Dan Haywood Blog

Webtrends for SharePoint World Tour

2012-02-08T10:26:00.000Z

I will be speaking at the Webtrends for SharePoint World Tour event on the 15th February at the Microsoft offices in Cardinal Place, Victoria, London. There will also be great speakers there from Avanade, Ascentium, Brightstarr and Content and Code.

The key points we will be addressing at the event are :

What trends are effecting digital marketing and branding.
Why customer experience management (CXM) is important to e-commerce, reporting, communities and personalization.
Who is using SharePoint to fuel customer experience, with case study examples of challenges, adoptions and integrations
How to use analytics data to empower 3rd-party marketing systems, email, CRM, etc. and measure effectiveness of campaigns.
How to optimize SharePoint and integrate with social media and mobile.

There are still some places left, so hurry to reserve your place.

Kinect + Surface + Windows Phone + Tag + Win 8 + SharePoint FIS

2012-02-01T12:13:00.001Z

The power of the Microsoft stack is truly impressive when you start to combine really cool technologies such as Kinect, Surface, Windows Phone, Tag, Windows 8 and SharePoint for Internet Sites.

This amazing video shows how combining all these technologies can completely change our whole shopping and digital experience.

Click here to watch the video

Shopping of the future?

SharePoint 2010 HTML 5 Master Page

2012-01-26T15:39:00.000Z

So many people are now focussing their attention towards HTML 5 because of the need to deliver a consistent user experience across multiple platforms (PC, Mobile, Tablet).

Kyle Shaeffer posted an excellent blog post where you can download a sample HTML 5 master page for SharePoint 2010.

Thanks Kyle for the great work!

Free SharePoint Internet Site Theme

2012-01-26T10:57:00.000Z

The guys at topsharepoint.com have just released a new free theme for SharePoint Internet Sites called 'Tendance.' You can find the theme here.

Thanks to the guys at topsharepoint for this free theme.

Huge Momentum for SharePoint for Internet Sites

2012-01-17T12:08:00.001Z

A few days ago I received an email from the guys at Top SharePoint saying:

"We've seen a spike inSharePoint 2010 adoption, at least for the public facing websites. During 2011we’ve added in our showcase more than 200 websites based on SharePoint 2010."

Here at Microsoft we have also seen a huge increase in the number of customers implementing SharePoint as their public facing website or extranet. I think there are a number of reasons as to why we are seeing this trend:

Customers who have already implemented SharePoint as an Intranet see the financial benefits and value of adopting the platform for their public facing websites.
Customers are looking for an open and extensible platform where they can integrate other key business applications - Big driver is self-service
Cost - SharePoint for Internet Sites Standard edition is a very cost effective solution with all the benefits of integration, authentication and scalability
Eco-system - There are over 450 SharePoint partners in the UK and a whole load of fantastic ISV solutions out there which are built specifically for SharePoint for Internet Sites.

If you need any more information on SharePoint for Internet Sites then please feel free to contact me or my colleagues sharepointinternetuk@microsoft.com.

Guide to Running a SharePoint for Internet Sites Proof of Concept

2012-01-09T15:10:00.002Z

This great content was pulled together by a colleague of mine, Geoffrey Edge (http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_digital_marketing_platform__the_edge_of_sharepoint/). This is a fantastic list of topics you as a partner should consider running through when carrying out a proof of concept for a customer looking at deploying a SharePoint for Internet Site:

1) Branding (atleast one or two different template feels, usually the home page and onesection of the site). Use the v5responsive master pagehttp://kyleschaeffer.com/sharepoint/v5-responsive-html5-master-page/ and killthe mobile message from the beginning.

2) ManagedMetadata – Create a few good Managed Metadata items and use them in the next section

3) Enable the MUI– If you’re talking to company that serves a non-English market, even if thePOC is in English, enable the MUI and show it. Marketers, even if they are publishing in all English, have aspirationsfor multilingual and if you show the MUI, you may be able to convince them thatmultilingual is easy without actually showing variations.

4) Asset Library– Use Asset Libraries for all images and videos, especially images that you’llselect in the page authoring. It justdemos better with the thumbnails and whatnot.

5) ContentCreation – Create a good page layout that makes sense for your section of thesite.

6) Show off theContent Query Web Part On the section of the site you’ve built out, create acouple of content pages including a section landing page where you can rollcontent up from the section to create a summary page.

7) Do somecontent-to-content targeting - While you’re playing with Content Query, andsince you used Managed Metadata in step #2, do some content-contenttargeting.

8) ReusableContent Library – Create some HTML fragment Reusable Content in the ReusableContent library and use it to insert “ads” on the homepage. This is all about sales positioning. You can position reusable content asadvertising, or re-purpose able content.

9) Turn on Searchand index their current live website.

10) Forms – Show offInfoPath Forms Services – in a scenario relevant to the customer.

11) Zones andsecured areas – Create a separate zone with authentication and call it anExtranet.

12) Show someaudience targeting – Create some simple audiences and show content targeting –Not applicable for anonymous authentication but more for Extranet.

13) Create Workflowon your content pages – Most of the time, explaining the idea of workflow issufficient; most people know SharePoint workflow so you don’t have to POC it –but if you do need to POC it, it can be difficult because you’ll need to do itthe correct way. This involves startingthe workflow design in Visio, to get the nice graphical process views while theitem is in flight. Don’t cut cornerswhile POC’ing workflow. Do it the rightway.

14) BCS – Figure outa way to use BCS. You’re building a POC,you should know enough about what your customer is doing.

15) Use JQueryLibrary On the home page; create some kind of dynamic content roll-up from thesection you’ve created, mixed up with some content living in a simple list. This will show content reusability usingmodern Web Design techniques, and the ability for non-technical users to modifyscript-generated content to be modified in absentia of a developer. Even better, use JQuery against a Data FormWeb part to mash up content from the WCM section you created, theaforementioned simple list AND the BCS entity you created in the stepabove. Static formal WCM + Ad-Hoc WCM +LOB structured data all mashed up together in one view – WOW most other vendorscan’t do that.

16) Turn on FASTSearch and index their current live website. Spend some time generating custom refiners using a dictionary of termsyou know about their business. FASTSearch, despite common misconceptions, CAN be installed in the same environmentas SharePoint for development/demo purposes.

17) Generate somegood Visual Best Bets.

18) Demo variations– If your customer is multinational, you must do it. Don’t do it as an afterthought – plan for itin advance.

19) FAST Search TagClouds - If you created custom refiners in step #11, use them to supply thedictionary in this simple C# code: http://thetagcloud.codeplex.com/ Everyone loves tag clouds.

20) Turn onanalytics and run some test runs using Visual Studio – the OOB analytics are agood basic offering.

21) Dynamic FASTSearch Content Web Parts – While you’re slinging FAST Search code, writeJavascript to interact with the FAST Search RESTful interfaces ala https://msengage-na.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/sites/oQ6FqW2A59/pages/delivery.aspx?offeringid=361&relatedofferingid=493.

22) Look at some ofthe wide range of ISV solutions.

Thanks to Geoffrey for compiling this list and hope you all found it useful.

SharePoint for Internet Sites Licensing

2012-01-09T12:15:00.001Z

Deploying a SharePoint for Internet Site is cheaper than you think!

I thought it was worth a quick blog post to talk about the differences in SharePoint for Internet Sites (FIS) licensing.

I often talk to customers and partners about the costs associated with licensing SharePoint FIS for either an Internet site or an Extranet site and they are often suprised to learn that you can deploy SharePoint FIS for as little as £9000 (pricing is dependant on your licensing agreement with Microsoft and can vary - please check with your LAR). Licensing costs are calcaulated on a per server basis, so one SharePoint server will require one FIS license. It is very rare that you will deploy a single server for resilience and redundancy reasons so you are looking at a cost of as little as £18,000 for a two server SharePoint public facing farm.

There are other licensing considerations to take into account and the table below summarises the difference between SharePoint FIS Standard and Enterprise:

SharePoint For Internet Sites Licensing

The fundamental difference between Standard and Enterprise which you will need to consider is the use of single or multiple domains.

If you are deploying a public facing website (e.g. www.microsoft.com), then you will need to use a SharePoint FIS license. For Extranet deployments, it is possible to use the server + CAL licensing model but there is a break-even point of approx 200-300 users where it is more cost effective to license the users with a FIS license. For further information please refer to this link:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing_SharePoint_for_Internet_Sites.docx

3 Things to Know Before Using SharePoint to Build Your Website

2012-01-06T13:40:00.000Z

If you have not seen this article, I recommend you take a read:

3 Things to know before using SharePoint to build your website

The three things you should know are:

Eighty/Twenty Rule
Out of the Box Won't Do
Content is King

Making the right WCM platform choice

2012-01-05T18:16:00.001Z

I came across an excellent whitepaper by Forrester called 'The Seven C's of Web Content Management.' (http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/seven_cs_of_web_content_management/q/id/58320/t/2?src=58958pdf) If you are looking at your current digital marketing strategy, this document is worthy of a read.

One of the most important points which the document highlights, is that some of the bigger vendors such as IBM, Adobe, Autonomy have all embraced the packaging of all their portfolio components such as Search, Social, Analytics, etc. to create an online engagement platform. The report highlights that these platforms are not well integrated and do not meet the Seven C's of WCM (content, context, channel, consistency, community, consumer behavior, and creation).

So what should you do? Well the answer is simple...select a WCM system which is open and extensible, one which integrates easily into other back end line of business applications such as a CRM. You should also consider the partner eco-system, the richness of the API and off-the-shelf add-ons.

This is a great story for adopting SharePoint as your web platform of choice...

An open and extensible platform featuring the BCS (Business Connectivity Services)
Over 400 SharePoint partners in the UK
A rich ISV (Independant Software Vendor) eco-system offering excellent solutions such as Webtrends, Aptimize, Cardiolog Marketing Suite, etc
Out of the box integration with Dynamics CRM and other leading CRM applications

Digital marketing is evolving and changing so fast that it is important to think beyond the product check box and version comparison table, future proof your platform choice by adopting one which will lend itself to new emerging trends and technologies.

Microsoft Let’s Get FIS-ical Digital Marketing Competency Community

2011-12-08T10:34:00.001Z

Already a SharePoint Digital Marketing Partner or looking to become one?

If you are looking to build up your digital marketing practice and start selling Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites (Internet and Extranet sites), then below is a link to a great resource which can help you get up to speed with regular webcasts and a heap of customer-ready material.

https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40174836

If you are not a Digital Marketing partner then you are missing a fantastic opportunity. See the below link for details on how to get this competency:

https://partner.microsoft.com/US/program/competencies/compdigitalmarketing

Redweb Hack Day Produces SharePoint FIS Radio Station

2011-12-04T21:20:00.001Z

Every year Redweb, a digital agency based in Bournemouth, set themselves a challenge for their annual hack day...This is probably one of the most impressive solutions I have ever seen built on SharePoint 2010 and in only 48 hours!

The problem
Listening to music at work. People find it difficult to agree on what to play, so the office often ends up deadly quiet, or there’s only music in certain areas, or many people sit with headphones on which can be a little unsociable. They also wanted to join up their other regional offices and create a tighter community.

The solution
They are going to use SharePoint to manage a ‘Redweb Radio’ station and build it in only 48 hours!

They will be using SharePoint to keep track of personal and collaborative playlists, user profiles, archives, schedules, alerts and communications, and to store and deliver all the content we’ll be making ourselves that will get added into the broadcast. All the music Redweb will play will be streamed from other services like Spotify, You Tube, Sound cloud, and Last FM. Their SharePoint solution will have an interface so users can choose tracks and line them up in their playlists. Users in remote offices will be able to access the SharePoint radio interface via the SharePoint Extranet.

Unfortunately I was not able to make the trip down to Bournemouth, so the next best thing was to use the power of Lync to sit 'virtually' on the Dragons Den style panel to judge the solution.

I have recorded the session and you can view it here:

A big well done and congratulations to the development team at Redweb for building a fantastic solution for SharePoint and in so little time. My favourite quote from the demo had to be,

"SharePoint already does that!"

This really does prove the real power of the SharePoint platform. Great effort guys and thanks for getting me involved.

Top Branded SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites Examples

2011-11-18T17:57:00.001Z

Many customers and partners ask me for examples of beautifully branded and designed internet sites which are running SharePoint 2010 and most our suprised at how many fantastic well-known brands are using SharePoint 2010 not only as an internal collaboration tool but also leveraging the same infrastructure, skills and knowledge to build beautiful, engaging and integrated websites. Here are (in my opinion and in no paticular order!) are the best branded SharePoint site examples:

Kraft Food Recipes

Ferrari

Marantz

Ralph Lauren

Energizer

Volvo

East Midland Trains

Turkcell

Denon

Glade

Swatch

Amway

Brembo

Graco

Pierre Marcolini

Paul Mitchell

NHS Choices

Renault

Graine de Curieux

Kiwi Experience

Wilco Hess

Winchester

SharePoint 2010 Communities

2011-11-16T17:47:00.001Z

Today I presented at an event for Perfect Info (www.perfectinfo.com) around the role of SharePoint and Communities. The event was also supported by Matthew Banks from Newsgator (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-banks/3/781/17b) who gave a great overview of how Newsgator enhances the SharePoint out of the box Social offerings.

For anyone who is interested - you can find a copy of my slides here:

https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=9B7D796BD3E9E65C&resid=9B7D796BD3E9E65C%211195

SEO on SharePoint 2010 For Internet Sites

2011-10-11T17:29:00.000+01:00

I was lucky enough to spend the last week attending the SharePoint conference in LA, which was a fantastic event with over 8,000 attendees! Whilst at the conference I delivered a session on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites.

The session is a level 200/300 so is appropriate for both IT Pro's and Developers and covers all the basics of SEO and also covers how Microsoft optimised sharepoint.microsoft.com for SEO. Below is the agenda:

- Background to SEO
- Why should you care about SEO?
- Overview of SEO Core Principles
- Developing an SEO friendly SharePoint site
- Tools to help
- An insight into how Microsoft optimised http://sharepoint.microsoft.com
- The future of SEO

Here are the links to the session recordings (The video was too large so I had to split it into 3 parts):

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I hope you all find this information useful and I urge you to look at and familiarise yourself with the IIS SEO Toolkit.

The code which was used to add the SEO features to sharepoint.microsoft.com can be found on the Canviz blog - A special thanks goes to Tim McDaniel at Canviz for sharing this code and experience.

Microsoft SharePoint for Internet Sites UK Public Sector Examples

2011-09-26T15:49:00.000+01:00

Harrogate Borough Council

Durham County Council

Bolton Council

Northamptonshire County Council

East Staffordshire Borough Council

Huntingdonshire District Council

Carmarthenshire County Council

Lewisham

Essex County Council

Local Government Information Unit

South Wales Fire

Wakefield & District Housing

NHS Choices

Cheshire and Wirral Partnership (CWP) NHS Foundation Trust

Gallagher Heath

Joint Royal Colleges of Physicians Training Board

Medical Schools Council

National Institute for Health Research

Plymouth NHS

Plymouth Teaching PCT

NHS Lanarkshire hospitals

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

UK Experimental Resource Finder

UKCRC Clinical Trials Units

University College London Hospitals

University Hospital of South Manchester

Devon & Cornwall Police

National School of Government

Carbon Trust

Audit Commission

Attorney General’s Office

EPSRC

Next Step

UK Hydrographic Office

Havering Borough Council

SharePoint 2010 For Internet Sites Customer Examples

2011-09-18T21:40:00.001+01:00

Quick Sunday night blog post...

Working in the Digital Marketing Platform team at Microsoft we are always talking about SharePoint for Internet Sites and referencing some fantastic examples of customer's websites running SharePoint. We often use the following sites and I thought it would be good to share the links:

WSS Demo - Amazing Live Pivot

Top SharePoint - SharePoint Showcase Site

Hope you all find them as useful as we do and feel free to add any other sites you know of in the comments below.

The Key Ingredient to an Engaging Online Experience

2011-09-09T17:17:00.003+01:00

The future of digital marketing clearly focuses on the user; the interaction the user has with the site; engaging the user; and finally building some form of rapport or community with them to ensure that the user returns to the site or brand. Sites on the web often fail to offer fresh and relevant content and with ever-changing user expectations, users are now abandoning sites quicker than ever.

So how do you ensure content on your site is fresh, relevant and engaging? The answer is quite simply relevancy.

Ok, so you are probably thinking that search is fairly dull subject and how does this all really engage the user? Enter the role of personalisation...

So what if I am an anonymous user on a site? How can content be personalised to me?

By placing a cookie on a user's machine when they browse to a site anonymously, we can start to track and record all their actions (i.e. clicks on links, images, search terms, etc). All these actions are stored somewhere. We can then query these actions using search and present relevant content back. For example, an anonymous user hits Kraft Food Recipes site (www.kraftrecipes.com - A great site built on Microsoft SharePoint 2010) and then starts to search for chicken. They click several links to chicken dishes and we start to record these actions. Knowing that the user has an interest in chicken, we start to show relevant content featuring chicken. This relevant content could even be in the form of an advertisement, such as chicken seasoning, chicken roasting trays, etc. Content is now not only relevant but also this now presents a great revenue opportunity. (This is not a current feature of the Kraft site - I am merely using the site as an example scenario)

So how could this work technically...

A cookie is placed on the user's machine upon browsing to the site. using the Windows Communication Foundation, all users events are dealt with by SQL Server StreamInsight, entirely in memory (point being that there is no IO cost when operating on streaming data). These actions are then moved to a more permanent store so that they can be queried. All actions are moved to the cloud (no CAPEX cost here) using Windows Azure AppFabric. We can now query all these actions using the FAST Search engine in SharePoint for Internet Sites to present relevant content back to the user.

How can we present highly relevant content using the power of Social/Web 3.0?

I saw a fantastic demo of this by one of the Microsoft search guys who showed how using the Facebook API, a user can connect/login to a site and using search the site can then query the user's social profile to present relevant content.

Using the Kraft Recipe site example further (again this is not a site feature), giving the user the ability to login to the site with their Facebook account will allow Kraft to understand so much more about the user's profile. For example, their age, gender, relationship status, etc. A user connecting to the site who is single, has a high profile career and lives on their own, may only be interested in simple and quick recipes. Now that we understand this user more, we can start to present content back to the user whilst he or she is browsing, with featured recipes which can be made in less than 10 minutes for example.

All this search capability presents a massive revenue opportunity for retailer's to target the right content to the right user at the right time.

The future of dynamic, engaging user experiences online centers around the role of search. Using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search you can create a truly compelling online experience.

Mobile Apps vs Web Apps - 3 Options

2011-07-29T17:45:00.000+01:00

This seems to be a very HOT topic at the moment for the CMO or marketeer, effectively there are three options when devising your mobile strategy:

1) Native apps programmed using Objective C on the iPhone, Java on Android devices or Silverlight on Windows Phone 7

Native apps make use of all the phone’s features, such as the mobile phone camera, geolocation, and the user’s address book.
Native apps do not need to be connected to the internet to be used.
A native app is specific to the mobile handset it is run on, since it uses the features of that specific handset.
Native apps can be distributed on the phone’s marketplace (e.g. Apple Store for iPhone or Ovi store for Nokia handsets).

2) Web apps which run in the phone’s web browser

This means the app works across all devices, and ensures cross-platform compatibility.
The same base code can be used to support all devices
However, web apps do not make use of the phone’s other features, such as the camera or geolocation.
Web apps cannot be deployed to the phone’s marketplace.
You have to consider supporting multiple types of mobile browsers and doing some form of redirection upon detection

3) Hybrid mobile apps - Mix

Using a development framework, companies can develop cross-platform applications that use web technologies (such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS), while still accessing the phone’s features.
A hybrid app is a native app with embedded HTML.
Selected portions of the app are written using web technologies.
The web portions can be downloaded from the web, or packaged within the app.
This option allows companies to reap all the benefits of native apps while ensuring longevity associated with well-established web technologies.

I think Microsoft and SharePoint 2010 has a great story here:

SharePoint deployed as the Web Content Management System with Silverlight adding rich functionality on the web
Mobile Web Apps are delivered via a customised Mobile Master Page/Layout
Mobile Apps are delivered to Windows Phone via Silverlight for rich offline experiences or we have some great partners out there who can deliver these apps to other phone platforms.

The future is bright, the future of the web is SharePoint! :-)

SharePoint For Internet Sites High Availability

2011-07-26T14:35:00.000+01:00

There are fundamentally two reasons why customer’s looking to deploy SharePoint 2010 as a public facing internet/extranet site should deploy a minimum of two servers:

- Website Performance

- Business Continuity

Website Performance

The speed of response is critical to the success of a website. Website performance is also important in your business reputation management effort. Whether you sell products or services on your business website (i.e. ecommerce site) or simply provide information on it (i.e. company profile or business blog,) the way your business website offers all those will make or break your business reputation.

‘Amazon found that a 100ms increase in page response time let to a 1% drop in sales’ (Kohavi and Longbotham 2007)

By deploying a second SharePoint server (another FIS license), this will give you the capability to handle not only more requests, but most importantly more simultaneous requests for content hosted on your site. So during hours of peak demand, having two SharePoint web servers, will allow you to serve more customers and ensure that each customer using your site will have a rich and engaging user experience. Depending on which vertical market your site serves, a drop in performance could have a significant impact on your bottom line. From a consumer perspective, our expectations have changed considerably over the years and we no longer accept a site which is frustratingly slow to use. With the advent of the internet and search technology, this ultimately gives the power of choice to consumers, allowing them to very quickly find an alternative site, resulting in a potential loss of a sale, or in the case of a service industry, a potential call to your call centre resulting in increased operating costs.

On a final note….did you know that search providers such as Bing and Google now factor site speed into their ranking algorithm?

Business Continuity

What is meant by business continuity on the web? Adding a second SharePoint server makes your website highly available – if one SharePoint web server fails, the other takes over and handles all forthcoming page requests. Why do I need to make my website highly available? Does it really matter if my website goes down every now and then? Consider this: What if your brick-and-mortar store is being closed for two days? You will lose more than just those two days-worth of revenue; your potential customers could turn to your competitor’s store; your customers could think that you are not dependable; you could make the headline on the local newspaper. Now think about a consumer’s web experience…if your site goes down during peak hours and customer’s ever-changing high expectations, you may lose that customer forever.

‘Businesses in the UK risk losing up to £36.7 billion in revenue per year if their websites fail during peak periods’ (Micro Focus, June 2011)

But it’s not just about protecting the bottom line all the time, your company’s website represents your brand online. With the rise of social media, any potential customer finding their way through the complex virtual paths of the social web, will ultimately land on your website hoping to learn more and experience your brand. If for any reason that site is down, then this journey for the customer ends in disappointment. Your website is also the heart and soul of your digital marketing strategy and as we start to embrace Web 3.0, your website will be the only source for connected devices.

‘By 2015, there will be over 25 billion connected devices world-wide and each person will on average have at least 3 connected devices’ (Cisco IBSG)

Making your website highly available should be the number one priority when formulating your digital marketing strategy.

Office Web Apps Licensing

2010-11-09T10:23:00.000Z

I had a customer with a requirement to build an extranet in SharePoint 2010 last week but they didn't want to make the jump to InfoPath forms/services. So I suggested they used Office Web Apps so their customers could access their Excel based forms.

This all sounds simple, however there are some complications aound licensing. Here at Outsourcery we use the SPLA licensing agreement with Microsoft and in order to license Office Web Apps all the user needs is an Office license.

Now here's the interesting bit, it doesn't matter what device the user acceses Office Web Apps on (Phone, Laptop, Desktop, etc) as long as they have an Office license - so for an Inranet/Extranet/hosted scenario this is great news.

Windows Mobile 7 First (Brief) Impressions

2010-11-08T18:56:00.000Z

I was out and about shopping on Saturday and managed to take a quick look and have a play with the new Windows Mobile 7 interface. The particular device I was playing around with was the Samsung Omnia (http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/smartphones/windows/GT-I8700YKAH3G/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail). First impressions were 'wow!' The new interface is clean, crisp and to be honest something all us non-iPhone users have been long waiting for. Working for Outsourcery I have had my fair share of devices, including Blackberry, iPhone and most recently Windows Mobile 6.5, the latter of which was probably the worst for reliability.

I love the tile look and feel of the new home screen and I think the biggest game changer for the business phone market is the very tight integration with Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Office - something which all the other OS' on the market do, but not as well. If you are a Microsoft house and you want to use SharePoint, any other OS other than Windows Mobile is just not going to cut it. When speaking to clients I for one will be recommending the new Windows Mobile 7 - I am just trying to get one to use from Outsourcery to do a full review.

First Blog Post

2010-11-08T11:50:00.000Z

Ok I am completely new to the whole blogging scene. I intend on using my blog to talk about all things to do with SharePoint, the cloud, Microsoft and a few personal hobbies and interests.