Consumerization of IT (CoIT) is a reality to many organizations today. Employees more and more want to use their personal electronic devices to do their jobs, and utilize the same technologies and applications at work that they use at home. This blending of consumer and enterprise technologies is the Consumerization of IT, and it boosts employee productivity and satisfaction. However, it can make it difficult for IT departments to ensure an enterprise’s data security and integrity. Many people think CoIT is only about “Devices Management”. To have a successful CoIT strategy, we also need to think about People, Security and Management, , and Productivity**.** Microsoft IT built the support for CoIT based on following four pillar. • Windows PCs and other devices: Classify what are enterprise-standard, consumer-standard, and nonstandard devices, and then determine the various support models for each. Look at your support model, think about how difference devices will be supported and what level of support each kind of devices gets. • Security and management: Determine how to manage and control these devices, and their users’ access to intellectual property, and then ensure data’s integrity and security once users place it on these devices. Different people may handle different information, HR and Finance Department typically handle more sensitive data and information. Classify different data and information then build access and control polices around it. For example, highly business impact (Like HR and Finance records) data and information should be only accessed from managed devices. Low business impact data and information may be accessed through unmanaged devices to enable flexibility. • Productivity: Determine which applications and technologies to support on employees’ devices to ensure that they continue to be satisfied and productive. •Unified application development: Establish best practices for line-of-business (LOB) application development, and ensure a secure development lifecycle and marketplace for these applications Below table (Click to enlarge) illustrate how Microsoft IT support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for both Windows and Non-Windows Devices. It also shows what kind of access each device can get. Here is list of technologies that involved to build this approach. ...

A few weeks ago, I was very lucky to have been invited by the NUS School of Computing to provide feedback to students for their project in Module CS4202. This module is focused on Human Computer Interaction and the teams were assigned to use the Kinect system for their projects. All of the teams used the Kinect to some extent. Of course some utilized it better than others and it really shows through the projects. It was interesting to see how the teams approached the problems given to them and how they thought of incorporating the Kinect. It reminded me of a video released by Microsoft sometime back after it noticed how people are innovating on the Kinect. A cheap, yet powerful sensor that has infinite uses only limited by one’s imagination. [youtube]http://youtu.be/T_QLguHvACs[/youtube] Prof. Sheng from NUS gave me the link to their blog and it shows all the projects that was presented. You can check it out here A couple of projects that stood out for me were Human Kinect Exhibit [youtube]http://youtu.be/mDweANoZAZk[/youtube] The Human Kinect Exhibit focused on providing a fun learning environment for children to learn about the human anatomy. The game they created was fun and engaging and provided a learning environment for children to learn some information about bones. On first glance the project seems like a simple game but what really fascinated me was the reaction and interaction of the audience once they have set the application up at the Science Museum. The feedback and the reaction of the users was very valuable for the team as this proves that their game is enjoyable and educational. For me, nothing beats getting your product out and getting people to try it out. ChopChopMirror [youtube]http://youtu.be/1kllEzn9Wgk[/youtube] ChopChop Mirror is a great concept. They treated the Kinect as an interface for your digital assistant. I think this will be a common feature in our bathroom mirrors as we enable more screens with touch and intelligence. The concept itself is in it’s infancy but I can really see intelligent houses in the near future once interfaces and components become cheaper. I liked the project because of their forward thinking and how they designed the interface. Aside from that, it also reminds me of one video from Microsoft envisioning the future. Microsoft releases envisioning videos every year, giving us a glimpse of what the future has for us trough the eyes of the largest software company in the world. This year’s envisioning video has something similar to ChopChop Mirror in some shape or form. [youtube]http://youtu.be/a6cNdhOKwi0[/youtube] I’m really grateful to have been invited by Prof. Sheng to his class. I saw some great projects and realized how much potential a student has given the right technology. Looking forward to their future projects!

We’ve been hearing a lot of talk around Metro, which is at the center of the new Windows 8 experience. Shane Morris, ex-Microsoft User Experience Design Evangelist and currently Director at Automatic Studio, was recently in town and shared lots of great tips about how to navigate Metro design. Code named ‘Metro’; this design theme is inspired by one of the most common sights we see in our daily lives – the Metro (or the MRT in our case!) If you’ve noticed, the signs, guidelines at our Metro/MRT stations have a clean, clear, distinctive design theme. The straight lines, squares and circles make it easy to distinguish and identify the stations. This is the key objective of the new Metro User Experience with Windows 8 as well. Shane shared that Metro is quintessentially a design that immerses users in the content. Instead of trying to re-create real life experiences on your tablet, it makes use of clean, modern and motion design to bring apps to life. This design also makes it easy to distinguish apps from one another – and if you as a developer make the effort to, you can easily bring your app to life with the ‘live tiles’ and attract users back to your application. Here are Shane’s slides: ...

#MSCampfire was an amazing opportunity for us to gather developers, IT professionals, students and start-ups together. Over the course of 3 days we saw 600 attendees come together to discuss and share about the latest in web and mobile technology, had the brightest student minds pit their heads together in the Semis and Final of Imagine Cup SG to tackle some of the toughest real-world problems and saw the grit and passion from start-ups in Singapore from the Singapore Satellite of Echelon by our partner E27. All these wouldn’t have been possible without your support. Thank you so much for attending #MSCampfire and we hope to continually see you for the rest of our events. For those of you who missed #MSCampfire, fret not! Our next event happening on 10 May is HTML 5 on Metro. During this session, we’ll speak specifically about how HTML5 is changing the way applications are designed and how best to use it to create Metro-styled apps! Register now at bit.ly/html5onmetro Here are the slides from each session and the coverage on it. 10:30 – 11:30 Keynote – Rob Miles (Coverage by E27) 16:30-17:30 The Kinect Effect: Infinite Possibilities – Rob Miles Slides and (mostly working) code from the presentations - here C# Yellow Book, Windows Phone Blue book and other free stuff - here .NET Micro Framework embedded development - here Gadgeteer embedded development - here Three Thing Game student madness – here Windows Phone development - here Dreamspark, free software for students - here Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio – here Kinect For Windows SDK – here 11:30 – 12:30 Prototype, Prototype, Prototype – Shane Morris (Coverage by E27) ...

We got a piece of good news and a piece of bad news to update on the contest! Let’s start with the bad news first. We have our winners for all Starbucks cards and 4gb thumbdrives but we won’t be announcing it here. GOOD NEWS is…. we are extending this contest till 11 May 2012! So start downloading System Center 2012 if you havent to stand a chance to win a Zenbook! details are here » with so many good reviews on UX31 (http://www.engadget.com/, http://www.pcmag.com, http://www.laptopmag.com) I’m sure you don’t want to miss this! Hint: Remember to sign up for MVA to triple your chances of winning! We also like to take this opportunity to invite you to get your hands on IT at Private Cloud Immersion! Learn how Microsoft is delivering cloud solutions now and in the future. For more click here »

Past couple of weeks, I shared at our community meetup and also partner briefings about some new fantastic features about Windows Server 2012 (formerly known as Windows Server “8”). SR-IOV is one of them. SR-IOV stands for Single-Root Input/Output (I/O) Virtualization. It’s is a standard defined by the PCI Special Interest Group. If you work for one of the member companies who have access, and are after some light bedtime reading, the specs are available on their website. To learn more, I want to point you to this outstanding 8 part blog series written by John Howard, a senior program manager on the Hyper-V team at Microsoft Here are the posts for you reading pleasure: Part 1: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/12/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-1.aspx Part 1 discusses emulated versus software devices, the pros and cons and constraints of each and why Microsoft is investing in SR-IOV. —————————————————————————————————– Part 2: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/13/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-2.aspx Part 2 discusses the SR-IOV standard, physical functions (PFs) virtual functions (VFs) and the hardware requirements to make SR-IOV even possible. —————————————————————————————————– Part 3: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/14/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-3.aspx Part 3 discusses device drivers and how they function in an SR-IOV environment as well as screenshots of an SR-IOV NIC within a Hyper-V VM. —————————————————————————————————– Part 4: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/15/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-4.aspx Part 4 discusses some of the low level necessary firmware and motherboard changes to make SR-IOV function and provides a pointer to an interesting presentation given 4 years ago at WinHEC 2008 by Jake Oshins that provides further insight into SR-IOV. —————————————————————————————————– Part 5: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/16/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-5.aspx Part 5 explains the IO path with SR-IOV enabled, covers SR-IOV configuration via the UI and a deeper dive into PowerShell. —————————————————————————————————– Part 6: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/19/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-6.aspx Part 6 discusses SR-IOV and Live Migration in detail. It covers the engineering challenge of making SR-IOV work with Live Migration (not trivial folks) and even includes a video that demonstrates a virtual machine with an SR-IOV NIC under load being Live Migrated. There’s even a link to a WinHEC 2006 presentation —————————————————————————————————– Part 7: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/20/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-7.aspx Part 7 discusses SR-IOV and how it works with the new inbox Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming. Yes folks, you can team SR-IOV NICs in the guest. —————————————————————————————————– Part 8: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/21/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-8.aspx Part 8 discusses debugging SR-IOV and includes examples in PowerShell and covers troubleshooting through the Event Viewer.

The recent announcements of Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive have thrown the spotlight on some of the most exciting changes in the global fight for cloud hosting services. As one of the most wired countries in the world, there is no better time to get onboard. Because like any true Singaporean, we all want the best value for our money. Even if it’s free. Here’s a quick summary of five cloud services available in Singapore. Microsoft SkyDrive Microsoft’s recently re-introduced their cloud hosting service SkyDrive, available across PCs and the Mac platform. Tips on how to install it here. (Psst. Quickly opt in now to re-upgrade your account to a 25GB storage for a limited period of time. Steps are here.) The SkyDrive desktop application’s compatibility with Mac extends only so far as Lion, so if you’re on an older Mac you’ll have to access SkyDrive through your browser. Points to SkyDrive must be awarded for its iOS app - photos taken on an iPhone were quickly uploaded and synced to my SkyDrive via an easy multiple selection screen. Around 30 photos took mere minutes to upload in their original uncompressed formats. Google Drive Image from https://drive.google.com/start Although Google very recently made headlines for Drive (and we do mean recently - this article was rewritten because of it), it unfortunately doesn’t seem to be available in Singapore as of yet. Anyone have any luck finding anything other than a “Google Drive is coming.” page? Originally, Google didn’t have a compiled cloud service per se. Sure, emailing files to your own email account might have done the trick, but your content was probably evenly spread among Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Google Calendar and so on. Some may argue that separate content requires separate services, but Drive, like the One Ring to Rule Them All, will probably be the consolidating platform that unites them. Watch this space. Apple iCloud Image from http://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html I would consider iCloud to be more of a behind-the-scenes sort of restore tool. You hardly realise it’s there until you need to use it. It backs up your mail, contacts, calendar and is needed to use native applications such as Find My iPhone. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever used it much. Because Singapore doesn’t have access to the content on the Apple Online Store (music, movies and whatnot), there is no local option to backup such content on the cloud. Amazon Cloud Drive Image from https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore This one’s a bit of a mystery since the online Amazon store is also not available in Singapore. A bit of an iCloud problem, if you could put it that way - why buy/use the service if you’re denied access to its repository of impressive content? I managed to log in with my Amazon account, but was slightly disappointed by its lack of features. Like iCloud, this service is closely tied in to the company’sproducts, so I would suggest giving this 5GB a miss unless you own a Kindle. Dropbox Image from http://www.dropbox.com The only service that isn’t tied in with a larger parent tech company, Dropbox has been around for a while and its strength lies in seamless syncing across various operating systems. There’s even a Public Folder option where you can generate a link to your uploaded files for public downloads. I’ve lost count of the times when I wanted to share a file quickly, then simply dragged and dropped and gotten an URL to copy and paste in a pinch. The Good News My advice? Why choose when you can literally have it all? Use SkyDrive for uploading photographs from your phone on the go, Dropbox for file-sharing with friends, Google for organising and editing group projects and Amazon Cloud Drive for… well, when you run out of free online storage space, I guess. Remember to upgrade your Skydrive to 25GB for a limited time too!

One of the things that can really bug a user is when you don’t have access to your data. Over the last year we’ve been hard at work building SkyDrive alongside Windows 8, setting out a unique approach to designing personal cloud storage for billions of people by bringing together the best aspects of file, app, and device clouds. [caption id=“attachment_8881” align=“alignnone” width=“652” caption=“Special folder stays in sync with your SkyDrive”][/caption] Today, we’re excited to take another big step towards our vision by making SkyDrive far more powerful. There are new storage options, apps that connect your devices to SkyDrive, and a more powerful device cloud that lets you “fetch” any file from a Windows PC. Starting today, we are now offering: ...

MMS2012 at Vegas last week was awesome. If you followed the keynotes, both keynotes were very good. You can watch Keynote and Breakout sessions at http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms. Same excitments are shared by medias too. I saw some good articles on some popular sites. eweek: Windows Server 8 is Now Officially Windows Server 2012 Meanwhile, at MMS, Microsoft’s Anderson said IT organizations that use System Center 2012 and Windows Server with Hyper-V for cloud computing are helping their companies move faster, save money and compete better. For example, EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services, a luxury car service headquartered in New Jersey, has used a Microsoft private cloud to reduce data center costs by 50 percent, amid 30 percent company growth during the past 18 months. With more than 1,000 employees, EmpireCLS relies on the Microsoft private cloud to deliver a reliable reservation system to customers in more than 700 cities around the world. Using System Center 2012, EmpireCLS also used its cloud environment to create a new business with its BeTransported software as a service (SaaS) offering. The application is now in use broadly within the car service industry. Network world: Your move, VMware:Windows Server ‘8’ Becomes Windows Server 2012 BetaNews: Meet Windows Server 2012 Windows IT Pro: MMS 2012: The Evolution of Data Center Computing The Register: Microsoft goes global with System Center 2012 at MMC Windows IT Pro: MMS 2012: System Center 2012 Released, Windows Server ‘8’ Now Windows Server 2012 Network World: Hyper-V: Hyper Adoption TechTarget: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 released – and new Windows Intune is on the way ZDNet: Windows Server 8 officially dubbed Windows Server 2012 Windows IT Pro: It’s Official: Windows Server 2012 ...

Check out this awesome project by our Australian DPE team! From their blog: We decided to push the boundaries for HTML5’s canvas tag in this beautiful photo gallery visualiser. So we at La La Ninja decided to make ForestFly – http://forestfly.lalaninja.com.au by Tom Knight from Xamling ForestFly was designed to provide a simple, yet visually appealing method of viewing facebook photo albums. With limited knowledge of Canvas, HTML5 Video and Audio elements, our designer and I managed to complete the project in less than 5 days thanks to broad community knowledge and relative ease of use. ...