Microsoft Innovation Center - Copenhagen

In April we had the pleasure to work with Danish Radio in the Innovation Center and Erik Westermann interviewed Thomas Elton about opportunities with Silverlight and their experience in the Innovation Center. If you want to start learn more about Silverlight yourself you can find more information at http://silverlight.live.com/

In the last few months the Innovation Center team has been working on an internal project besides the direct customer and partner engagements and I am really excited about the Web Video Delivery Client that the team is working on. The project is being lead from the Innovation Center point of view, by Emmanuel Mesas and he has released the following vision/scope summary of the project.

With Internet access being available to a majority of households in developed economies and broadband connectivity becoming the rule, video applications on the Internet have become feasible. Media companies see the Internet as a new distribution channel for their content, and an opportunity to generate additional revenue, either by selling additional advertising space, or by charging users for the content they offer. At the same time, the way users interact with content is changing – they no longer just consume it, they also rate it, recommend it, tag it or even edit it – or even share content they have created themselves. User-generated content is a key element of what bloggers are commonly calling “Web 2.0”.

Video services offered through the Internet may encompass three core types of services: a) live television, i.e. the (near) real-time distribution of a TV signal; b) catch-up television, a service which enables users to view content that was broadcasted in the past within a certain timeframe after the content was broadcasted; and c) video on demand, a service that allows users to choose from a catalog of video content and view the content at any time. To access the content, the user may use a channel selector to select a live television channel, an electronic program guide to find the content he or she is interested in, a search or a category selection interface to find interesting content. The category selection interface provides access to content based on different categorization criteria – genre, popularity, ratings, etc.

These services may either be advertising-funded or based on pay content. Using information about the editorial context provided by the content and information about the user’s profile, preferences and habits, adverts can be presented in the appropriate editorial context (contextual advertising) and to the targeted audience (targeted advertising), essentially make it an “extension of the content”. Such advertising will likely provide better RoI for advertisers, and ideally will be perceived by users as adding value – or, at least, as being less intrusive and objectionable than “traditional” television advertising. For pay-content models, adaptable pricing taking into account the user’s preferences, bundling and promotions are important.

Microsoft has been building its next generation of tools that will enable Rich Internet Application (RIA) which deliver compelling content experiences. In its first release, Silverlight 1.0 has proven that it was already a good foundation for building interactive application using rich content (Images and Videos). With its version 2.0, combined with the Expression tools, Silverlight is demonstrating that not only Business applications are now one of its capabilities but also that the MS Silverlight team has continuously improved its ability to deal with digital content by introducing new media controls capabilities, new encoding tools for editing metadata and dealing with large images and media as well as new clouds services for monetization and Ads tracking.

In this context the Microsoft Innovation Center in Copenhagen will be working on demonstrating Silverlight’s capabilities as a digital content delivery technology and how it will empower content providers to monetize those new services through various ads- or transaction-based business models. Stay tuned to the blog as we will release more info on this as we develop the client. 

I just realized that I actually never posted any pictures from the Innovation Center. Each room was carefully designed for a specific purpose and when you hover over the pictures you get the details of each room and as you might sense quality has been of the top of our mind as always. The Architect design session rooms was designed with whiteboards on all walls and with the table centered in the middle for discussions whereas the Proof Of Concept rooms has PC's on the sides where participants can develop the solutions in a dedicated and secure environment. The training seats 24 participants at the most and is equipped to deal with most training requirements. All the rooms is connected to our datacenter which is owned and maintained by Karsten our lab engineer and the lounge is the place for everyone to hang out, relax and connect with colleagues, other partners or MIC team members and we are always open for a challenge on our Xbox 360. The MIC team is busy creating a "welcome" to the MIC video which I hope we can share with you end of August.

Since my last post, the video with Pebblestone, we have had a lot of activities in the Innovation Center. I just received approval to post some great feedback an Architect design session we had with the Norwegian Company Bluegarden lead by Jimmy and Erik from the MIC team and as in prior engagements the quality of the engagement was high clearly expressed in this statement.

“The workshop with discussions and talks about the potential solution was very useful for us; we received valuable information to continue development of our solution and confirmation on some of the ideas and thoughts we had before the workshop. The challenges around integration, databases, workflow, BI and user experience was key focus areas for us and during the Architect design session we received a lot of useful information and feedback to support the future of Bluegardens systems. We are very happy about way we were received and the content of the two days in the Microsoft Innovation Center in Vedbaek”

I am very proud of the local team delivering the engagements and the feedback we receive after each engagement clearly shows that the team is highly regarded by our partners and customers.

As always feel free to contact me on kimn@microsoft.com if you have any questions.

Pebblestone was visiting the Microsoft Innovation Center in Copenhagen for a Proof of Concept. Please watch the video if you want to learn more about their solutions and their experience in the Innovation Center.

CDM A/S was visiting the Microsoft Innovation Center in Copenhagen for an Architect Design Session as they needed more technical information to accelerate and develop on the new CRM platform.CDM A/S has more than 10 years of experience developing CRM solutions for the life sciences industry. This first release focuses on Sales Force Automation using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform and future releases will focus on other areas of CRM in the life sciences industry. 

Please watch the video if you want to learn more about their solutions and their experience in the Innovation Center.

Being back from the Easter Holidays and MIX in Las Vegas the MIC team is all energized and fired up about the exiting projects we have in front of us. In April we have planned two architect design sessions with customers on Silverlight 2.0 and at the same time we have started to work on two internal projects which I can't discuss with you yet. The MIC is almost fully booked until the end of June, Erik, Emmanuel and Jimmy  is really setting the scene delivering high quality high impact all the time which increases the demand for engagements. Emmanuel did blog about MIX and you can find hi's notes here http://blogs.msdn.com/emesas

As always if you have any questions or if you want more details on the Innovation Center feel free to send me a mail  kimn@microsoft.com

The Dynamics ISV Offerings are a set of professional offerings to help prospects to discover the huge benefits that the Dynamics Development Platform offers. Detailed Analysis of business logic is covered as well as technology sessions. In this video Steffen Niehues gives more details on the specific components that the Dynamics ISVs are composed of.

Steffen Niehues

Steffen Niehues is part  of the Dynamics ISV Developer & Evangelists team at Microsoft Western Europe. This team helps to recruit and enable ISVs who want to benefit from the power of the Dynamics platform. Steffen is very successfully driving specific offerings for ISVs interested in connecting to Dynamics.

Prior to his current role he had various roles within Product Management and  Product Development. With more than 10 years he has quite a broad experience in ERP and ISV development .

You can find his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/sniehues/

The MIC in Copenhagen prides itself for high quality and high impact in all engagements with customers and partners - and once again the MIC team has delivered on that in an Architect design session with CSC Scandihealth, expressed in the statement below.  

"Our most recent experience with the Microsoft Innovation Center in Vedbaek, has again proved the value of our long standing cooperation with Microsoft.The insight when it comes to Microsoft Technology shown by the Microsoft team, and their extremely fast learning curve when it comes to understanding our domain and requirements is quite outstanding. Again in this latest ADS session, we've been able to discuss all the aspects relevant for the realization of new feature into one of our strategic products. We can fully recommend this kind of approach to anyone, moving into the development of new products, or adaptation of new technology."  

Last week I introduced you to the MIC team who works on our S+S and Live Technology strategy. Dynamics is also an important part of our core strategy and I want to ensure that you know the team who's delivering that as well and you will find their mini bio's below. In the next few weeks I will post some video's explaining the Dynamics offerings for ISV's in general, featuring Steffen Steffen Niehues and also update you on the MIC specific engagements on Dynamics.

  Steffen Niehues

Steffen Niehues is part  of the Dynamics ISV Developer & Evangelists team at Microsoft Western Europe. This team helps to recruit and enable ISVs who want to benefit from the power of the Dynamics platform. Steffen is very successfully driving specific offerings for ISVs interested in connecting to Dynamics.

Prior to his current role he had various roles within Product Management and  Product Development. With more than 10 years he has quite a broad experience in ERP and ISV development .

You can find his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/sniehues/

Daniel Tian-Sio-Po

Daniel, part  of the Dynamics ISV Developer & Evangelists team at Microsoft Western Europe. This team helps to recruit and enable ISVs who want to benefit from the power of the Dynamics platform.

Daniel is very successfully helping ISVs to growth their technical skills connecting to Dynamics

Prior to his current EMEA role he had various roles within the field (Microsoft France as ISV Evangelist on SQL Server, Visual Studio.Net, Partner Technology Specialist on CRM. has quite a broad experience in CRM and ISV, SI development.

You can find his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/dtiansio/

Wilfried Heermann

is a Group Manager at Microsoft and driving Dynamics Platform Evangelism in EMEA. As part of Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) Western Europe HQ his team is in charge of early adopter programs for AX 5 and CRM 4 (METRO, formerly Ascend and Touchdown) and working with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who are interested in developing their solutions based on the Microsoft / Microsoft Dynamics platform or want to integrate their applications with Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV or Dynamics CRM.

Wilfried Heermann joined Microsoft as ERP developer with the Great Plains acquisition in 2001 and was responsible for Partner Readiness in EMEA before joining DPE.

You can find his blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/wheerman/