Ozan Öncel Blog: General

Rafal Lukawiecki- Data Mining and Business Intelligence for Enteprises on TechNet Spotlight

Thu, 29 May 2008 18:23:17 GMT

In Data Mining and Business Intelligence for Enterprises, Rafal Lukawiecki aims to show IT Professionals how data mining can be used in IT infrastructure to support real business scenarios demystifying the perception that Data Mining is complex, untested or only for specialists. This has become possible since Microsoft has taken the technology to new levels making it accessible to all. In four easy-to-understand yet packed with practical information sessions you will learn about what Data Mining and Business Intelligence can do for you, how to deploy and manage it, how to use it, and how to make it available to other parts of your IT environment.

Visit TechNet Spotlight: www.microsoft.com/technetspotlight

Video on Demand, Video Downloads, PowerPoint Presentations, Audio and more

Data Mining and Business Intelligence for Enterprises

Available Videos

Data Mining and Business Intelligence for Enterprises:

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/event.aspx?id=99

Links to Session Videos:

Ø Introduction to Data Mining- Rafal Lukawiecki, Strategic Consultant, Project Botticelli Ltd

Ø Working with Data Mining- Rafal Lukawiecki, Strategic Consultant, Project Botticelli Ltd

Ø Using Data Mining in your IT Systems (Part 1)- Rafal Lukawiecki, Strategic Consultant, Project Botticelli Ltd

Ø Using Data Mining in your IT Systems (Part 1), Rafal Lukawiecki, Strategic Consultant, Project Botticelli Ltd

END-TO-END INTEGRATED VIRTUALIZATION

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:52:12 GMT

Many companies consider to use their existing infrastructure more efficiently or take advantage of new technologies without having to buy additional hardware every time new applications and services are added.
Virtualization enables more than just consolidation and Server Virtualization. It has the power to enable agility across IT environments. Virtualization will play a significant role in enabling companies to create IT systems that are not only highly efficient, but that have the self-awareness to adapt automatically as business conditions change.

By considering on the solution, there are some specific questions come up;

"How are you planning to use virtualization?"
"Is it just about server virtualization or do you have other scenarios in which you want to virtualize applications, client or presentation layer?"
"How do you plan to manage this environment? Do you need a tool set to manage both the physical and virtual world at the same time?"

When you examine the solution in the market, you will see that Microsoft offers end2end integrated virtualization solutions better TCO.

Server Virtualization

With Microsoft Windows Server 2008, server virtualization will be available as part of the operating system with the new 'Hyper-V' feature. Microsoft's design approach improves virtualization efficiency and delivers better performance. (This technology is also available separately through Microsoft Hyper-V Server.) Hyper-V technology--as well as the currently available Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2--supports server consolidation, re-hosting of legacy operating systems and applications on new hardware, and disaster recovery based on application portability across hardware platforms.

Presentation Virtualization

With Microsoft Windows Server Terminal Services, a Windows desktop application can run on a shared server machine and present its user interface on a remote system, such as a desktop computer or thin client.

Desktop Virtualization

Microsoft Virtual PC runs applications that are not compatible with the operating system on a desktop PC by supporting multiple operating systems on a single machine. It also accelerates testing and development of new software and systems. In addition, with the Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop license for hosted desktop architectures (also known 'virtualized desktop infrastructures'), an entire desktop can be hosted on a server and remotely delivered to another desktop computer.

Application Virtualization

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization transforms applications into centrally-managed virtual services that are streamed to desktops, servers, and laptops when and where they are needed. SoftGrid dramatically accelerates application deployment, upgrades, and patching by simplifying the application management lifecycle.

ISO and IEC approve Office Open XML document format standard

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:41:50 GMT

The International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have approved ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Office Open XML File Formats as an International Standard. Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes cast negative. Both of these criteria were achieved, with 75 % of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and only 14 % of all national votes cast being negative.

Microsoft Gets Gartner's Business Intelligence Top Ranking

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:32:43 GMT

The company makes a surprise leap ahead of Business Objects and Cognos in its ability to execute on BI products and pricing.

By Mary Hayes Weier
InformationWeek
February 5, 2008 03:34 PM

Business Objects and Cognos have long been considered the leaders in business intelligence platforms. But in a surprising new report, Gartner ranks Microsoft ahead of those companies in its ability to execute.

Gartner's "magic quadrants" are typically annual market evaluations that place software vendors in one of four quadrants within a square: niche players, visionaries, challengers, and leaders. Specific placement within a quadrant depends on a vendor's ability to execute, which moves them upward, and completeness of vision, which moves them to the right.

Business Objects, Cognos, and Microsoft were placed among the leaders in Gartner's just-released Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008. But the research firm placed Microsoft above the other two in its ability to execute, including the competitiveness and success of its BI goods and services, its viability and investment in BI, and the execution of its sales and pricing. In last year's BI platform report, Gartner put Microsoft in the challenger quadrant.

Business Objects and Cognos slightly outranked Microsoft in completeness of vision, which includes such things as market understanding, sales strategy, and product development and delivery strategy.

By placing the world's largest vendor of commodity software as one of the BI market leaders, Gartner is demonstrating how quickly BI is moving from a specialized, expensive technology into a commodity itself. The rapidly commoditizing BI market, many industry observers believe, is among the reasons Business Objects accepted a $6.8 billion buyout offer from SAP and Cognos took a $5 billion buyout offer from IBM.

In its report, written by James Richardson and three other Gartner analysts, the firm cites the attractiveness of Microsoft's integrated Office suite, its PerformancePoint Server released last year, and SQL Server to businesses standardized on Microsoft platforms. "The bundling and pricing of its BI products makes [Microsoft] an economically attractive offering that will be considered by many organizations," the analysts wrote, adding that Microsoft's large development community will further the platform.

They also wrote that customers cite Microsoft for having the "best BI software quality of all the megavendors, with over half of them reporting no problems with the software," and attribute this quality, in part, to much of its technology having been internally developed rather than acquired.

Other companies placed in the leaders' quadrant included Oracle MicroStrategy, and SAS Institute, while Information Builders straddled the line between challengers and leaders. The leader ranking also is a move up for MicroStrategy, which Gartner ranked as a visionary last year.

SAP was ranked separately from Business Objects as a challenger, since SAP's acquisition of Business Objects was completed just a few weeks ago. Gartner ranked QlikTech and Tibco Spotfire as visionaries, and Actuate, Arcplan, Board International, and Panorama Software as niche players.

Gartner defines BI platforms as those that enable users to build applications that help organizations learn and understand their business. It divides these capabilities into the functions of integration, information delivery, and analysis.

See the Virtual Earth Platform in Action

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:53:49 GMT

http://maps.live.com/

Video:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/resources/Files/4000000882/CB_Virtual_Earth_300k0.wvx

Sites:

New Document Standard - OpenXML

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:08:46 GMT

ABOUT OpenXML ...

Office Open XML is a new standard that is ratified by ECMA for word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. It can be freely implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms.

The need for an open office format arises from the necessity for long-term preservation of documents. Existing documents based on binary formats are coupled tightly with the programs that create them. Over time, they become difficult to read without significant loss. Preserving the integrity of documents has become an important issue.

OpenXML is based on XML, which confers the benefits of preservation, interoperability, and extensibilty. It is designed to support the existing features of word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Furthermore, the features it specifies closely mirror that of those supported by existing Microsoft(TM) Office suite of products. This allows the transition from Micrsoft(TM) Office documents to OpenXML documents to happen easily.

With the OOXML standard, new applications can be built that enables the

Automatic extraction of data from documents
Modification of a small part of the doccument, and yet allowing editability
Mass formatting on a large set of documents
Generation of standard documents from business data

Microsoft Office (2007, 2003, XP, 2000), OpenOffice Novell Edition, open-source project Gnumeric, Neo-Office 2.1, and PalmOS (Dataviz) already support Open XML. Corel has announced Open XML support for WordPerfect 2007 and developers worldwide are building solutions using Open XML.

http://www.openxml.biz/

http://www.openxmlcommunity.org/

Open XML trumps ODF in document format fight, consulting firm says - Eric Lai

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:38:16 GMT

January 14, 2008 (Computerworld) The OpenDocument Format (ODF) remains "more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection" by users, according to a report released Monday by analysts at Burton Group, who recommend that companies adopt Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format whether or not it is approved as an ISO standard next month.

Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group said that the report was neither commissioned nor paid for by Microsoft. However, Burton analyst Peter O'Kelly, one of the report's co-authors, is scheduled to make a presentation at an Open XML press briefing that Microsoft plans to hold in the Seattle area on Wednesday. Also speaking will be multiple Microsoft executives involved in the Open XML standards-ratification effort.

In their report, O'Kelly and fellow analyst Guy Creese predicted that Open XML "will be more pervasive" among users than ODF will be. The latter format -- officially known as the Open Document Format for Office Applications -- will remain viable but "in a minor role," Creese and O'Kelly wrote.

The two analysts cited several reasons to back up their contentions:

Other than in "simple scenarios," they said, Open XML beats ODF in terms of compatibility with prior Office document formats. "This may be an inconvenient truth for Microsoft competitors, but it will remain so unless Sun [Microsystems Inc.] and other ODF supporters revise ODF to include full Office file format compatibility."
"Much to the chagrin of Microsoft competitors," Creese and O'Kelly wrote, "Microsoft appears to be sincere in its efforts to make [Open XML] a meaningful and global industry standard." Open XML already has been accepted by the Ecma International standards body, which today published a 2,300-page document addressing complaints and suggestions about the format from members of Geneva-based International Standards Organization. The latter group in September narrowly rejected an attempt by Ecma to win fast-track ISO standard approval for Open XML.
Open XML is "more complex than ODF, but it's not unnecessarily complex for the contexts it was designed to address," according to the Burton analysts. Moreover, they claimed that only "a very small percentage of application developers" will need to fully master Open XML, just as "few" developers have mastered all aspects of formats such as PostScript or PDF.
Creese and O'Kelly wrote that although ODF is "a clean and useful design, [it] addresses only a subset of what most organizations do with productivity applications today." They added that ODF's evolution "will likely be slow and complex, in part because of the fact that Openoffice.org, the primary implementation of ODF, is arguably still, in some respects, controlled by Sun Microsystems."

ODF proponents contend that OpenOffice.org and other alternatives to Office will win in budget-constrained environments, such as governments or schools in poorer countries. But Creese and O'Kelly countered that success is "not a forgone conclusion for ODF" because of Microsoft's cut-rate Office pricing for those customers, such as its $3 Student Innovation Suite.

Marino Marcich, executive director of the OpenDocument Format Alliance, retorted via e-mail that many users are taking "a buyer-beware attitude" toward Open XML because that format "is not interoperable and will tie them to the upgrade path of a single vendor."

For example, he noted that Becta, the U.K. government's educational technology agency, last week released a report of its own advising, among other things, that to ensure the widest compatibility of files between different applications, Office 2007 users shouldn't save documents in Open XML. Instead, Becta recommended the continued use of Microsoft's older and proprietary .doc, .xls and .ppt formats.

Those formats "dominate the current landscape," Marcich acknowledged. "But the issue is the format of the future, and there ODF has taken a considerable lead [over Open XML]." He claimed that more than 40 applications now include support for ODF, and that online documents stored in ODF outnumber ones stored in Open XML "by a margin of 80:1."

The combination of ODF and OpenOffice.org made some strides last year, primarily among governments overseas. But those technologies haven't made much headway in the U.S., where bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies were defeated in at least five states during 2007.

A positive result for Microsoft in the Ecma-led effort to have Open XML ratified by ISO -- which already has accepted ODF as a standard -- could help prevent more foreign governments from defecting from Office.

But Creese and O'Kelly said in their report that no should expect Open XML's approval or nonapproval as a standard "to have market-altering ramifications." They added that Microsoft's many competitors will ensure that if the software vendor "abuses standards initiatives, the market response will be swift and severe."

The two analysts also predicted that software-as-a-service vendors working with documents online likely will have to add Open XML support to their products over time. In addition, they said that they expect Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF to remain the dominant format for "nonrevisable" documents. But ODF and especially Open XML will prevent PDF from catching on with documents that still may be changed or edited, such that Adobe will "likely" add support for Microsoft's format to its Buzzword online word processor, Creese and O'Kelly said.

IN THE SPIRIT OF TURKISH SOLDIERS WHO KILLED BY TERRORIST ATTACKS.

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:45:24 GMT

MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK'S ADDRESS TO TURKISH YOUTH*

Turkish Youth;

Your first duty is to preserve and to defend Turkish Independence and the Turkish Republic forever. This is the very foundation of your existence and your future. This foundation is your most precious treasure. In the future, too, there may be malevolent people at home and abroad, who will wish to deprive you of this treasure. If some day you are compelled to defend your independence and your Republic, you must not hesitate to weigh the possibilities and circumstances of the situation before doing your duty. These possibilities and circumstances may turn out to be extremely unfavorable. The enemies conspiring against your independence and your Republic may have behind them a victory unprecedented in the annals of the world. It may be that, by violence and trickery, all the fortresses of your beloved fatherland may be captured, all its shipyards occupied, all its armies dispersed and every corner of the country invaded. And sadder and graver than all these circumstances, those who hold power within the country may be in error, misguided and may even be traitors. Furthermore, they may identify personal interests with the political designs of the invaders. The country may be impoverished, ruined and exhausted. Youth of Turkey's future, even in such circumstances it is your duty to save Turkish Independence and the Republic. You will find the strength you need in your noble blood.

MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATURK

* Yerli, yabancı, dost, düşman, herkesin dikkatlice okuyabilmesi için İngilizce yer vermeyi düşündüm.

Microsoft Surface

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:00:36 GMT

Microsoft keeps innovating.
One of the last exciting innovation is Microsoft Surface.
Here you can see a glipmse of Microsoft Surface technology. You are going to be a witness soon how Microsoft Surface technology will be used in manufacturing business.

For More Information: www.microsoft.com/surface

Possibilities of Microsoft Surface

Video: Possibilities of Microsoft Surface