studio. It goes and launches the browser for me.

And I can click over here on the Server Explorer, and Windows Azure actually appears on the side now. I can start and stop virtual machines, start and stop websites; they’re all integrated inside of the Server Explorer.

That’s my website. I can double click on it, and again, while I can go to the management portal, I can change my settings, my .NET version and my application logging without having to enter the portal.

So back over into my app, when I sign in, I know that people are going to be pushing buttons and answering questions backstage. I want to see that. I put in some tracing. So what I’m going to do is right click and say view streaming logs in the output window.

This is the Visual Studio output window. And I’m just going to pin that off to the side. And then as I’m answering questions, and it looks like someone backstage is answering questions as well. I’m getting live streaming trace logs from Azure fed directly into Visual Studio. (Applause.)

Now, you know that we’ve also rewritten the entire authentication infrastructure and made it based on OWIN, which is the Open Web Interface for .NET. It’s an open source framework that lets you have pluggable middleware. So identity and authorization has been rewritten in a really, really clean way. And it allows us to do stuff that we really couldn’t do before and extend it in a pretty funny way.

And I think that every good sample involves a QR code, right? Don’t you think? This will bring the number of times that you’ve seen a QR code scanned in public to three. (Laughter.)

So what I want to do is I want to install this QR sample because I know people are going and checking out these trivia stats. And I’ve got SVG and SignalR giving me real-time updates as people are answering trivia questions.

I’m logged in right now as CHanselman. I want to take this session and I want to deep link into an authenticated session on a phone and then view these samples and take them with me.

So I’ve gone and used NuGet to bring in the QR sample. And now I’m going to go and publish that again to the same site. This is an incremental publish now. So this is going to go and send that new stuff up to Azure.

And then I’ll bring up my phone here. I’ve got my phone. And my camera guy, he follows me around. And I’m going to click on trivia stats. And here are the real-time trivia stats.

And then I’m going to click on transfer to mobile up here in the auth area. And we’re going to do is we’re going to generate a QR code. I’m going to then scan that code, and we get a deep link that pops up generated by ASP.NET that’s then going to bring me in IE, and now I’ve got SingnalR, SVG, and Flot all running inside of my browser and I’ve jumped into my authenticated session using OWIN, ASP.NET, and HTML5. It’s pretty fabulous stuff. (Applause.)

So we’ve got the promise of one ASP.NET; we’ve got browser link, bringing all of those browsers together with Web standards using SignalR. You saw Web Essentials as our playground that we’re adding new features to Visual Studio 2013. We can make Azure websites easily in the portal, publish directly from VS, logging, SignalR everywhere. Thanks very much, I hope you guys have fun. (Applause.)

SATYA NADELLA: So I hope you got a great feel for how we’re going to completely change or revolutionize Web development by innovation in tools, in the framework, and in the Web server in Windows Azure. And round-tripping across all three such that you can really do unimaginable things in a much more productive way.

We have over 130,000 active websites or Web applications today using Azure websites. Some big-name brands — Heineken, 3M, Toyota, Trek Bicycle — doing some very, very cool stuff using some of this technology.

I’m very, very pleased that we’re using all of that feedback to announce the general availability of Windows Azure Websites. This has been in preview now since last Build, and we’ve had some tremendous amount of feedback from all of the customers who have been using it. Many of them, obviously, in production. But now you can start using it for full SLA and enterprise support from us. So we’re really, really pleased to reach this milestone. Hope you get a chance to start using it as well. (Applause.)

I’m also pleased to announce the preview of Visual Studio 2013. You got to see it yesterday, today, and you’ll see a lot more of it. It’s just pretty stunning improvements in the tool itself. And combined with the .NET 4.5.1 framework update, you now have the previews of both the framework and the tools, and we really encourage you to give us feedback like you did the last time in your app development, and we’ll be watching for that.

So now I want to switch to mobile. Now, when you think about mobile-centric application development, the key consideration perhaps more than anything else is how do you build these mobile apps fast? And since there’s not a single mobile experience or application you’re building which doesn’t have a cloud backend, then the natural question is: What can we do to really speed up the building of these cloud backends?

And that’s exactly what Azure Mobile Services does, which is we provide a very easy way for you to build out a backend for your mobile experiences and applications. We provide a rich set of services from identity to data to push notification, as well as background scripting.

And then, of course, we support all of the platforms, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, IOS, as well as HTML5.

To show you this in action, I wanted to invite up onstage Josh Twist from our Windows Azure Mobile Services team. Josh? (Applause, music.)

JOSH TWIST: Thanks. We launched Windows Azure Mobile Services into preview in August last year. And in case you weren’t familiar, mobile services makes it incredibly easy to add the power of Windows Azure to your Windows Store, Windows Phone, IOS, Android, and even Web and HTML applications.

To prove this to you, I’m going to give you a demo now of how easy it is to add the cloud services you need to an IOS application using this map.

Here we are in the gorgeous Azure portal, and creating a new mobile service couldn’t be easier. I click, new, compute, mobile service, create. I enter the name of my mobile service, and then I choose a database option.

And I want to point out, look at this new option we have here. You can now create a free 20-megabyte SQL database. Which means it’s now completely free for developers to work against Mobile Services with the 10 free services and that free 20-megabyte SQL database.

Now, I’ve already created a service we have here today that we’re going to use called My Lists. If I click on the name, I’m greeted by our quick start, which is a short tutorial that shows me how to build a to-do list application.

Now, I selected IOS, but this same mobile service could simultaneously power all of these platforms.

We’re going to create a new IOS application. And since it’s a to-do list app, I need a table to hold my to-do list items.

And then I’m going to download a personalized starter project. So here it comes. That’s a little zip file. And inside that zip file I’m downloading from the portal is an Xcode project. So if I double click this, it’ll open up in Xcode, and then we’re going to take a look at the source. Because what we’ve done is we’ve pre-bootstrapped the application to be ready to talk to Mobile Services. You’ll see it already contains the URL for my new mobile service.

So what I’m going to do is launch this in the simulator. And what we’ll see here is a little to-do list application that inserts, updates, and reads data from Windows Azure with each operation being a single line of code, even in Objective-C.

So I’m going to create a little to-do list item here to add to my tasks. Let’s just save that. So now that’s saved in Windows Azure. To prove that to you, I’m going to switch over to the portal. We take a look at the data tabs, and you’ll see I can drill into the table, view all of my data right here, and there’s the item I just added saved safely into a SQL database in Windows Azure.

Now, we have so many cool features in Mobile Services. Here’s another one. I can actually add a script that executes securely on the server and intercepts those CRUD operations.

So what I’m going to do here, just to give you a quick example, is I’m going to add a time stamp to items that are being inserted. So I simply say item dot created equals new date. I’m going to save that. And right here from the portal, that’s going to go live into Windows Azure and be updated in just a few seconds. So it’s done.

Switch back to the app. Let’s insert a new item. That’s now saved. So if I switch back to browse, we’ll see that data again, but notice how we’ve automatically created a new column, and we’ve got that extra piece of data in there that executed on the server.

Now, we have this amazing script editing experience here in the browser, but not everybody wants to edit code in the portal. And so we’ve added a new feature to Windows Azure Mobile Services that allows you to manage all of your source assets using Git Source Control.

So I’m going to show you how to enable that. We go to the dashboard. Just down here under quick glance, we’ll get an option to set up source controls. So I’m going to click on that and kick it off.

Now, this can take a minute or two. So while that’s running, I’m going to give you a tour of some of the other new features we’ve added to Mobile Services recently.

One of our most-requested features was the ability to have service scripts for execute on the server but not in conjunction with HTTP CRUD operations where I can create an arbitrary REST API.

We’ve added that feature, and it’s called Custom API. So I can now create a completely arbitrary REST API in a matter of minutes with Mobile Services.

We also have a scheduler that allows me to execute scripts on a scheduled basis. So I can execute these every 15 minutes, every night at 2 a.m., whatever I prefer. And we also make it incredibly easy for you to authenticate your users with Microsoft Accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. It’s just a single line of code in your applications.

Now, our source control’s still running here. So what I’m going to do actually is switch to another service, not make you guys wait.

So we have one here where I pre-configured Git. So if we go to the configure tab, you’ll see what we have here is a Git URL. So I’m going to copy this to the clipboard and then switch the terminal. And we’re now going to pull all of the source files down from the server repo onto my local machine.

That’s going to take just a few seconds. It’s going to pull those files down so I can now work on them locally with my favorite tools.

So I’m going to just drive into this directory here and show you what the tree looks like. So you can see we can see all of the API files, the scheduler files, and my table files including that insert script that we just edited in the portal.

Let’s take a look at that in Sublime. And you can see there’s that change. Now, we can make more changes here. I’m just going to comment this out and save it. And then I’m going to do a Git push to push that back up. So let’s commit it to the tree. And then Git push, and in a matter of seconds, that change will go live into Windows Azure.

So enough with the Mac. Let’s talk about what’s happened since preview. We’re now supporting tens of thousands of services in production on Mobile Services to all kinds of scenarios from games to business applications and consumer engagement applications.

I want to talk to you today about one of my favorite applications that we have in the store. And it’s from a company called TalkTalk Business. TalkTalk Business are one of the U.K.’s leading telephony providers for businesses. And these guys have a serious focus on customer service. So they’ve created a Windows Phone app and a Windows Store app.

Let me show you the phone application now. So here’s the app on my Start screen. If we launch it, you’ll see we get an instant at-a-glance view of my billing activity, my account balance. I can see all of the services I can use with TalkTalk Business, and I get real-time delivery of up-to-the-minute service alerts.

Now, it should come as no surprise that best-in-class applications like this need best-in-class services. And this is actually built using Mobile Services and is live in the U.K. stores today.

Now, they also have a Windows Store application. And I actually have a replica of that project here on my Windows machine.

And you can see the project’s open in the next version of Visual Studio 2013. One of the capabilities this app has is it lets me manage my user profile.

Now, let me show you some of the code that does that. So over here in this file, you can see where we upload the user profile when we make a save. Notice how that’s just a single line of code to write that data all the way through to my database.

And here we load a user profile into the UI, again, with a single line of code.

Now, these guys also have tables and scripts. And I want to show you those, but instead of switching out to the portal, let’s do it using the new Server Explorer in Visual Studio 2013.

So I can open up the Server Explorer here, dive into Windows Azure, notice the new Mobile Services tab, expand that, and we’ll see enumerated all of our Mobile Services.

There’s my TalkTalk service. And if we open this, we’ll see all of the tables that are backing that service, including my user profiles table down here.

If we look in that, we’ll be able to see all of my scripts. The best thing is I can now edit them here in Visual Studio.

So I launched the script editor. I can make a change. And then when I hit save, this is going to deploy live to Windows Azure directly from Visual Studio in a matter of seconds. It’s done. (Applause.)

So the next thing I want to do is app push notifications for this application.

Now, setting up push traditionally is quite a few steps. I have to register my application with the Windows Store. I have to configure Mobile Services with my credentials to call Windows Notification Services. I have to require a channel URI on my client and upload that to Mobile Services so it’s ready to send the push.

Let me show you just how easy we’ve made this in the next version of Visual Studio.

I simply right click, add push notification, and this wizard is going to guide me through all of the steps necessary. So I’m just entering my credentials there for the Windows Store. And then it’s going to ask me to choose which application I want to associate. So I’m going to choose this one.

The next step, I’ll be asked to choose which mobile service I want to configure. I’m going to choose TalkTalk, and we’re done.

What’s going to happen now is this is going to make some changes to my mobile service and to my client application. In fact, it’s going to prewire a test notification so I can be superbly confident that everything is wired correctly and going to work. And to try that out, all I have to do is launch the application.

Let’s try that now. It’s going to take a second to deploy. And then what we should see is a push notification arrive in the top-right corner. And there we go. So that’s how easy we’ve made it now to add a push notification to your application with Mobile Services and Visual Studio 2013. (Applause.)

The next thing I want to do is create an ability for the administrators at TalkTalk Business to actually send these service alerts. And these guys use a Web portal. So let’s switch over to their Web project.

So here it is in Visual Studio. And you’ll see we have an index HTML file. Let’s open that up.

Now, notice how we pre-configured this with the Mobile Services JavaScript SDK that we added recently. It now means it’s super easy to add Mobile Services to your Web and HTML hybrid applications.

We’ve already added the client. So all I need to do now is add the code to invoke the service API that sends those messages. So let’s try that. So I start client dot invoke API. I need the name of the API I’m calling, which is send alert, in this case. And then since I’m doing a post, I need to specify the body. Body is service alert. And we’re done.

So I’m going to save that and launch it in the local browser. Now, since we’ve already pre-configured the client to receive push notifications, we can actually test this whole scenario end to end right here on this machine.

So what I’m going to do is send out a service alert for email in the midlands and western region that says SMTP upgrade complete. And when I hit send notification I should get a push notification in the top-right corner that was initiated from a website. And there we go. (Applause.) Thank you.

You can see just how easy it is to add some incredible capabilities to your apps using Windows Azure Mobile Services. I really can’t wait to see what you guys do with this. I’ll see you at 2:00. (Applause.)

SATYA NADELLA: Thanks, Josh.

As Josh was saying, we’ve been in preview, and we’ve got some tremendous feedback. We’ve had over 20,000 active apps on Azure Mobile Services to date, and TalkTalk Business is something that Josh showed. There’s a cool app written by Aviva, which is an application that collects telematic data from a mobile app and gives you a real-time quote based on your driving habits for your car insurance, which is a fascinating application, and there are many, many applications like that, which are getting written on top of Azure Mobile Services.

So I’m really, really pleased to announce the general availability of Azure Mobile Services today. We think that this is going to really help in your mobile development efforts across all devices, and we look forward to seeing what kind of applications you go build.

So now to take you to the next section, which is all around cloud scale and enterprise grade, let me invite up onstage Scott Guthrie. Scott? (Applause.)

SCOTT GUTHRIE: Well, this morning we looked at how you can use Windows Azure to build Web and mobile applications and host them in the cloud.

I’m now going to walk through how we’re making it even easier to scale these apps, as well as integrate them within enterprise environments.

Let’s start by talking about scale. Specifically, I’m going to use a real-world example, which is Skype.

Now, Skype is one of the largest Internet services in the world. And over the last year, they’ve been working to migrate that service to run on top of Windows Azure.

One of the benefits they get from moving to Windows Azure is that they can avoid having to buy and provision their own servers, and instead leverage a dynamic cloud environment.

Like most apps, Skype sees fluctuations in terms of load throughout the day, the week, even different parts of the year. And in a traditional datacenter environment, they need to deploy a thick set of servers in order to handle their peak load.

The downside with this, though, is that you end up having a lot of expensive, unused compute capacity during non-peak times.

Moving to a cloud environment like Windows Azure allows them to, instead, dynamically scale their compute capacity based on just what their service needs at any given point in time. And this can yield enormous cost savings to both small and especially to very large services.

Now, with Windows Azure, you’ve always been able to dynamically scale up and scale down your apps, but you had to typically write custom scripts or use other tools in order to enable that. What we’re excited to announce today is that we’re going to make this a lot easier by baking in auto-scale capability directly into Windows Azure. And this is going to make it easy for anyone to start taking advantage of these kind of dynamic scale environments and yield the same cost savings.

I’d like to invite Charles Lemanna onstage to show it off in action. (Applause.)

CHARLES LEMANNA: I’ll be giving a quick demo of the brand-new autoscale feature that supports Windows Azure Compute Services.

First, I’ll cover the website autoscale, then the cloud services, and then the virtual machine.

So if I navigate to the website you saw earlier from Scott Hanselman’s demo, the geek quiz website, we see all the normal metric information that Windows Azure is collecting for his deployment. In this case, CPU time, response time, and network traffic.

But now there’s a new prompt to configure autoscale for this particular website. In the past, when the website would get lots of traffic, people would come in and take the quiz. Scott would have to go in and manually drag the slider to increase his capacity so his response time is not impacted.

However with autoscale, I’m able to now configure a basic set of rules that will manage the capacity from my website automatically.

I can configure an instance count range with a minimum value that we’ll always honor, as well as a maximum value. In this case, we’ll never go above six instances, so you can be sure you won’t get a giant bill.

Next, you can also configure a target CPU range. In this case, I say choose 40 to 54 percent, and what that means is the autoscale engine for Azure in the background we’ll be turning off and turning on website instances so your CPU always stays in that range. In other words, if you go below 40 percent, we’ll turn off the machine to save you money, and if you go above 54 percent, we’ll turn on a new machine so none of your users are impacted.

And just like that, I click save, and Windows Azure will manage my website, scale, and capacity entirely on its own. (Applause.)

Next, I’ll hop over to the cloud service autoscale. I just have a simple deployment here with a Web front end where my customers can come and, say, place T-shirt orders or other memorabilia. And this front end puts items into a queue, which I have a background worker role, which will go and pull items from this queue and process them for billing or shipping.

For the Web role, I’ve already configured autoscale based on CPU, just like you saw for websites with an instance range and a CPU range. But I also can configure a scale up button, which impacts the velocity by which I increase my capacity. I’ve chosen to scale up by two instances with only a five-minute cool down because I want to respond immediately and quickly to spikes in customer demand.

For my background worker role, it’s a little bit different. I don’t care as much about CPU; I care about how many items are waiting in the queue to be processed, how many orders I have to go through.

In this case, I’ve already configured autoscale based on queue depth by selecting a storage count and queue name, as well as the target number of items in that queue per machine.

In this case, as the queue gets bigger, we’ll add more machines. Imagine it’s the holidays and a bunch of new orders come in; we’ll make sure you have enough capacity to process it in real time.

And imagine it’s a Sunday night and not as many people are coming to your website and placing orders. We’ll go down to your minimum to save you even more money on your monthly Azure bill.

Lastly, I’ll hop over to virtual machines. Virtual machines are just like cloud services in that you configure autoscale for a set of virtual machines based on either CPU or queue.

For the virtual machines, you can choose minimum-maximum instances, and we’ll move you up and down within that range by turning on and turning off those machines. And with the recent announcement of no billing while the machine’s stopped, you don’t have to worry about being charged in this case.

As you can see, it just took a few minutes to configure autoscale across all these different compute resources. And that’s what the power of autoscale brings to Windows Azure. In just a few minutes, you can make sure your cloud application runs, stays up and running for the lowest possible cost. Thank you. (Applause.)

SCOTT GUTHRIE: So as Charles showed you, it’s super easy to configure autoscale and set it up so you can really take advantage of some great savings. He also mentioned, two of the improvements that we made earlier this month is the ability now to stop VMs without incurring any billing compute charge, as well as the ability to now bill per minute. This means that if you run your site or you run your VM for only 20 minutes, we’re only going to bill you for the 20 minutes that you actually run it instead of the full hour.

And when you combine all these features together, it really yields a massive cost savings over what you can do today in the cloud, but in particular, also over what you can do in an on-premises environment.

We’re really excited to announce that the preview of Windows Azure Autoscale is now live. And you can actually all try it out for free and start taking advantage of it today. (Applause.)

So let’s switch gears now and talk a little bit about enterprise integration and some of the things that we’re doing to make it even easier for you to build cloud apps and integrate them within your corporate or enterprise environment. Whether you’re an enterprise building your own apps or you also hear a little bit about how we’re enabling ISVs that are building SaaS-based solutions to sell into an enterprise environment and monetize even more effectively.

There are a whole bunch of services that we have built into Windows Azure in the identity space that makes it really easy to do this kind of enterprise identity integration so that you can define an Active Directory in the cloud using a service we call Windows Azure Active Directory.

You can basically have a cloud-only directory, meaning you only have one directory, and it’s in the cloud, and you put all your users in it.

What’s nice about Windows Azure Active Directory though is it also supports the ability where you can synchronize it with an on-premises Active Directory that you’re running on Windows Server. And this is great for enterprises or corporates that already have Active Directory installed. And it allows them to very easily synchronize all their users into the cloud and allow cloud-based applications to start using that directory very easily to authenticate and enable single sign-on for all their customers.

And what’s nice about Windows Azure Active Directory is it’s built using open standards. So we support SAML, OAuth, as well as WS Federation, which makes it really easy for you as developers to start authenticating and enabling single sign-on within all your apps using existing libraries and protocols that you already use.

So what I thought I’d do is actually walk through a simple example of how this week we’re making it even easier in order to take advantage of that.

So what I’m going to show here is just a simple example where we have a company called Contoso that has an Active Directory on premises. And they’re going to basically spin up an Azure Active Directory running inside Windows Azure. And they can synchronize their directory up into the cloud. That means all their users are now available there.

And what they can then do is they can start to build apps, whether they’re mobile apps, Web apps, or any other type of app, deploy them in the cloud, and now any of their employees when they go ahead and access that application can enable single sign-on using their existing enterprise credentials and be able to securely login and start using that app. Let’s go ahead and walk through some code on how we do that.

So what I’m standing in front of here is the Windows Azure Management Portal, which you already seen Scott and Josh and Charles walk through earlier today.

What I’m going to do is click on this Active Directory tab that’s within the portal, which allows me to control and configure my Windows Azure Active Directory.

And what you can see here is the Contoso directory has already been created. I’m creating directories inside Windows Azure; it’s actually free; it doesn’t cost anything. So every developer they want can create their own directory, and companies can very easily go ahead and populate their directory with their information.

You can see here this directory; I already have a number of users that are stored within it. If I want to, I could directly inside the admin tool create new users and manage them through the admin console.

I could also click that directory integration tab and then set up a sync relationship with my on-premises Active Directory. That means every time a user is added or updated inside my on-premises Active Directory, it’ll be automatically reflected inside Windows Azure as well.

So once I have this, I basically have a directory that I can use within my applications to authenticate users.

So let’s build a simple app using the new Visual Studio 2013 and the new ASP.NET release coming out this week and show how I could basically integrate that within a Web app.

So I’m going to use the same Web application template that Scott showed earlier. Call this Simple App.

I can choose whatever frameworks I want within it. I can also click this change authentication dialog box that Scott touched on briefly in his talk.

And what I’m going to do is I’m going to click this organizational accounts tab. And I can go ahead now and enter in the name of the domain of my company. You’ll notice inside this dropdown we’ve added support so that both for internal apps within an enterprise that want to target a single company, they can do it. We also support the ability if you want to develop a SaaS application and target multiple enterprise customers, you can go ahead and select that as well. (Applause.)

I can then go ahead and just enter the password here. What I’m doing here is just registering this application with Windows Azure. And I just hit create project, and what this is literally going to go ahead and do now is create for me an ASP.NET project using whatever framework that I wanted to specify as registering that application with Windows Azure. So it’s basically saying I’m going to do secure sign-on with it.

And now if I go ahead and run this application in the browser, it’s going to launch, and one of the first things you’ll see it do is because I’ve enabled Active Directory single sign-on, it’s just going to automatically show me a single sign-on screen. And right now, I’m on the Internet, so that’s why it’s going to prompt me with this in HTML. I can also set it up if I was in an intranet environment where I wouldn’t have to explicitly sign in.

But right now, I can sign in. And I’m just going to say Contoso Build.com. If I do this now, I’m logged into this ASP.NET. I’m logged in using my Active Directory account that the employee has. And I’ve literally in a matter of moments set this thing up where I’m actually now using the cloud in order to actually use a single sign-on provider.

What this means is not only can I run this thing locally, but I can now just right click and hit publish, and I can publish this as a website, I can publish this as a virtual machine or in a cloud service. And now any of the employees within my organization that access it are integrated with their existing enterprise security credentials and can do single sign-on within the application. (Applause.)

So this makes it really, really easy for you now to build your own custom applications, host them in the cloud, and enable enterprise security throughout.

What we’re also doing with Windows Azure Active Directory is making sure that not only can you host your own applications, but we also want to make it really easy for enterprises to be able to consume and integrate existing SaaS-based solutions and have the same type of single sign-on support with Active Directory as well.

This is great for enterprises because it suddenly means that they can go ahead and take advantage of all the great SaaS solutions that are out there, and they can start to integrate more and more apps with less friction into their enterprise environment. And it’s really great from an ISV and developer perspective because it now means that you can go ahead and build SaaS solutions and sell them to enterprises at a fraction of the friction that was required today. That makes it much easier to go ahead and show the value quickly, makes it much easier to onboard your enterprise customers, and at the end of the day, enables you to make a lot more money.

So what I’m going to do is walk through an example of how this works. So we’re going back to the Windows Azure portal. And we’ve got our users, like we had before here. I’m now going to click this applications tab as well. And what the applications tab does is it’s going to show me all of the apps that have been registered with this directory. So any of the custom apps that I would build would show up here.

You’ll notice also inside this list, we have a bunch of popular SaaS-based solutions that have already been registered with Contoso as well. So we’ve got Box, Basecamp, and many others.

What I can do now inside the Windows Azure portal if I’m an administrator of the directory is I can go ahead and just click add. Click this manage access to an application link. And what we’re integrating is SaaS-based directory of existing SaaS-based solutions that this organization can now seamlessly integrate as part of their Windows Azure Active Directory system.

So, for example, I could do popular ones like DocuSign or Dropbox or Evernote.

We’ve got ones you might not expect at a Microsoft conference. We’ve got Google Apps. We’ve got Salesforce.com. We even just for giggles enabled Amazon Web Services. (Laughter.) Some of these we’d like you to use more than others. (Laughter.) But regardless, you can add any of these, and basically once you just click add, they’ll show up in this list. And then all you need to do in order to integrate your single sign-on with one of these apps is drill into it.

So in this case here, I’m going to drill into Box. Basically, I can just hit configure. I can say I want to enable my users to authenticate the Box using my Windows Azure Active Directory. Just paste in my Box tenant URL, which is the URL I get from Box. And I just download and upload a cert in order to make sure that we have a secure connection.

And once I do that, I then basically have integrated my Active Directory with Box. I can then go ahead and hit configure user access. This will bring up my list of all the users within my Windows Azure Active Directory. I can then go ahead and click on any of them, click enable access.

You’ll notice we’ve even integrated if the SaaS provider has roles defined within their application, I cannot only give this user access to Box, but I can actually map which roles within the Box applications they should have access to. And then hit OK and then literally in a matter of seconds, that user is now provisioned on Box and they can now use their Active Directory credentials in order to do single sign-on to that SaaS application. (Applause.)

So I’m going to switch gears now and go to another machine. So I was showing you kind of the administrator experience for how an administrator would login or enable that. I’m now going to kind of show you the end-user experience of what this translates into. And once we set up that relationship with that particular employee, that employee can go ahead and just go to Box directly and use their Active Directory credentials to sign in.

Or one of the other things that we’ve done which we think is kind of cool is integrated the ability so that the company can expose the single dashboard of all the SaaS applications that they’ve configured that employees can just go ahead and bookmark.

So in this case here, going ahead and logging into this. So this is kind of an end-user experience. All of the apps, SaaS solutions, or custom apps that the administrator of Active Directory has gone ahead and said you have access to will show up in this list. So you can see the Box app that we’ve just provisioned shows up here now. And as more get added, we’ll just dynamically show up.

And then what the user can do is just go ahead and click on any of them in order to initiate a single sign-on relationship. And that’s how easy now our Contoso employee is now logged into Box. And they can now do all the standard Box operations now using their Active Directory against it. (Applause.)

The beauty about this model is not only is it super easy to set up, you saw both on the administrator side, as well as on the developer side, it’s really, really easy to integrate. But it also means from an enterprise perspective, they feel a lot more secure. It means that if the employee ever leaves the organization or their account is ever suspended, they basically lose all access to the SaaS applications that they’ve been using on the company’s behalf. So the company doesn’t have to worry about the data leaving or the employee still able to kind of login and make changes to their data. So it enables a very nice model there.

And I think from a developer perspective, you know, one of the things to think about in terms of what we’re enabling here is not only is it easy, but it’s going to enable you to reach a lot of customers. We have more than 3.2 million businesses that have already synced their on-premises Active Directory to the cloud and more than 68 million active users that login regularly using that system.

That basically means as a developer, as a company that wants to sell to enterprises, you’ve got an awesome market that you’re now able to go ahead and sell to and makes it real easy for you to monetize.

And what I thought I’d do is actually invite Aaron Levie, who is the co-founder and CEO of Box to actually come onstage and talk a little bit about what this means to Box and some of the kind of possibilities this opens up for them.

AARON LEVIE: Hey, how you doing? (Applause.) How’s it going? So I’m really excited to be here. At Box, we help businesses store, share, manage, and access information from anywhere. And we’re big supporters of Microsoft. We build for the Windows desktop, we build on Windows 8, build on Windows 8 Phone. We love to integrate our work with SharePoint. Unfortunately, they haven’t returned our email yet, but maybe spam filter, we don’t know what’s going on there.

But it’s really exciting to see sort of an all-new Microsoft. I think the amount of support for openness and heterogeneity is incredibly amazing. I think you normally wouldn’t have seen a development preview on top of a Mac or whatever. I was actually afraid that Bill Gates was going to drop down from the ceiling and rip it off. So that was really exciting to see.

So we’re really excited to be supporting Windows Azure Active Directory. It helps reduce the friction for customers to be able to deploy cloud solutions, and we think it’s going to be great for developers. We think that’s going to be great for startups and the ecosystem broadly.

SCOTT GUTHRIE: Yeah, we were talking a little bit earlier about some of the friction that it reduces. I don’t know maybe you could talk as an enterprise SaaS solution what that friction is like, and how does something like this help?

AARON LEVIE: Yeah, I mean, if you think about how the enterprise software industry for decades basically if you wanted to deploy software or technology in your enterprise, you had to build this sort of massive competency in managing infrastructure and managing services and managing new software that you want to deploy. And there was so much friction for implementing new solutions into your business. So any new problem that you wanted to solve, you had to have the exact same amount of technology that you had to implement per solution.

Even harder was getting things like the identity to integrate and getting the technology to actually talk to each other. The power of the cloud is that any business anywhere in the world — and we’re talking millions of businesses that now have access to these solutions — can instantly on-demand light up new tools.

And so what that means is when you have lower friction, when you have more openness, we’re going to see way more innovation. And that creates an environment where startups can be much more competitive, where we can build much better solutions, and I think the ecosystem broadly can actually expand. And the $290 billion that is spent every year on enterprise software today on-premises can massively move to the cloud, and we can actually expand the amount of market potential that there is between the ecosystem.

SCOTT GUTHRIE: That’s awesome. You know, we’re kind of excited on our side in terms of the opportunity both kind of to enable that kind of shift. How we can use Windows Azure, how we can use the cloud in order to provide sort of this great opportunity for developers to basically build solutions that really can reach everyone.

You know, I think one of the other things that’s just nice is sort of how we can actually interoperate and integrate with systems all over the place. And that’s across protocols, that’s across operating systems, that’s devices, that’s even across languages. And I think as Aaron mentioned, it’s going to open up a ton of possibilities. And at the end of the day, I think really provide a lot of economic opportunity out there, hopefully for everyone in the audience.

AARON LEVIE: Cool.

SCOTT GUTHRIE: So thanks so much, Aaron.

AARON LEVIE: Thanks a lot, appreciate it. See you. (Applause.)

SCOTT GUTHRIE: I’m really excited to say that everything that we just showed here from a developer API perspective, you can start plugging into and taking advantage of this week. We’ve got a lot of great sessions on Windows Azure Active Directory where you can learn more, and you can start taking advantage of all the tools that we are providing in ASP.NET and with the new version of .NET and VS to get started and make it really easy to do it.

We’re then going to go ahead and soon have a preview of the SaaS app management gallery that you can also start loading your applications into, and we’ll start taking advantage of as an enterprise. So we’re pretty excited about that, and we think, again, it’s going to offer a ton of opportunity.

So let’s switch gears now. We’ve talked a little bit about identity and how we’re trying to make it really easy for you to integrate that within an enterprise environment. I’m going to talk a little bit about the integration space more broadly, and in particular talk about how we’re also making it really easy to integrate data, as well as operations in a secure way into your enterprise environment as well.

And we’ve got a number of great services with Windows Azure that make it really easy to do so.

One of them is something that we first launched this month called Windows Azure BizTalk Services. And I’m pretty excited about this one in that it really allows me to dramatically simplify the integration process. For people that haven’t ever tried to integrate, say, an SAP system with one of their existing apps, or ever tried to integrate an SAP system with an existing SaaS-based solution, there’s an awful lot of work involved in terms of doing that both in terms of code, but also in terms of monitoring and making sure everything is secure. And these types of integration efforts can often go on for months or years as you integrate complex line-of-business systems across your enterprise.

What we’re trying to do with Windows Azure BizTalk Services is just dramatically lower that cost in a really quantum way. And basically with Windows Azure BizTalk services, you can stand up an integration hub in a matter of minutes inside the cloud. You can do full B2B EDI processing in the cloud so you can process orders and manage supply chains across your organization.

We’re also enabling enterprise application integration support so that you can very easily integrate lots of different disparate apps within your environment, as well as integrate them with cloud-based apps, both your own custom solutions, as well as SaaS-based apps that your enterprise wants to go ahead and take advantage of.

You know, we think the end result really is going to be a game-changer in the integration space and opens up a bunch of possibilities.

So what I thought I’d like to do is walk through just sort of a simple example of how you can use it. So I’m going to go back to our little Contoso company.

And they want to be able to consume and use a SaaS-based app that does travel management. We’ll call it Tailspin Travel. And they want to be able to do single sign-on with their employees so that their employees can login using their Active Directory credentials.

But to really make it useful, they also want to be able to tie in their travel information and policies with their existing ERP system on premises, and that poses a challenge, which is how do you securely open up your ERP system and enable a third party to have access to it? How do you monitor it? How do you make sure it’s really secure?

And so that’s where BizTalk services comes into play. So with BizTalk services, you can go to Windows Azure, you can very easily and very quickly stand up a Windows Azure BizTalk service. And then we have a number of adapters that you can go ahead and download and run on-premises to connect it up.

In particular, we have an SAP adapter. We also have Oracle adapters, Siebel adapters, JD Edwards adapters, and a whole bunch more. So, basically, without you having to write any code, you can actually just define what we call bridges, which make it really easy and secure for you to go ahead and expose just the functionality you want.

That SaaS app or your own custom app can then go ahead and call endpoints within Windows Azure BizTalk Services using just standard JSON or REST APIs, and then basically securely go through that bridge and execute and retrieve the appropriate data.

Again, it’s really simple to set this up. What I’d like to do is just walk through a simple example of how to do it in action.

So what I have here is kind of the end-user app that our Contoso employees will use. It’s a Web-based application. Again, our Tailspin Travel. You’ll notice that the users are already logged in using the Windows Azure Active Directory already within the app. So this app could be hosted anywhere on the Internet.

I could then create new trips as an employee, or I could go ahead and look at existing ones that I’ve already booked. So here’s one, this is the return trip from Build. Right now, I’m flying in economy. I don’t know, maybe it would be nice to get upgraded. So I can go ahead and try to enter that.

But you’ll notice here at the top when I do it, a few seconds later, I’ve got a policy violation that was surfaced directly inside the Tailspin Travel app. And basically it just was saying I can’t just do this myself; my manager actually has to go ahead and approve it. And it’s coming directly out of the SAP system of Contoso.

So how did this happen? Well, on the Tailspin Travel side, this is the SaaS app, they’re building it in .NET. This is basically a simple piece of code that they have, which allows them on the SaaS side to actually check whether or not this trip is in policy.

Basically, the way they’ve implemented it is they’re just making a standard REST call to some endpoint that’s configured for the Contoso tenant. And this doesn’t have to be implemented with Azure, doesn’t have to be implemented with .NET, it can be implemented anywhere. And it’s just making a standard REST call. And depending on that action, the SaaS app then goes ahead and does something.

So how do we implement this REST call? Well, we could implement it in a variety of different ways on Windows Azure. We could write our own custom REST endpoint and process the code and handle it that way. We have lots of great ways to do that. Now, the downside, though. The tricky part of this is not going to be so much implementing the REST API; it’s actually implementing all the logic to flow that call to an on-premises SAP system, get the information validated, and return it.

Again, that would typically require an awful lot of code if you needed to do that from scratch.

What I’m going to do here is switch here to the other machine. And walk through how we can use BizTalk services to dramatically simplify it.

So you can create a new BizTalk service. Go ahead and just say new app service, BizTalk service custom create. I could say Contoso endpoint. And literally just by walking through a couple wizards here and hitting OK, I can basically stand up my own BizTalk service inside the cloud hosted in a high-availability environment literally in a matter of minutes.

And for anyone who’s ever installed BizTalk Server or an integration hub themselves, they’ll know that typically that does not take a couple minutes. And the nice thing about the cloud is we can really kind of make this almost instantaneous.

Once the service is created, you get the same kind of nice dashboard view and quick start view that you saw Josh with Mobile Services. And so there are ways that you download the SDK. You can also monitor and scale up and scale down the service dynamically.

And then as a developer, I can just launch Visual Studio. I can say new project. I can say I want to create a new BizTalk service, which will define all the mapping rules and the bridge logic that I want to use.

This is one I’ve created earlier. You’ll notice here on the left in the Server Explorer we have a number of LOB adapters that are automatically loaded inside the Server Explorer, so I can connect through my SAP system directly and do that.

Add it to the design surface, and then I can create these bridges that I can either define declaratively; I can also write custom code using .NET in order to customize. Basically, I can just double-click it. This little WYSIWYG designer here lets me actually map the REST calls that I’m getting from that Tailspin Travel SaaS app, transform it, and then I can basically map it to my SAP system.

And you can see here in our schema designer, we basically allow you to do fairly complex mapping rules between any two formats. So here on the right-hand side, I have my SAP schema that’s stored in my on-premises environment; the left-hand side here, there’s that REST endpoint. This is a very simple example with a lot of these integration workflows. You might have literally thousands of fields that you’re mapping back and forth.

Once I do the mapping, though, all I need to do is just go ahead and hit deploy, and this will immediately upload it into my BizTalk Azure service and at that point, it’s live on the Web. I can then choose who do I want to give access to this bridge? And I can now securely start transferring just the information I want into and out of my enterprise.

For an IT professional, they can then go ahead and open up our admin tool. They can see all the bridges that have been defined. And then one of the things that we also build directly into Windows Azure BizTalk Services is automatic tracking support. And what this means is now the IT professional can actually see all of the calls that are going in and out of the enterprise. It’s all logged; it’s all audited so it’s fully compliant, and they can basically now keep track of exactly all the communication that’s going on to make sure that it’s in policy.

Literally, you saw all of this sort of a simple example here, but this really starts to open up tons of possibilities where you can integrate either with other SaaS out there that your organization wants to use, or as you want to start building your own custom business application and host within Windows Azure, you can now securely get access to your on-premises line-of-business capabilities and very securely manage it. (Applause.)

And I’m excited to announce that everything we just showed here, as well as everything I showed when I created that Active Directory app, is now available for you to start using. You can go to WindowsAzure.com, and you can start taking advantage of Windows Azure BizTalk Services today. (Applause.)

So I talked a little bit about how we’re making it easy to integrate enterprise systems with the cloud, both on the identity side as well as the integration side. The other side of enterprise grade services that we’re delivering fall into the data space. And here we’re really trying to make it easy for you to store any data you want in the cloud, any amount of data you want in the cloud, and be able to perform really rich analysis on top of it. And so with Windows Azure storage, we have a really powerful storage system that lets you store hundreds of terabytes, or even petabytes, of storage in any format that you want. We have NoSQL capabilities that are provided as part of that as well as raw block capability. With our SQL database support, we now have a relational engine in the cloud that you can use. You can very easily spin up relational databases literally in a matter of seconds and start using the same ADO.NET and SQL syntax features that you are familiar with today.

We also a few months ago launched a new service that we call HD Insight. This makes it really easy for you to spin up your own Hadoop cluster in the cloud, and that you can then go ahead and access any of this data that’s being stored and perform map reduce jobs on it. And what’s nice about how we’re doing HD Insight, like you’ve seen with a lot of the openness things that we’ve talked about throughout the day, is it’s built using the same Hadoop open source framework that you can download and use elsewhere. We’re actually contributors into the project now.

And with Windows Azure, it’s now trivially easy for you to spin up your own Hadoop cluster, be able to point at the data and immediately start getting insights from it, and starting to integrate it with your environment. And so I think in the next keynote later today, you’re actually going to see a demo of that in action. So I’ll save some of that for them.

But the key takeaway here is just sort of the combination of all these capabilities in identity integration and data space really we think are game-changers for the enterprise, really enable you to build modern business applications in the cloud. I think they’re going to be a lot of fun to use. So we look forward to seeing what you build.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

SATYA NADELLA: Thanks, Scott.

So one last thing I want to talk about is Office and Office 365 as a programmable surface area. We talked a lot about building SaaS applications using services, Scott talked about it. But what if you were a large developer, line-of-business application developer, or a SaaS application developer and could use all of the power of Office as part of your application? And that’s what we’re enabling with the programming surface area of Office.

What that means is the rich object model of Office, everything from the social graph, the identity, presence information, document workflows, document libraries, all of that is available for you to use using modern Web APIs within your application. You can, in fact, have the chrome either in the Office client or in SharePoint, and you can have the full power of the backend in Azure. And, of course, the idea is here is to be able to do all of that with first-class tool support.

To show you some of this in action, I wanted to invite up onstage Jay Schmelzer from our Visual Studio team to show you some of the rapid application development in Office.

Jay, come on in.

JAY SCHMELZER: Thank you. The requirements and expectations and importance of business applications has never been greater than it is today. Modern business applications need to access data available inside and outside the organization. They need to enable individuals across the organization to connect and easily collaborate with each other in rich and interesting ways. And the applications themselves need to be available on multiple different types of devices and form factors.

As developers, we need a platform that provides a set of services that meet the core requirements of these applications. And we need a toolset that allows us to productively build those applications while also integrating in with our existing dev ops processes across the organization.

What I want to show you this morning is a quick look at some things we’re still working on inside of Visual Studio to enable developers to build these modern business applications that extend the Office 365 experience leveraging those services available both from Office 365 and the Windows Azure platform.

And, of course, doing it inside of a Visual Studio experience that allows the developer to focus on unique aspects of their business, and their application, not spending as much time in boilerplate code.

To do that, we’re going to focus on the human resources department at Contoso, who has been using Office 365 to manage the active job positions across the organization. And we want to create a new application that allows individuals in the company to submit potential candidates for open positions from within their Office 365 site using whichever device they happen to have available at the time.

To do that, we’ll switch over to Visual Studio, and we’ll see that we have a new Office 365 Cloud Business app project template available to us. This project goes and builds on the existing apps for Office and apps for SharePoint capabilities that are surfaced as part of that new cloud app model Satya was talking about. And it provides us a prescriptive solution structure for building a modern business application.

I mentioned data is a core part of this, and you see we’ve already started creating the definition for a new table that we’ll use to store our potential candidates. What Office 365 Cloud Business apps does for us is surface additional data types that provide access to these core capabilities of the Office 365 and Windows Azure platform.

Some examples of that we see here that the referred by is typed as a person, giving us access to all the capabilities in Office 365 associated with that Office 365 or Azure Active Directory user. The document, their resume, is stored as a typed document. So we can store it in a document library, and it leverages the rich content management and workflow capabilities associated with Office documents.

We also need to be able to go and pull in data from elsewhere. In our case, we want to go and grab data from that existing SharePoint list the human resources team is using to manage active positions, so that our users can choose a potential position they think those candidates are appropriate for. You see, I’ve already added that, so it’s in my project.

We’ll just go and connect it up between the candidate and our job postings, specify the relationship, and say OK. And now we have this virtual relationship between our Office 365 list and our SQL Azure Database.

OK, the next thing we want to do, though, is really enable that people interaction. If you notice, when I look over here at the candidate, if I select this, you’ll see right from here I have the ability to have the application interact with my corporate social network on my behalf as I’m doing interesting things in the application.

So we have the data model defined. The next thing we need to do is create the UI model. Users of business applications today expect a modern look and feel, a modern experience, but they also want it to be consistent. Visual Studio gives you great ways of doing this for providing a set of patterns that are going to be consistent across your applications. We’ll select a browse pattern, just choose, or the default pattern, choose the table we care about, and now let Visual Studio go and create for us a set of experiences for browsing, viewing, editing and updating that candidate information.

So we have our data model. We have our UI model. The last thing we want to do is go in and actually write some business logic. In this case, back on the entity designer, we’ll go in, and we’ll leverage the data pipeline where we can interact with data moving in and out of the application. In this case, we’ll use our validate. And what we’ll do is, we’ll just go in and make sure that the only folks that can go and actually set or modify the interview date are members of the HR department. And here’s another example where we see the power of surfacing those underlying platform capabilities. I’m able to reach in to the current user, into their Azure Active Directory settings, and grab the current department and validate it against the checks we want to make.

Let’s go ahead and set a breakpoint here. I think we’re probably in good shape. Anyway, so we’re going to launch the application, and Visual Studio is going to go package this up, send the manifest off to our remote Office 365 developer site, and then launch our application. We have no candidates yet, so we’ll create a new one. Last night when we were talking about this stuff, Scott seemed pretty excited about what we’re doing. So maybe he would be an interesting person for us to work with.

When I go in and actually start specifying who it is that’s going to refer this person, you see I’m by default getting the list of the users available on this Office 365 site because I typed that it’s a person. So we’ll select Jim there, one of our team members, go ahead and upload a document that is Scott’s resume. And we’ll specify an interview date, maybe we’ll go out here into September.

The last thing we want to do is go choose which of the positions we think is appropriate to Scott. He’s going to be new to the team, so we’ll maybe choose a little more junior role for him so that he can be successful. We hit save. If we’d actually set that breakpoint, we would see our business logic would have been executed, and we would be able to get that rich debugging experience you’ve come to know and expect from Visual Studio.

We now see we have our candidate. When I drill in and look at it, you see that we’re getting that consistency of experience. I’m getting presence information for the person. When I hover over it, we see the contact card. A little misplaced, but if I want to have a conversation with Jim right now, I can go ahead and do that right from within the application just because we’ve leveraged those underlying capabilities. Of course, in the document we can see the properties of the document. We can view it in the Web application right from the site, or we can follow it if we want to do that as well.

I noticed one thing here; I’ve got this extra ID showing up. So let me go flip over to Visual Studio, and we’ll look at the View Candidate page. And just like we can with any other Web development, we can just go in here and while the application is running we’ll just remove that. We’ll save those changes, flip back over here, just kind of do a little quick refresh, and now when I go in you’ll see that, hey, that extraneous value is no longer there.

The other thing you’ll notice is that in addition to the values we specified for our SQL data, we also have built in the ability to do the basic tracking of, hey, who was the last person who created or modified this record, just core requirements of a business application.

The last thing we’ll look at is on the newsfeed we’re going to click over to that, and you’ll see that the application has gone and interacted on my behalf, right, and entered things into our internal social network, letting people know that, hey, I just submitted somebody as a potential new candidate. So if you folks want to follow them, and so forth.

OK. Our application is looking good. It’s time to go get it integrated with our existing dev ops processes. To do that, we’ll just go over here to the solution explorer, we’ll right click on the solution, and we’ll start by adding this to source code control. In this case, we’ll add it to our Team Foundation Service instance. We’ll go right click; we’ll go check in all these changes that we just made, and while that’s happening I’m going to switch over and take a look at some of the build environments we have established in our Team Foundation Service.

In this case. we’ll see that we have an existing build definition for HR jobs. If I look at that definition, we’ll see that the things I can do is I can switch it to now be continuous, so that as we check in code we can go move on. The other interesting thing is here we’ve got a custom process template that understands how to take the output of the build and deploy it into our Office 365 test site. So this is all just basic power, and this is all built on the underlying technologies and capabilities inside of Visual Studio. That also means we can extend this beyond the SharePoint experience into the Office client experiences, as well.

So here I’ve also built a mail app that allows me to go and prepopulate information in the application from the content of the mail and shove it right into creating a new user, without having to go directly into the application. Hopefully with that, you got a really quick look at some things we’re still working on in Visual Studio, to enable developers to build modern business applications, extending the Office 365 experience, building on the capabilities of Office 365 and the Windows Azure platform.

Thank you very much.

SATYA NADELLA: Thanks, Jay. Thank you.

So hopefully, you got a feel for how you can rapidly build these Office applications, but more importantly, how you could compose these applications you build with, in fact, your full line of business application on Azure and enrich your SAS app, or your line of business enterprise app. I’m very, very pleased to announce that there is a subscription of my Office 365 Home Premium for 12 months that’s going to come to you via email later this afternoon. We hope you enjoy that subscription. (Applause.)

And I know everyone in the room is also perhaps an MSDN subscriber. So we are continuing to improve MSDN benefits. One of the things that we are doing with Windows Azure is to make it very, very easy for you to be able to do dev tests. So now you can use your dev test licenses on Windows Azure. In fact, the cost and the pricing for that is such that you can probably share something like 97 percent of your dev test expenses. We’re also going to give you credits based on your various levels of MSDN. So if you’re a premium subscriber, you get $100, which you can use across your VMs, databases, as well as doing things like load testing. So fantastic benefits I would encourage everyone to go take advantage of it. And also to reduce the friction even further, we have now made it possible for any MSDN subscriber to be able to sign up to Azure without any credit card. I know this is something that many of you have asked for. We’re really pleased to do that. (Applause.)

We had a whirlwind tour of the backend technologies. Really with Windows Azure, we think we now have a robust platform for you to be able to do your modern application development for a modern business. It could be Web, mobile, or this cloud scale and enterprise grade. So hope you get a chance to play with it. We welcome all the feedback, and have a great rest of the Build.

Thank you very, very much.

END

Proper Oracle Java, Database and WebLogic support in Windows Azure including pay-per-use licensing via Microsoft + the same Oracle software supported on Microsoft Hyper-V as well

June 25, 2013 2:40 pm / 4 Comments on Proper Oracle Java, Database and WebLogic support in Windows Azure including pay-per-use licensing via Microsoft + the same Oracle software supported on Microsoft Hyper-V as well

While with the latter Hyper-V is gaining significant market advantage against the VMware vSphere it is even more important that Windows Azure is becoming a true open cloud computing platform, especially by fully supporting Java and Oracle developers (in addition to existing .NET and various web developers), and Oracle cloud offerings are also vastly extended, especially in the crucially important “pay-per-use” space as the cloud offerings of the Oracle software so far have been only:
– Oracle [Public] Cloud (Larry Ellison’s Oracle Cloud Announcement Highlights [Oracle YouTube channel, July 6, 2012] for when it was finally delivered and TechCast Live Introducing Oracle Public Cloud [Oracle YouTube channel, Dec 9, 2011] when it was pre-announced) which has application solutions in the cloud as well
– Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle available with “pay-per-use” (officially named “license included” by AWS, earlier named “on-demand hourly”) licensing since Q2 2011 (Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server came a year later), as well as Oracle Fusion Middleware (which includes the GlassFish Java application server and the WebLogic web application server), and Oracle Enterprise Manager licensed in the AWS Cloud

The essence according to Java and other Oracle software heads to the Microsoft cloud [Ars Technica, June 24, 2013]

Microsoft and Oracle may compete head to head in many ways within the database realm, but today the two companies performed the most sweeping cross-join ever as executives from the two companies announced a broad partnership around cloud computing. In a conference call this afternoon, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Oracle President Mark Hurd discussed a partnership between the companies that will bring Oracle platforms—including Java middleware—into Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

Oracle has moved to certify and support its products, including Oracle WebLogic, the Oracle database, and Oracle Linux, for Azure and Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. “At the highest level, this partnership extends Oracle’s support of Windows Server to also include Windows Hyper-V and Windows Azure as supported platforms,” Ballmer said.

Oracle will provide full license mobility, Ballmer added, so that customers can move existing Oracle software licenses from on-premises physical or virtual servers to virtual servers on Hyper-V and in the Azure cloud. “There’s an immediate benefit for our customers,” he said. Support of Oracle’s database and application server products, and of Oracle Linux, is available immediately starting today.

Microsoft also agreed to license Oracle’s enterprise Java run-time and APIs and make Java “a first class runtime in Windows Azure, fully licensed and fully supported by Oracle” according to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s president of Microsoft Corporation’s Server and Tools Business. Previously, Microsoft offered open Java SDKs, he said. “Now we have the licensed [Oracle] Java stack, plus the [Oracle] middleware stack, available. We think it makes Java more first class within Azure.”

Hurd said that in addition to allowing existing licenses to be moved into the Azure cloud, Microsoft would provide a mechanism to obtain licenses on demand “for those who don’t have licenses for Oracle or Java.” Nadella emphasized that Microsoft would “make it easier to spin up Oracle software in Azure with pay-as-you-go licenses,” including pre-built Oracle Linux images that can be deployed in Azure as server instances.

Oracle has been pursuing its own cloud strategy, but Hurd said he saw “nothing but good” coming from a partnership with Microsoft. “I think it just makes sense for us to continue to improve our capabilities but also form partnerships like this,” he said. “Java is the most popular development platform in the world. The fact that more people will get access to our IP is favorable.”

A general business media opinion:
Rivals Microsoft, Oracle bonding in the cloud [The Seattle Times, June 24, 2013]

The partnership looks to be a good move for both companies, while being bad for mutual competitor VMware, said veteran Microsoft and Oracle analyst Rick Sherlund, of investment bank Nomura.

Back in the day, Microsoft and Oracle were bitter rivals, competing over providing database and server products and trading barbs during the U.S. government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s.

Now they’re holding hands and looking at a future together.

Microsoft and Oracle announced Monday a cloud partnership in which customers will be able to run Oracle software (including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server) on Microsoft’s Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure. Oracle will provide certification and full support.

Oracle Linux will also be made available to Windows Azure customers.

…

“I think they need each other,” Sherlund said. “They’re cooperating in areas that are mutually beneficial.”

Microsoft is getting Oracle’s support for Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor technology, which allows companies to run virtual servers. That’s important because Hyper-V competes against VMware, which is dominant in the server virtualization market. And many of the businesses that would be interested in such technology already use some Oracle software.

“It’s an advantage for Microsoft to be able to say: ‘All this Oracle stuff runs on Hyper-V,’ ” said Sherlund, who added that Oracle does not support VMware’s vSphere.

The move likely also allows Microsoft to say it’s being open with its Azure platform.

“That’s the rap you have against Microsoft: That it’s all the Microsoft platform,” Sherlund said. “If you’re in the cloud, it’s good that you’re supporting other platforms.”

Oracle, meanwhile, has traditionally delivered its software to its customers’ own premises. Now that it’s focusing more on delivering its software as services, it’s “motivated to make sure that [the services are] available on a lot of different cloud platforms,” Sherlund said. “So that’s good for Oracle.”

…

… these days, both companies are battling newer competition from the likes of VMware and Seattle-based Amazon.com.

Ballmer and Oracle President Mark Hurd said during the conference call after Monday’s announcement that their two companies would continue to compete.

But, Ballmer said, “the relationship between the two companies has evolved … in a very positive and constructive manner on a number of fronts.”

Hurd said, “The cloud is the tipping point that made this all happen.”

Hurd said Oracle would continue to offer its own public, private and hybrid platforms. But the fact that Java will be accessible to programmers who work in Windows Azure “is a good thing for us. … The fact that more people get access to our IP is favorable,” he said. “It’s good for our customers and therefore good for Oracle.”

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had also said last week that the company would be announcing partnerships with Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

And an ICT analyst opinion: ORACLE EMBRACING THE BROADER CLOUD LANDSCAPE [James Staten on Forrester blogs, June 24, 2013]

It’s easy to accuse Oracle of trying to lock up its customers, as nearly all its marketing focuses on how Oracle on Oracle (on Oracle) delivers the best everything, but today Ellison’s company and Microsoft signed a joint partnership that empowers customer choice and ultimately will improve Oracle’s relevance in the cloud world.

The Redwood Shores, California software giant signed a key partnership with Microsoft that endorses Oracle on Hyper-V and Windows Azure, which included not just bring-your-own licenses but pay-per-use pricing options. The deal came as part of a Java licensing agreement by Microsoft for Windows Azure, which should help Redmond increase the appeal of its public cloud to a broader developer audience. Forrester’s Forrsights Developer Survey Q1 2013 shows that Java and .Net are the #2 and #3 languages used by cloud developers (HTML/Javascript is #1). The Java license does not extend to Microsoft’s other products, BTW.

This deal gives Microsoft clear competitive advantages against two of its top rivals as well. It strengthens Hyper-V against VMware vSphere, as Oracle software is only supported on OracleVM and Hyper-V today. It gives Windows Azure near equal position against Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud platform wars, as the fully licensed support covers all Oracle software (customers bring their own licenses), and pay-per-use licenses will be resold by Microsoft for WebLogic Server, Oracle Linux, and the Oracle database. AWS has a similar support relationship with Oracle and resells the middleware, database, and Oracle Enterprise Manager, plus offers RDS for Oracle, a managed database service.

Bring your own license terms aren’t ideal in the per-hour world of cloud platforms, so the pay-per-use licensing arrangements are key to Oracle’s cloud relevance. While this licensing model is limited today, it opens the door to a more holistic move by Oracle down the line. Certainly Oracle would prefer that customers build and deploy their own Fusion applications on the Oracle Public Cloud, but the company is wisely acknowledging the market momentum behind AWS and Windows Azure and ensuring Oracle presence where its customers are going. These moves are also necessary to combat the widespread use of open source alternatives to Oracle’s middleware and database products on these new deployment platforms.

While we can all argue about Oracle’s statements made in last week’s quarterly earnings call about being the biggest cloud company or having $1B in cloud revenue, it is clearly no longer up for debate as to whether Oracle is embracing the move to cloud. The company is clearly making key moves to cloud-enable its portfolio. Combine today’s moves with its SaaS acquisitions, investments in cloud companies and its own platform as a service, and the picture clearly emerges of a company moving aggressively into cloud.

I guess CEO Ellison no longer feels cloud is yesterday’s business as usual.

Microsoft and Oracle announce enterprise partnership [joint press release, June 24, 2013]

Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. today announced a partnership that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Customers will be able to deploy Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full support from Oracle. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As part of this partnership, Oracle will certify and support Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Microsoft will also offer Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to Windows Azure customers, and Oracle will make Oracle Linux available to Windows Azure customers.

Java developers, IT professionals and businesses will benefit from the flexibility to deploy fully supported Oracle software to Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure.

“Microsoft is deeply committed to giving businesses what they need, and clearly that is the ability to run enterprise workloads in private clouds, public clouds and, increasingly, across both,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Now our customers will be able to take advantage of the flexibility our unique hybrid cloud solutions offer for their Oracle applications, middleware and databases, just like they have been able to do on Windows Server for years.”

“Our customers’ IT environments are changing rapidly to meet the dynamic nature of the world today,” said Oracle President Mark Hurd. “At Oracle, we are committed to providing greater choice and flexibility to customers by providing multiple deployment options for our software, including on-premises, as well as public, private, and hybrid clouds. This collaboration with Microsoft extends our partnership and is important for the benefit of our customers.”

Additional information about support and the licensing mobility changes that went into effect today is available on Oracle’s blog at https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud/entry/oracle_and_microsoft_join_forces.

Oracle and Microsoft Expand Choice and Flexibility in Deploying Oracle Software in the Cloud [Oracle Cloud Solutions blog, June 24, 2013]

Oracle and Microsoft have entered into a new partnership that will help customers embrace cloud computing by providing greater choice and flexibility in how to deploy Oracle software.

Here are the key elements of the partnership:

Effective today, our customers can run supported Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure
Effective today, Oracle provides license mobility for customers who want to run Oracle software on Windows Azure
Microsoft will add Infrastructure Services instances with popular configurations of Oracle software including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to the Windows Azure image gallery
Microsoft will offer fully licensed and supported Java in Windows Azure
Oracle will offer Oracle Linux, with a variety of Oracle software, as preconfigured instances on Windows Azure

Oracle’s strategy and commitment is to support multiple platforms, and Microsoft Windows has long been an important supported platform. Oracle is now extending that support to Windows Server Hyper-V and Window Azure by providing certification and support for Oracle applications, middleware, database, Java and Oracle Linux on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure. As of today, customers can deploy Oracle software on Microsoft private clouds and Windows Azure, as well as Oracle private and public clouds and other supported cloud environments.

For information related to software licensing in Windows Azure, see Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment.

Also, Oracle Support policies as they apply to Oracle software running in Windows Azure or on Windows Server Hyper-V are covered in two My Oracle Support (MOS) notes which are shown below:

MOS Note 1563794.1 Certified Software on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V – NEW

…

MOS Note 417770.1 Oracle Linux Support Policies for Virtualization and Emulation – UPDATED

…

Explanation for that is in Partners in the enterprise cloud [Satya Nadella on the The Official Microsoft Blog, June 24, 2013]

As longtime competitors, partners and industry leaders, Microsoft and Oracle have worked with enterprise customers to address business and technology needs for over 20 years. Many customers rely on Microsoft infrastructure to run mission-critical Oracle software and have for over a decade. Today, we are together extending our work to cover private cloud and public cloud through a new strategic partnership between Microsoft and Oracle. This partnership will help customers embrace cloud computing by improving flexibility and choice while also preserving the first-class support that these workloads demand.

As part of this partnership Oracle will certify and support Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure. That means customers who have long enjoyed the ability to run Oracle software on Windows Server can run that same software on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and take advantage of our enterprise grade virtualization platform and public cloud. Oracle customers also benefit from the ability to run their Oracle software licenses in Windows Azure with new license mobility. Customers can enjoy the support and license mobility benefits, starting today.

In the near future, we will add Infrastructure Services instances with preconfigured versions of Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server for customers who do not have Oracle licenses. Also, Oracle will enable customers to obtain and launch Oracle Linux images on Windows Azure.

We’ll also work together to add properly licensed, and fully supported Java into Windows Azure – improving flexibility and choice for millions of Java developers and their applications. Windows Azure is, and will continue to be, committed to supporting open source development languages and frameworks, and after today’s news, I hope the strength of our commitment in this area is clear.

The cloud computing era – or, as I like to call it, the enterprise cloud era – calls for bold, new thinking. It requires companies to rethink what they build, to rethink how they operate and to rethink whom they partner with. We are doing that by being “cloud first” in everything we do. From our vision of a Cloud OS – a consistent platform spanning our customer’s private clouds, service provider clouds and Windows Azure – to the way we partner to ensure that the applications our customers use run, fully supported, in those clouds.

We look forward to working with Oracle to help our customers realize this partnership’s immediate, and future, benefits. And we look forward to providing our customers with the increased flexibility and choice that comes from providing thousands of Oracle customers, and millions of Oracle developers, access to Microsoft’s enterprise grade public and private clouds. It’s a bold partnership for a bold new enterprise era.

IMPORTANT: for Java developers this strategic partnership will be really important when the latest versions will be covered on Windows Azure, see:
– Java EE 7 / GlassFish 4.0 Launch Coverage [Oracle’s The Aquarium blog, Jan 12, 2013]

Java EE 7, the standard in community-driven enterprise software, is now available. Back in April, Java EE 7 completed the JCP final approval ballot. Today, developers can learn all about Java EE 7 during the Java EE 7 Live Web Event, and get some hands-on experience with the arrival of the Java EE 7 SDK and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0. Of course, others have quite a bit to say about Java EE 7 as well, and this is just for starters:

Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (Press release)
Oracle Officially Launching Java EE 7 and GlassFish 4 Today (InfoQ)
Talking Java EE 7 with Anil Gaur, Vice President of software development at Oracle(JaxEnter)
GlassFish 4 brings Java EE 7 (DZone / Markus Eisele)
Java EE 7 Recipes and Introducing Java EE 7 (Josh Juneau)
Java EE 7 and GlassFish Day at CloudBees (CloudBees)
NetBeans 7.3.1 with Java EE 7 Support (NetBeans)
What’s new in GlassFish 4 (C2B2)
Java Magazine – Java EE 7 (Oracle)
Oracle releases Java EE 7 with eye on HTML5 development (InfoWorld/Computerworld)
Fifteen Java EE APIs Featured in the Java Spotlight Podcast (Oracle)
Oracle releases Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (ZDNet)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (MarketWatch)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (MCPro)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (Data Manager Online)
Java EE 7 officially launches, bringing HTML5 and WebSocket support (jaxenter)
New Java EE 7 and GlassFish Support in OEPE 12.1.1.2.2 (Oracle)
Working with Eclipse and GlassFish (Gerry Tan)
Java EE 7 melds HTML5 with enterprise apps (The Register)
Oracle Delivers Java EE 7 with HTML5 Support (eWeek)
Java grows up in the enterprise (Holger)
Java EE 7 tutorial released (Java Tutorials)
No Clouds, Only Sunshine (Markus Eisele)
Reference implementation for Java EE: GlassFish 4.0 Released (Markus Eisele)
Newly released NetBeans IDE 7.3.1 Introduces Java EE 7 Support (Geertjan Wielenga)

– Java EE 7 SDK and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0 Now Available [Arun Gupta, Miles to go … weblog among Oracle technical blogs, June 12, 2013]

Java EE 7 (JSR 342) is now final!

I’ve delivered numerous talks on Java EE 7 and related technologies all around the world for past several months. I’m loaded with excitement to share that the Java EE 7 platform specification and implementation is now in the records.

The platform has three major themes:

Deliver HTML5 Dynamic Scalable Applications

Reduce response time with low latency data exchange using WebSocket
Simplify data parsing for portable applications with standard JSON support
Deliver asynchronous, scalable, high performance RESTful Service

Increase Developer Productivity

Simplify application architecture with a cohesive integrated platform
Increase efficiency with reduced boiler-plate code and broader use of annotations
Enhance application portability with standard RESTful web service client support

Meet the most demanding enterprise requirements

Break down batch jobs into manageable chunks for uninterrupted OLTP performance
Easily define multithreaded concurrent tasks for improved scalability
Deliver transactional applications with choice and flexibility

This “pancake” diagram of the major components helps understand how the components work with each other to provide a complete, comprehensive, and integrated stack for building your enterprise and web applications. The newly added components are highlighted in the orange color:

In this highly transparent and participatory effort, there were 14 active JSRs:

342: Java EE 7 Platform
338: Java API for RESTful Web Services 2.0
339: Java Persistence API 2.1
340: Servlet 3.1
341: Expression Language 3.0
343: Java Message Service 2.0
344: JavaServer Faces 2.2
345: Enteprise JavaBeans 3.2
346: Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.1
349: Bean Validation 1.1
352: Batch Applications for the Java Platform 1.0
353: Java API for JSON Processing 1.0
356: Java API for WebSocket 1.0
236: Concurrency Utilities for Java EE 1.0

The newly added components are highlighted in bold.

And 9 Maintenance Release JSRs:

250: Common Annotations 1.2
322: Connector Architecture 1.7
907: Java Transaction API 1.2
196: Java Authentication Services for Provider Interface for Containers
115: Java Authorization for Contract for Containers
919: JavaMail 1.5
318: Interceptors 1.2
109: Web Services 1.4
245: JavaServer Pages 2.3

Ready to get rolling ?

Binaries

Java EE 7 SDK
GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0

Tools

NetBeans 7.3.1
GlassFish Tools for Kepler(Technology Preview)
Maven Coordinates

Docs

Java EE 7 Whitepaper
Java EE 7 Tutorial (html pdf)
First Cup Sample Application
Java EE 7 Hands-on Lab
Javadocs (online download)
Specifications
All-in-one GlassFish Documentation Bundle

A few articles have already been published on OTN:

What’s new in JMS 2.0: Part 2 (Jun 2013)
What’s new in JMS 2.0: Part 1 (May 2013)
Java EE 7 and JAX-RS 2.0 (Apr 2013)
JSR 356, Java API for WebSocket (Apr 2013)
Ten ways in which JMS 2.0 means writing less code (Apr 2013)
Higher Productivity and Embracing HTML5 with Java EE 7 (Feb 2013)

And more are coming!

This blog has also published several TOTD on Java EE 7:

TOTD #212: WebSocket Client and Server Endpoint
TOTD# 211: Chunked Step using Batch Applications
TOTD #210: Consuming and Producing JSON using JAX-RS Entity Providers
TOTD #203: Concurrency Managed Objects
TOTD #202: Resource Library Contracts in JSF 2.2
TOTD #199: Java EE 7 and NetBeans IDE
TOTD #198: JSF 2.2 Faces Flow
TOTD #196: Default DataSource in Java EE 7
TOTD #194: JAX-RS Client API and GlassFish 4
TOTD #192: Batch Applications in Java EE 7
TOTD #191: Simple JMS 2.0 Sample
TOTD #189: Collaborative Whiteboard using WebSocket in GlassFish 4
TOTD #188: Non-blocking I/O using Servlet 3.1

All the JSRs have been covered in the Java Spotlight podcast:

#136: Paul Parkinson on JSR 907/JTA 1.2
#135: Marina Vatkina on JSR 318/Interceptors 1.2
#134: Kin-man Chung on JSR 341/Expresion Language 3.0
#133: Sivakumar Thyagarajan on JSR 322/Connectors 1.7
#132: Shing-Wai Chan on JSR 340/Servlet 3.1
#131: Nigel Deaking on JSR 343/JMS 2.0
#130: Santiago Pericas-Geertsen on JSR 339/JAX-RS 2.0
#129: Anthony Lai on JSR 236/Concurrency Utilities for Java EE 1.0
#126: Jitendra Kotamraju on JSR 353/JSON 1.0
#124: Chris Vignola from JSR 352/Batch 1.0
#119: Emmanuel Bernard on JSR 349/Bean Validation 1.1
#117: Danny Coward on JSR 356/WebSocket 1.0
#115: Ed Burns on JSF 344/JSF 2.2
#109: Pete Muir on JSR 346/CDI 1.1
#90: Marina Vatkina on JSR 345/EJB 3.2
#84: Anil Gaur on JSR 342/Java EE 7

The latest issue of Java Magazine is also loaded with tons of Java EE 7 content:

Media coverage has started showing as well …

Official Oracle PR
JaxEnter.com
InfoQ

And you can track lot more here.
You can hear the latest and greatest on Java EE 7 by watching replays from the launch webinar:

This webinar consists of:

Strategy Keynote
Technical Keynote
16 Technical Breakouts with JSR Specification Leads
Customer, partner, and community testimonials
And much more

Do you feel enabled and empowered to start building Java EE 7 applications ?
Just download Java EE 7 SDK that contains GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0, tutorial, samples, documentation and much more.
Enjoy!

Previous situation:

From Oracle Database Cloud Service [Oracle presentation, Feb 15, 2013]

as well as: New Java Resources for Windows Azure! [Windows Azure blog, July 31, 2012]

… Make the Windows Azure Java Developer Center your first stop for details about developing and deploying Java applications on Windows Azure. We continue to add content to that site, and we’ll describe some of the recent additions in this blog.

Using Virtual Machines for your Java Solutions

We rolled out Windows Azure Virtual Machines as a preview service last month; if you’d like to see how to use Virtual Machines for your Java solutions, check out these new Java tutorials. …

New in Access Control

Included in the June 2012 Windows Azure release is an update to the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java (by Microsoft Open Technologies). …

The Java part of this partnership is dating back to GlassFish and Java EE 6 everywhere, even in the Azure cloud! [Oracle’s The Aquarium blog, Jan 18, 2011]

Microsoft’s technical architect David Chou has a detailed blog entry on how to run a recent GlassFish 3.1 build on the Microsoft Azure Platform (wikipedia). The article builds on this other recent blog entry on running Java applications in Azure and adds GlassFish-specific instructions.

In Azure terminology, the article discusses setting up a Worker Role using Visual Studio, reserving Ports, setting up a Startup Task (for the JVM), and configuring the Service, GlassFish in this case. This uses Windows Server 2008 (a GlassFish supported platform) and a zip install of GlassFish.

It’s early days (need best practices on working around some of the cloud-inherent limitations) but with this support of GlassFish, the Azure platform now has full support for Java EE 6!

which then was followed with a Java wishlist for Windows Azure [Arun Gupta, Miles to go … weblog among Oracle technical blogs, Feb 11, 2011]

TOTD #155 explains how to run GlassFish in Windows Azure. It works but as evident from the blog, its not easy and intuitive. It uses Worker Role to install JDK and GlassFish but the concepts used are nothing specific to Java. Microsoft has released Azure SDK for Java and AppFabric SDK for Java which is a good start but there are a few key elements missing IMHO. These may be known issues but I thought of listing them here while my memory is fresh 🙂

Here is my wish list to make Java a better on Windows Azure:

Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse has “PHP Development Toolkit” and “Azure SDK for Java” but no tooling from the Java perspective. I cannot build a Java/Java EE project and say “Go Deploy it to Azure” and then Eclipse + Azure do the magic and provide me with a URL of the deployed project.
Why do I need to configure IIS on my local Visual Studio development for deploying a Java project ?
Why do I have to explicitly upload my JDK to Azure Storage ? I’d love to specify an element in the “ServiceConfiguration” or where ever appropriate which should take care of installing JDK for me in the provisioned instance. And also set JAVA_HOME for me.
Allow to leverage clustering capabilities of application servers such as GlassFish. This will also provide session-failover capabilities on Azure 🙂
Sticky session load balancing.
If Windows VM crashes for some reason then App Fabric restarts it which is good. But I’d like my Java processes to be monitored and restarted if they go kaput. And accordingly Load Balancer switches to the next available process in the cluster.
Visual Studio tooling is nice but allow me to automate/script the deployment of project to Azure.
Just like Web, Worker, and VM role – how about a Java role ?
And since this is a wishlist, NetBeans is the best IDE for Java EE 6 development. Why not have a NetBeans plugin for Azure ?
A better integration with Java EE APIs and there are several of them – JPA, Servlets, EJB, JAX-RS, JMS, etc.
The “happy scenario” where every thing works as expected is fine is good but that rarely happens in software development. The availabilty of debugging information is pretty minimal during the “not so happy scenario”. Visual Studio should show more information if the processes started during “Launch.ps1” cannot start correctly for some reason.

And I’m not even talking about management, monitoring, adminstration, logging etc.

Thank you Microsoft for a good start with Java on Azure but its pretty basic right now and needs work. I’ll continue my exploration!

Christmas is coming later this year … and I’ll be waiting 🙂

Experiencing the Cloud

Category Archives: Enterprise computing

Dell’s all Intel tablets and laptops targeting the evolving mobile workforce even with their most consumer specific Android tablets

Read also: The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14-26, 2013]

Dell messages:

While at least one media source, CNET was much more Microsoft/Windows focussed:

Press release from the company:

Dell Introduces New Line of Tablets and Updated XPS Laptops: Create, Share and Access Content from Virtually Anywhere [Oct 2, 2013]

Amazon’s move into overall leadership: Kindle Fire HDX with Snapdragon 800, “revolutionary on-device tech support” (Mayday), enterprise and productivity capable Fire OS 3.0 forked from Android 4.2.2 etc. PLUS a significantly enhanced, new Kindle Fire HD for a much lower, $139 price

We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices.

Important notes regarding pricing and global availability (including Amazon Appstore for Android):

As of Sept 27, 2013 the All-New Kindle Fire HDX 7″ Tablet, All-New Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ Tablet and the All-New Kindle Fire HD 7″ Tablet seem to be not available globally (?because pre-order?)

www.amazon.com/maydaytv – www.amazon.com/fireos – www.amazon.com/origami – www.amazon.com/quickpic i.e. the links from the above slide (created by me) in order to be able to click from here as well

Source: Compare Kindle Fire tablets on the Amazon site

SourceSource: Amazon Announces new Kindle Fire Tablets and Fire OS 3.0 [Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog, Sept 24, 2013]NOTE THAT FOR Fire HDX THE PROCESSOR IS QUAD-CORE KRAIT 400 AND NOT A15. See Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Product Brief [May 16, 2013].

Source: Compare Small Tablets on the Amazon site

Source: Compare Large Tablets on the Amazon site

…

The Mayday button on the new Kindle Fire HDX brings your own personal tech advisor directly to your sofa or desk

Free, 24×7, 365 days a year

Details of the Mayday button:– It’s free. – Available 24×7, 365 days a year. – 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal. – You can see the tech advisor, they can’t see you. – Simple and deeply integrated—the Mayday button lives in the Quick Settings menu, one tap away.

The Mayday button is available exclusively on the new Fire HDX tablets—read the press release: www.amazon.com/kindle-pr.

All-new Kindle Fire HDX—stunning new 7″ or 8.9″ HDX display, quad-core 2.2 GHz processor with 3x the processing power, 2x more memory, 11 hours of battery life, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio

New HDX display goes beyond HD—exceptional pixel density, perfect 100% sRGB color accuracy, reduced glare, dynamic image contrast, and improved brightness for the best viewing experience indoors or out

Lightest large-screen tablet—Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ is startlingly light at 13.2 ounces, 34% lighter than the previous generation

Introducing the Mayday Button—revolutionary on-device tech support—free, 24×7, 365 days a year

Prime Instant Video movies and TV shows now available for downloading—watch anywhere, even when offline—available exclusively on Kindle Fire HDX

Stay connected and productive with updated email, calendar and Silk browser, plus seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter

Enterprise-ready with support for encryption, Kerberos Intranet, secure Wi-Fi connections and VPN integration

The new Kindle Fire HDX family features:

Powerful quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.2 GHz provides over 3x the processing power compared to the previous generation, plus the latest graphics engine and 2x more memory for fast and fluid performance. These are the only tablets with a processor over 2 GHz.

Startlingly light design—at just 13.2 ounces [374g], the 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX is the lightest large-screen tablet, 34% lighter than the previous generation.

Powered by the latest version of Fire OS—Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito”—with hundreds of new and upgraded features, platform updates, and Amazon-exclusive services like X-Ray for Music, Cloud Collections, Goodreads, and more.

New Mayday button delivers revolutionary live tech support—one touch connects you to an Amazon expert who can guide you remotely through any feature—24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal.

All-day battery life—up to 11 hours of mixed use and 17 hours of reading.

Updated email, calendar, and Silk browser to stay connected and productive.

New enterprise features including hardware and software-encryption, Kerberos Intranet, secure Wi-Fi connections, VPN integration, and wireless printing.

Both HDX 7″ and 8.9″ available with ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless. Available on the AT&T network, and for the first time on the Verizon Wireless network.

Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio and virtual 5.1 multi-channel surround sound—the standard in high-end audio.

Front-facing HD camera makes it easy to stay in touch with Skype, plus a new 8 megapixel wide- aperture rear-facing camera on the 8.9″ Fire HDX offers crisp photos and 1080p HD video.

Best video experience on a tablet with new Amazon-exclusive features like Prime Instant Video downloads, Second Screen, and expanded X-Ray for Movies and TV.

Deep integration with the world’s best content ecosystem—over 27 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks and magazines.

New Origami covers feature an innovative design that allows you to position Fire HDX in both portrait and landscape.

World-Class Hardware

The Mayday Button

New Amazon-Exclusive Features and Services

All-New X-Ray for MusicAmazon is expanding X-Ray to music by adding lyrics that let you follow along with songs. Lyrics display and scroll automatically line-by-line as the song plays. See a screenshot: www.amazon.com/x-ray.

Pricing & Availability

The 7″ Kindle Fire HDX is $229. It is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/hdx-7 and it will begin shipping October 18. The 4G version is $329—you can pre-order today to reserve your place in line at www.amazon.com/4g-hdx-7 and it will begin shipping November 14.

The 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX is $379. It is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/hdx and it will begin shipping on November 7. The 4G version is $479—you can pre-order today to reserve your place in line at www.amazon.com/4g-hdx and it will begin shipping December 10.

New features include device encryption, secure Wi-Fi connections, native VPN, Kerberos authentication for Intranet access, and integration with leading MDM providers

Today, Amazon is introducing new enterprise and productivity features in Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito,” the software platform that powers the new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets. The new Fire HD and Fire HDX are available for pre-order starting today atwww.amazon.com/hdx.

Business customers can also take advantage of Android enterprise and productivity apps available in the Amazon Appstore. Examples of top productivity apps available for Kindle Fire include GoToMeeting, Evernote, Cisco AnyConnect, and Documents To Go.

Some of these features will be delivered as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update in mid-November. For additional details, visit www.amazon.com/fireos.[From which I will copy here the most important part:]

To read the separate press release for the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets visit: www.amazon.com/kindle-pr.

For additional information about the new enterprise features visit:amazon.com/kindle/business.

Brings hundreds of platform updates and exclusive new features, including the Mayday button, X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, 1-Tap Archive, Cloud Collections, Quiet Time, Optimizing Download Manager, and Social Integration with Goodreads and Facebook

New enterprise and productivity features—including printing, email conversation view, enterprise encryption and mobile device management—BYOD support

Apps and games built for Android are compatible with Fire OS

Fire OS 3.0 available exclusively on the all-new Kindle Fire HD & Kindle Fire HDX tablets

Millions of Amazon customers can now discover their favorite apps and games online, from their Android mobile devices and Kindle Fires with Amazon Appstore

This announcement is the latest in a series of global expansions, including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China and Japan.Amazon Appstore will come to Brazil in the coming months.

Multi-tasking and multi-window view used together for high performance productivity scenarios in the state-of-the-art UX environment of Microsoft Windows 8.1 – the ultimate solution not available with Apple and Android devices

Acknowledgement: I should thank Zsolt Bátorfi from the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) unit of Microsoft Hungary for his invaluable input to this post.

Details

Use snap view to engage your users

Example: home screen snap view

Windows Store app

The snap view of the home screen is just a different view of the home page where a user can still access the same content.

In snap view, a user pans vertically to get to more content because it is more comfortable to pan along the long edge. This is different than the horizontal panning in full view, which is also optimized to pan along the long edge.

I held off from buying a Microsoft Tablet and bought an Android Tablet after listening to some flawed and rather biased reviews a while back.

But after being frustrated once again that Android STILL CAN’T MULTITASK while playing videos I went and looked further into the Microsoft Surface RT and bought one.

As I said, the most of the reviews that came up in search were flawed.

I was watching this pathetic one and should have known better when I saw the username… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYbCfL…

But check out the comments now. LOL! The comments were more helpful than the video.

They talked about some honest review by some Lisa woman so I found this video and it was great… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIOG2V…

So after that I bought one and the Surface RT did what I needed and then some. Like built in Remote Desktop that works just like it did on my Windows 7 laptop so I can log into my home pc while away.

Anyway I am ranting again… and that’s what this video is. It is more of a RANT and a warning to others to be careful with the biased reviews. I give a two thumbs up to this tablet!

Design, technology and business background for the above differentiation

So the first thing that you’ll notice is that we’ve made it really easy to get to the Start screen in 8.1 with the addition of the Start button. (Laughter, applause.)

We want to make money when people use our devices,
not when they buy our devices.

www.amazon.com/maydaytv – www.amazon.com/fireos – www.amazon.com/origami – www.amazon.com/quickpic
i.e. the links from the above slide (created by me) in order to be able to click from here as well

SourceSource: Amazon Announces new Kindle Fire Tablets and Fire OS 3.0 [Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog, Sept 24, 2013]
NOTE THAT FOR Fire HDX THE PROCESSOR IS QUAD-CORE KRAIT 400 AND NOT A15. See Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Product Brief [May 16, 2013].

Details of the Mayday button:
– It’s free.
– Available 24×7, 365 days a year.
– 15 seconds or less is the Mayday response time goal.
– You can see the tech advisor, they can’t see you.
– Simple and deeply integrated—the Mayday button lives in the Quick Settings menu, one tap away.

All-New X-Ray for Music
Amazon is expanding X-Ray to music by adding lyrics that let you follow along with songs. Lyrics display and scroll automatically line-by-line as the song plays. See a screenshot: www.amazon.com/x-ray.

Some of these features will be delivered as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update in mid-November. For additional details, visit www.amazon.com/fireos.
[From which I will copy here the most important part:]

Surface RT $349+…….. Surface 2 $449+……….…. Surface Pro 2 $899+
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30)…..….NVIDIA Tegra 4 (T40)……..Intel Core i5-4200U