Press Statements

Productivity: it’s all about the information

Durban – 19 October, 2011 - Real productivity in the workplace is all about finding the information you need to do your job quickly and easily, without having to spend hours wading through Outlook folders and archives on your computer or company server.

That was one of the main take-outs from a round-table on productivity at Microsoft’s Tech·Ed event in Durban this week, attended by vendors and industry analysts.

Productivity is not a buzzword, or an easy way for companies to use technology to get their people doing more with less, says HP consultant Rudi Raath: it’s about time well spent – and it’s not a one-size-fits-all exercise that organisations can embark on.

“True measures of productivity are not fluffy measures of time saved. Productivity is all about changing people’s user experience, and it’s based on the way people in different roles and even of different ages perceive data and information,” said Raath. “Before you can get your people to be productive, you have to understand who is accessing information, what they need to do with it, and how they like to access it.”

Sadly, says Anders Spatzek, who works for Microsoft’s worldwide business group in Seattle, precious few companies have achieved the nirvana of an environment where information flows quickly to the right people to allow them to make better decisions. The key is getting people to use the tools, he says.

“We often think about productivity as doing more – we want to service more customers without adding more staff, for example. But productivity also means our service levels and the quality we deliver can go up. It’s not just about efficiency, but effectiveness as well,” says Spatzek.

In other words, adoption is everything. If people don’t use the tools, they won’t be more productive. The trick, says Spatzek, is to adopt a role-based approach, which gives people access to the data and tools they need to do their jobs. So the person filling orders in the warehouse gets a different set of tools and functionality as the guy in accounts, or the HR director.

Patricia Martins, who heads Microsoft’s Dynamics business in South Africa, believes old-fashioned spreadsheets remain the biggest competitor to modern business software. People know and trust spreadsheets – but it’s not going to give them access to business intelligence or give them a broader view of the business.

“So keep them on their spreadsheets – but start exposing them slowly to easy-to-use tools that make their lives easier,” says Martins. “Help them understand the business risks inherent in making poor decisions at critical moments, and how modern productivity tools make compliance and governance a breeze. You have to show them how the tools make a difference in their lives to get their buy-in.”

It’s what HP’s Raath calls the “quick wins”: “I adopt the new tools, and my first question is: is there a quick and easy change in the way I work? Instant gratification becomes the quick win. If people see the value for themselves, they are hooked.”

So what are the kind of tools that can enhance productivity in the real world? Spatzek gives the example of a travel expense management application that allows you to take photos of your restaurant slips with your cellphone, and upload them instantly to a database, which processes them. The result: hours of admin saved at the end of a trip. Now that’s productivity.

Or the plumber using a cloud-based productivity suite like Office 365, who gets an emailed request for a quote on his smartphone, accesses his company server to generate the quote, signs it electronically and sends it immediately. Now that’s productivity, says Tracy Bolton, who heads Microsoft South Africa’s Information Worker division.

“Technology should enable you to work where and when you want to, and the information that you need to do your job should come to you quickly and easily wherever you are,” says Bolton. “It’s all about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. It’s not just about the app – it’s about the app with info. Allow me to get to the info I need quickly – that’s productivity.”

But there are bigger opportunities, says Microsoft’s Martins. Used well, productivity tools allow companies to connect to suppliers and customers, and get SMEs operating quickly and effectively in a big enterprise supply chain.

“Productivity is not just about maintaining the status quo – it’s about how we grow our businesses and capitalise on the opportunities opened up by being part of a bigger supply chain,” says Martins.

First Technology grabs limelight at Microsoft Partner Awards

Durban, South Africa – 19 October, 2011 – Independent information technology provider First Technology grabbed the bulk of the spoils at Microsoft’s annual Partner Network Awards, announced at a glittering gala dinner at Durban’s ICC on Tuesday night.

First Technology was one of five companies to win three awards on the night, including the coveted Managing Director’s Award and Large Account Reseller of the Year awards.

The dinner was held during Microsoft’s Partner Summit 2011, the company’s premier annual event for industry partners. The finalists were chosen from hundreds of entries submitted by partners across the country, and the winners were selected on their dedicated use of Microsoft technologies to provide solutions for their customers’ needs.

Dimension Data, Intervate, iSolve and iSPartners also walked away with three awards each. Dimension Data’s haul included the awards for Unified Communications Partner of the Year and Virtualisation Partner of the Year, sparking celebrations among the large Dimension Data contingent.

Intervate won the Customer Experience Partner of the Year, Content Management Partner of the Year and Portals and Collaboration Partner of the Year awards, while iSolve Business Solutions’ wins included Midmarket Solution Provider of the Year and Volume Licensing Partner of the Year. iSPartners capped an impressive year by scooping the awards for Business Intelligence Partner of the Year, Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year and Winning Customers Partner of the Year.

Other notable winners were security specialists BUI, who won the Identity and Security Partner of the Year award for a sixth year in a row, and small hosting specialists Global Micro Solutions, whose cloud credentials were underlined by being named Hosting Partner of the Year for a second successive year. Netsurit won the coveted Small Business Specialist award, while newcomers UMT were named Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year.

Mteto Nyati, the managing director of Microsoft SA, said partners were the key to igniting business innovation through technology and helping customers drive down costs.

“The high standards of entries received for the awards showed that our partners are delivering unmatched innovation and value to customers,” said Nyati.

Mark Reynolds, head of the small business, midmarket and partner division at Microsoft South Africa, said the standard of entries received for the awards was increasing every year.

“We strongly value our partners’ contributions, and we want to highlight these top partners’ commitment of delivering exceptional solutions and unsurpassed value to customers. We’re delighted to acknowledge their strong performance, tremendous contributions and outstanding achievements over the past year.”

‘Office in the cloud’ on its way to SA

Durban – 18 October, 2011 – Microsoft’s long-awaited Office 365, which will start trialling in South Africa later this year and become commercially available in early 2012, will make it easier for thousands of local companies to get and use the same business productivity solutions used by major enterprises.

Announcing the local launch of Office 365 at Microsoft’s Tech-Ed event in Durban this week, Microsoft’s James Avenant said the new offering brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service, at a predictable monthly subscription.

Microsoft is optimistic about Office 365, which it says will bring cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, particularly smaller businesses without an IT department. The service will be hosted from the Microsoft datacentres in Europe, leveraging the economies of scale present in these large datacentres.

“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Avenant. “The power of cloud solutions allows companies to rent computing power, rather than acquire it outright. Microsoft Office 365 is software-as-a-service, a form of cloud computing where business services are presented to the end user in a subscription model.”

Moving to the cloud with Office 365 means people don’t have to change the way they work, because Office 365 works with the most popular browsers, smartphones and desktop applications people use today. It puts enterprise-grade email, shared documents, instant messaging, video and Web conferencing, portals, and more at everyone’s fingertips.

“Great collaboration is critical to business growth, and because it’s so important, we believe the best collaboration technology should be available to everyone,” said Avenant. “With a few clicks, Office 365 levels the playing field, giving small and midsize businesses powerful collaboration tools that have given big businesses an edge for years.”

With Office 365, people can stay on the “same page” using instant messaging and virtual meetings with people who are just down the hall or across the world. They can work on files and documents at the same time and share ideas as easily as they can share calendars. Office 365 gives people new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device.

Microsoft Office applications are at the heart of Office 365. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook and other Office applications connect to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync to deliver a world-class solution for communication and collaboration.

Microsoft is building a massive partner ecosystem around Office 365, including systems integrators, software vendors, resellers and other partners. These companies will package Office 365 with their own services — from Web hosting and broadband to finance solutions and mobile services — and bring those new offerings to small and midsize businesses.

Customers interested in trying out Office 365 on trial can register at www.office365.co.za. The trail version is a full, free version of Office 365.

Microsoft, HP make private cloud easy for businesses

Durban – 17 October, 2011 - Microsoft and HP have put down a strong marker in the South African cloud space with the announcement of their joint Database Consolidation and Private Cloud Appliance, designed to help organisations consolidate all their database workloads into a private cloud built around SQL Server.

Marketed by HP as the HP Database Consolidation Appliance (DBCA), the key attributes of the appliance are its ability to consolidate thousands of databases with no application changes and manage them from the operating system to the database with new custom software.

The HP DBC Appliance will include all the hardware, software and support a customer needs to migrate all their database workloads from physical servers into a private cloud designed for optimal performance and energy efficiency.

Frikkie Bosch, the Product Marketing Manager for the Application Platform at Microsoft SA, says the appliance provides the additional benefit of a private cloud infrastructure: elasticity, self-service, resource pooling and control.

“This is the first appliance in the industry to integrate virtualisation, consolidation, database and appliance for an out-of-the box solution with single support, simplified integrated management from the OS to the Databases, very rapid time to market, 80% energy savings, and enabling unprecedented database IT agility,” said Bosch.

Announced at Microsoft's Tech-Ed Africa event being held in Durban this week, the appliance was jointly engineered with HP to save customers the time and effort involved in building such a system themselves. HP also said it can provide support to commission the appliance and integrate it into a customer's existing environment.

“The appliance will enable customers to deploy new databases in minutes and reduce operational costs by up to 75 percent, thanks to cost savings in energy consumption and floor space. Customers will not need to make application or database changes when consolidating database workloads,” said Eugene De Souza, Product and Business Development Manager, Infra2Apps at HP.

The HP Enterprise DBC Appliance is delivered as a fully functional system, with the smallest configuration taking up half of a standard data centre rack. A complete rack provides servers with a total of 192 logical processors, 2TB memory and 58TB of storage.

Pricing for the appliance has yet to be disclosed, but HP and Microsoft says the cost reductions will lead to it paying for itself within two years.

Microsoft unveils array of new goodies at Tech·Ed kick-off

Durban – 17 October, 2011 - Microsoft has stepped up its aggressive drive into the South African consumer and cloud space with the imminent local release in the next few months of two key products: its Azure cloud platform and its cloud subscription version of Office, Office 365 as well as with the recently released Windows Phone Mango platform.

That was the big news from the opening day of the software maker’s Tech-Ed and Partner Summit 2011 in Durban, which has attracted more than 3 500 technology vendors, developers and executives from across Africa.

Tech·Ed runs from 17-20 October at the International Conference Centre (ICC), with Partner Summit ending one day earlier on 19 October. Another smaller event, Microsoft’s CIO Summit, will be hosted at the Oyster Box Hotel at the same time, and is has drawn nearly 100 of the country’s top chief information officers.

The Windows Phone Mango update brings 500 new features to local users of the platform, but the major development is the availability of Marketplace, which will allow South African consumers to buy local and international apps using local currency via their credit cards. Mango also includes Xbox live integration, which will allow users to access Xbox mobile games.

Speaking at the event keynote at the ICC, Microsoft corporate vice-president Jason Zander said Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, which is planned for release between March and May 2012. Office 365, which brings cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, will be commercially available in the first half of 2012, with trial availability towards the end of this year.

“Microsoft has repeatedly made its commitment to the cloud very clear and has made repeated updates to its cloud offerings,” said Zander. “We recently announced several new updates to the Windows Azure platform – which we see as the most comprehensive operating system for Platform-as-a-service – that will help customers create rich applications that enable new business scenarios in the cloud.”

In his welcome, Microsoft South Africa MD Mteto Nyati said the event would focus strongly on the two broad trends that are shaping the industry and are shaping Microsoft’s strategy: the cloud, both public and private cloud computing, as well as devices.

“You're going to see a whole bunch of devices of different shapes, sizes, form factors, speeds, usage types. We need a world of devices, and they need to be smart. They need to create data, they need to connect to the cloud,” said Nyati.

“The cloud for us is the extension of rich experiences that once began on the desktop or on the server, and it's making them richer and more interesting to users and more compelling every single day.”

Microsoft has high hopes for Office 365, which it says will bring cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, particularly smaller businesses without an IT department. The service will be hosted from the Microsoft datacentres in Europe, leveraging the economies of scale present in these large datacentres.

“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Zander. “The power of cloud solutions allows companies to rent computing power, rather than acquire it outright. Microsoft Office 365 is software-as-a-service, a form of cloud computing where business services are presented to the end user in a subscription model.”

Customers and partners can visit www.office365.co.za to pre-register for the trial.

More details on the events, as well as links to videos, blogs, product downloads, and other information about this year’s event, can be found at www.teched.co.za and www.partnersummit.co.za

Partners vie for top Microsoft awards

Johannesburg, South Africa – 11 October, 2011 – Some 40 of South Africa’s top technology companies have been named as finalists in Microsoft’s Partner Network Awards 2011, which will be handed over at a gala dinner in Durban next week.

The awards, across nearly 30 categories, recognise Microsoft partners that delivered exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year across a range of categories. The finalists were chosen from hundreds of entries submitted by partners across the country.

The awards coincide with Microsoft’s annual Partner Summit event, which runs from 17-19 October at Durban’s ICC. At the event, the software maker lays out its technology and business roadmap for the coming year to its partners, and highlights areas of innovation that will benefit end users.

Mark Reynolds, head of the small and midmarket business and partner division at Microsoft South Africa, said the standard of entries received for the awards was probably at its highest level yet. Finalists had to come through a grueling two-round process, which included face-to-face presentations to a panel of judges

“As a partner-centric business, Microsoft’s success is directly dependent upon the expertise, commitment and performance of our partners,” said Reynolds.

“Each of these partners has demonstrated a unique approach and exceptional dedication in addressing the technology and business challenges of our mutual customers. Their efforts continue to bring incredible value to the companies they serve and the marketplace as a whole.”

The full list of finalists can be found at https://secure.mseventssa.co.za/partnerawards2011

Microsoft goes large with Tech·Ed, Partner Summit

Johannesburg – 26 September, 2011 – More than 4 000 IT Professionals, developers, partners and technology enthusiasts are set to descend on Durban next month for Microsoft’s iconic Tech·Ed Africa and Partner Summit events, which will be staged concurrently for the first time.

Tech·Ed runs from 17-20 October at the International Conference Centre (ICC), with Partner Summit ending one day earlier on 19 October. Another smaller event, Microsoft’s CIO Summit, will be hosted at the Oyster Box Hotel at the same time, and is expected to draw 100 of the country’s top chief information officers.

Tech·Ed’s keynote speaker has been confirmed as Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jason Zander, and he will be complemented by a formidable line-up of local and international speakers, which include internationally recognised technology expert, author, and public speaker Michael Noel, and self-confessed geek Lynn Langit, who co-host’s the MSDN Channel 9 geekSpeak series at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/geekSpeak/

Microsoft South Africa MD Mteto Nyati says the event will focus strongly on the two broad trends that are shaping the industry and are shaping Microsoft’s strategy: the cloud, both public and private cloud computing, as well as devices.

“There’s a lot going on in the Microsoft world right now; Tech·Ed and Partner Summit are critical platforms for us to share our plans, give some previews of what’s coming down the line, make a couple of major announcements, and discuss ways for our partners and customers to make the most of their opportunities,” said Nyati.

On the cloud front, Microsoft is bringing an increasingly compelling set of products and services to the table, with a powerful offering across infrastructure, software and services, and platform.

For devices, says Nyati, there is a proliferation of devices and of form factors. People are now carrying multiple devices, and they expect the applications and the data for their business is available on the device they want and optimised for that device.

“This, generally, creates a dual challenge for IT providers in that they need to be able to deliver an experience to that device while maintaining the security and the control and the visibility that is needed for compliance and for security. At Tech·Ed and Partner Summit, Microsoft will be talking a lot to the ways we have managed to overcome these challenges,” he said.

Partner Summit, which brings together Microsoft’s leading resellers, service providers and technology partners - and culminates in the legendary Partner Awards gala dinner – will see a strong focus on ways that partners can unlock opportunities within the cloud and beyond.

“Cloud computing is as big a transformation as we have ever seen and, together with our partners, Microsoft will help customers through the shift,” said Nyati. “By being part of Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to cloud computing, partners can embrace this transformation and build strong and vibrant practices that will advance how business gets done.”

More details on how to attend the events, as well as links to videos, blogs, product downloads, and other information about this year’s event, can be found at www.Tech·Ed.co.za and www.partnersummit.co.za.

Users the weak link in security, says new Microsoft report

Johannesburg – 12 October 2011 – Social engineering – in other words, user behavior - and unpatched vulnerabilities accounted for 99 percent of all malware attacks during the first half of 2011, according to the 11^th version of Microsoft’s authoritative Security Intelligence Report (SIRv11).

By contrast, less than one percent of exploits in the first half of 2011 were against zero-day vulnerabilities, which are software vulnerabilities that are successfully exploited before the vendor has published a security update or “patch.”

What this means, says Microsoft South Africa’s chief security advisor, Dr Khomotso Kganyago, is that most common computer threats can be mitigated through good security best practices.

“Fully 90% of infections that were attributed to vulnerability exploitation had a security update available from the software vendor for more than a year,” said Dr Kganyago.

User interaction, typically employing social-engineering techniques, caused nearly half (45 percent) of all malware propagation in the first half of 2011. In addition, more than a third of all malware is spread through cybercriminal abuse of Win32/Autorun, a feature that automatically starts programs when external media, such as a CD or USB, are inserted into a computer.

The report includes guidance to help educate people about commonly known social-engineering techniques, how to create strong passwords and how to manage security updates. In addition, Microsoft provides insight into reducing Win32/Autorun abuse with updates released earlier this year for Windows XP and Windows Vista (Windows 7 already included these updates) that prevent the Win/32Autorun feature from being enabled automatically for most media.

“Within four months of issuing the update, the number of infections from the most prolific Win32/Autorun-abusing malware families was reduced by almost 60 percent on Windows XP and by 74 percent on Windows Vista in comparison to 2010 infection rates,” says Dr Kganyago.

To protect networks and systems, he suggests that users adopt a multifaceted approach to managing risk, including building products and services with security in mind; educating customers and employees; upgrading to the latest products and services; and considering cloud services.

Organisations can choose to leverage the cloud to help ensure the services they use have the most up-to-date security protections. Cloud providers, such as Microsoft, are resourced to focus on security and, in transitioning the management of a portion of security functions, resources are freed up to focus on other areas of security or on different IT projects altogether.

More information about SIRv11 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/sir.