Hi All,

Just come back from the lovely Island of Cyprus - Nice hotel, fantastic weather, interesting people - you get the picture..... I was in the bar one night having a tonic water - with a bit of gin in it and I was talking to a couple of people at the bar one of them asked what I did in the UK - standard answer " I work for a IT consultancy firm we are not huge but we are sucessful and we specialise in IDM" - at this point people usually switch off "ah, Identity management what do you think of Forefront?" - whoh somebody knows what I'm talking about!

It turned out there was a small IT conference on, Theo it turns out was a local Microsoft consultant a quick chat ensued and I felt brave enough to ask "what do you think has happened that people actually like Microsoft again?" - Lets be honest the last couple of years MS has had a bit a hammering - what with legal battles and neg police out to pull Vista to bits. 

The consensus reply to my question was two words - Steve Ballmer - Microsoft in their opinion had stopped for air, smelt the roses and realised that maybe they had been resting on their laurels and were now re-inventing themselves. I really cant argue with that conclusion, one thing is for sure Mr Ballmer is far more commercially savvy than the maligned (I think unfairly - as this guy broke new boundaries) Bill Gates, but since his departure Microsofts strategy has notably changed i.e advertisements with considerable humour while at the same time taking an almighty swipe at their competition. Look at the ads and articles highlighting "Apple tax" - ouch.

However I personally think there are a few more champions at Microsoft who have emerged from the shadow of Bill Gates take a bow Ray Ozzie (Microsofts leading technical whizz) and of Office 2007 fame and now Windows 7 Steven Sinofsky - a person who really believes in putting the user first.
 
Google have enjoyed the "cool" bracket for a couple of years now but recently they have been pretty quiet - apart from getting serious heat around privacy issues and what about scanning books without asking people's permission? - thats not going to impress people (especially in academia I suspect) and lets be honest Chrome OS hasn't exactly taken the world by storm....more of a wimper compared to the virtual (no pun intended) stampede for Windows 7 and remind me how many times has Google Mail fallen over now? Sorry but its worth considering when you are looking at email solutions, plus with Office 2010 opening up huge possibilities with cloud based apps Google could be next to cop an almight swipe from team MS!

But it does not stop there people with 7 and Office 2010 - look at other projects like Photosynth, Silverlight , Surface and Project Tuva. Tuva exites me, this is a series of physic's lectures conducted by Richard Feynman in the 40's (he worked on the Manhatten Project during WW2 you knew that right!) this is available online - using the aforementioned Silverlight and also ultilises a timeline beneath the video listing additional content and definitions so you can instantly switch to other noted boffins to look at their lectures ect. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (like Feynman) to work out the possibilities of expanding this application as a prototype for future powerful web based learning tools - Google have been campaigning for years for information on the internet to more accessable, user friendly and searchable, maybe Microsoft have taken on the challenge of finally opening up the web?

Then there is SeaDragon which could revolutionise wall size displays in exhibition halls and shopping centres to how you view your mobile device. Oh and lets not forget Azure and the new Sharepoint developments with pre-made templates.....really, these are hardly the signs of a company that has lost the plot, sounds more like a company that is positively brimming with fresh new idea's.

Okay gush over its not all plain sailing Window 7 has hit some walls i.e the european editions coming with or without MS explorer due to breaking EU competition criteria (hopefully this has now finally been resolved with the inclusion of a brower selector panel when installing) and of course some confusion with 7 being an upgrade or a completely fresh install (a sweepstake might be an idea to guess how many people are going to click fresh install and wipe all their existing documents,pictures and emails not to mention preloaded software on their machines) but these are mere gripes I suspect, I believe Microsoft are on the verge of something potentially special, the next 12 months are going to be very interesting that's for sure.