Facts & Messages From Conferences

From the Oct. 2006 Issue

One of the things that I try to do to keep my knowledge current is to attend
vendor-sponsored conferences. This is the case whether I am looking at practice
management products, accounting software products, paperless products, consumer
products or networking products. The fees, loss of time and related travel expenses
often seem large, but, in retrospect, I usually gain enough knowledge, ask questions
directly to people responsible for the decisions, benefit from networking with
peers, and get to hear the product message unfiltered or interpreted by the
press. I’d suggest you budget and schedule to allow people to attend conferences
held by CCH, CSI, Intuit, Microsoft, Sage, Citrix and others. I also suggest
that you budget and plan to attend major technology shows held by the AICPA,
Sleeter, K2, Consumer Electronics, AIIM and others when considering how to spend
your conference and CPE dollars.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (MSWPC) is held annually to help
Microsoft partners understand strategies for the coming year and beyond. It
was particularly helpful to be in Boston this year to understand more about
the release features and timing of Windows Vista and Office 2007. From main
stage comments during the show, it would be my best guess that Office 2007 (and
probably Vista) will ship to companies on Microsoft licensing agreements in
November. Consumer shipments are likely to occur in January 2007. Negotiations
have occurred between Microsoft and major hardware vendors to have an upgrade
coupon available over a certain timeframe so sales can proceed during the fourth
quarter. Additionally, the revisions to Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 convinced
me all the more that training will be required for users. The time invested
in training will quickly come back in productivity. Forcing users to flounder
in an attempt to use the new operating system and Microsoft Office without training
is a bad management decision.

Microsoft continued to promote and refine its position to have all of us use
the following: SharePoint, OfficeLive, OneCare (new anti-virus services), business
intelligence, geospatial mapping, and the company’s Voice over IP (VoIP)
offering. Microsoft is serious about many of its new product offerings. The
company hit its deadline with the release of Vista Release Candidate 1 as well
as the announcement of a relationship with Nortel to deliver VoIP. Let’s
explore some of these offerings a little further.

OfficeLive
Particularly if you are a small office, you should sign up for the
free OfficeLive service from Microsoft. This service provides you with a domain
name and the ability to share files with SharePoint technology. Pick a domain
name that is related to your existing domain name, but slightly different. Experiment
with some of the portal and file transfer capabilities. Consider how the e-mail
system might work for you. I think you will find that this advertising-supported
service will actually solve a few business problems for you with little or no
investment of money and a minimal investment of time. Office 2007 will integrate
to OfficeLive. Microsoft also announced that it would host Microsoft Dynamics
CRM as an OfficeLive service in 2007.

OneCare
The OneCare system from Microsoft has been maligned
in the press, but my experience with the product to date has been good. Having
all of the virus, malware detection, and other protection services from Microsoft
seems to provide a cleaner experience on our test systems than we have had with
the best of other competitive products. Microsoft will extend this in the future
with the server-based System Center protection products.

Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence has moved strongly into the Microsoft
Office 2007 System, with improved interfaces in Excel, PivotTables and connections
to SQL 2005, as well as other data resources. The improved graphics and improved
business data reporting are key advantages. Analytics providers will have to
improve their products to compete with some of the new capabilities.

Geospatial Technology
Also demonstrated was an interesting use of geospatial technology to map customer
data. An example was used of a retailer with a store location considering a
new contract. Through Microsoft Office technologies, a graphical display of
the number of customers by address was displayed. The controls allowed the amount
of customer purchases, the distance away and other factors to be displayed graphically
on a map of the San Francisco Bay area. Then, using RSS feeds, real estate transactions
in the desired area were displayed. Selecting desired parameters of space, parking,
drive time and other attributes, possible alternative real estate sites were
located. A potential new site was selected based on customer demographic data,
and then satellite images and a bird’s eye view of the potential site
were used. Much of this technology was integrated with Microsoft MapPoint and
Microsoft LocalLive. These two tools are available now, and I am routinely showing
how to do pin maps with customer data in Excel 2007 today.

VoIP
Microsoft has a strong interest in integrating server and desktop services with
VoIP. Interfaces for telephony have been around for some time through technologies
like MAPI and TAPI, but the new integrations include Exchange, presence indicators,
private instant messaging (IM), conference calling, conversion of voicemail
to e-mail, and integration into Nortel systems. Microsoft is trying to make
its IM capabilities secure for corporate communications. Using presence indicators
is something that our children and younger employees have enjoyed while using
instant messaging services from MSN, AOL and Yahoo! — the notification
that their friends are online and available. These presence indicators will
let you establish an IM session, a voice call, a conference call, and may also
present geospatial GIS (people locating) information based on Microsoft ILS
services, another product that is already shipping. Also included are call rerouting
services to PDAs via wireless. The live demonstration of a voice call received
by Steve Balmer on stage to a cell phone from a computer was pretty impressive,
and surprisingly clear. The promise of having one way to find a person may be
getting close. Some authors are discussing whether an e-mail address or a phone
number becomes your single identifier, but Microsoft did not take a position
on this.

One other interesting item to note from a demonstrated main stage application
was the browser-enabled application to Microsoft Dynamics. The client was not
referred to as Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP or any other member of the Microsoft
line, but only as the Dynamics client. Further, the accounting software interface
did not include terms like journal entries, transactions or other terminology
that we have become used to in accounting software. The user interface named
balances, reports and graphics to display the accounting information. This could
be the start of a much larger trend throughout Microsoft accounting. Time will
tell if this observation is correct.

It was clear from this barrage of technologies that other vendors will gain
a tremendous advantage if they will update their products to take advantage
of the latest Microsoft development technologies. You will gain even more business
purpose if your application vendor will take advantage of the many new capabilities
in the Microsoft family. Again, I encourage you to attend your preferred vendor’s
conferences to gain insight directly from your vendor about their strategies
for the next year.

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Mr. Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and
Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant
and writer with over 30 years experience in strategic technology planning, systems
and network integration, accounting software selection, business development
and management, disaster recovery and contingency planning, and process engineering.

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