David Overton's Blog

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• How to sell Hosted CRM (CRM Online) in the UK and still retain your customers and a good profit – by working with Increase CRM

  [updated with contact details at 16:38] I have a partners or two that are looking to implement CRM internally and through the conversations about how they could do this came to know of the guys at Increase CRM. The good folks at Increase CRM seem to understand how SBSC partners think because the offerings they have for referral and resellers seem to be quite good to me. if you want the brochure on the subject, let me know, but here is the important piece for partners: What is the Referral Program? Partners in... Posted Apr 24 2008, 04:39 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: CRM, Community, Hosted, Software as a Service, Microsoft, Small business, Partner, Licensing, Software plus Service, If you only read one post today

• Microsoft SQL Server Data Services - more online services announced this week

  This is one big week for developers (as Mix was always going to be). We now also have data services in the cloud ( http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices/default.mspx ) On-demand Scalability SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) are highly scalable, on-demand data storage and query processing web services. Businesses use storage resources as needed transforming large upfront capital and operations expenditures into much smaller on-demand costs. On-demand storage and access Store and query your data virtually any... Posted Mar 07 2008, 02:27 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, SQL Server, Community, Hosted, Microsoft, Documentation, Internet and Web, ISV

• Training announcement for ISV who are developing or planning to develop on the Windows Live Platform (Silverlight, Live Controls, Live ID, Messenger, Spaces)

  Another entry from the ISV blog - this time for developing on the Windows Live platform Training announcement for ISV who are developing or planning to develop on the Windows Live Platform. The Partner Readiness have just announced the release of the Windows Live Platform Services course. This 1.5 day deep dive covers the core technical aspects of Windows Live Platform Services including: Overview of Windows Live Silverlight Streaming Windows Live Controls Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio Windows Live Data... Posted Mar 05 2008, 02:13 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Community, Hosted, Live, Microsoft, Office Live, Training

• Office Live Workspace is now available (in beta) for all - aka Windows SharePoint Services for all small businesses

  According to the site Workspaces (WSS for Office Live users) is now not quite out of beta, but still has a lot to offer: Anywhere Access Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail Learn more Share with Others Invite people to your workspace You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents Stop manually merging versions from multiple people Learn more Extend the Microsoft Office... Posted Mar 04 2008, 10:42 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Office System, Windows SharePoint Services, Hosted, Software as a Service, beta, SBSC, Microsoft, Office 2007, Office Live, Small business, Internet and Web, Partner, Software plus Service, SharePoint

• Microsoft Online Services - beta in US, international .. not for a while yet, but you get to see where Microsoft is going!

  What is it? I know Vlad is not going to like this, but even he will admit that this has been on the cards for a while. Software plus services is coming to town in a bigger and bigger way. At the moment there is a limited beta in the US and (just like Google), it has the beta tag on it . So what have we seen today, well we have seen Microsoft stand up and be counted in it's commitment to the software-plus-services strategy. We have seen existing "on premise" solutions of Exchange and SharePoint... Posted Mar 03 2008, 09:01 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Business, Community, Exchange, Hosted, Software as a Service, beta, Event, Microsoft, Office Live, Internet and Web, Partner, Licensing, Software plus Service, SharePoint, OWA, Outlook Web Access, If you only read one post today

• Microsoft Office Live Small Business v2 - have you got it already?

  This happened a couple of weeks ago, but it is always worth sharing the improvements in Office Live. Not only do we have this going on, but we also have the beta of Workspaces progressing. Remember, your customers could benefit from Office Live and if you don't offer it, someone else might just offer them Office Live or something else, blocking you out from that customer as they grow in size. Microsoft Office Live Small Business is the award-winning, easy-to-use suite of Web-based software and services designed... Posted Feb 24 2008, 11:29 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Windows SharePoint Services, Community, Hosted, Office Live, Small business, Internet and Web, SharePoint

• SkyDrive (free online storage accessed via the web) goes to 5GB, comes out of beta, is available in 38 countries around the world

  I went to my skydrive today and noticed it was not 5GB, not 1GB and no longer beta. According to the official blog besides the things in the blog title it is also: This release also includes bug fixes and improvements to make the site even faster and more reliable . We’re proud of this release — so proud, in fact, that we’re officially removing the Beta tag ! The Windows Live wire blog said ( Windows Live Wire: Bigger, better, faster SkyDrive! ): Improvements to Windows Live SkyDrive , including 5 GB of free... Posted Feb 22 2008, 09:23 AM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Hosted, Live

• MSDN Events in November (Silverlight dynamic applications, SharePoint, SQL Server 2008, web applications and Smart Client) and not in Reading, but Manchester, Edinburgh, Bradford, Birmingham and Bristol ... and one in Reading

  MSDN Events – Free Technical Events for Your Partners We have the following free MSDN developer events taking place as listed below covering various topics/technologies. It would be great if you could communicate these events with your partners to offer them the opportunity to receive technical 'know-how' demos and insights into our latest technologies. · 15 November 2007, Manchester MSDN: Building Dynamic Web Applications with Microsoft Silverlight · 20 November 2007, Edinburgh MSDN: SharePoint for... Posted Nov 19 2007, 08:08 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Hosted, beta, Event, Training, Internet and Web, Partner, SharePoint, Silverlight, IIS

• Linked Live IDs - how to join multiple Hotmail / MSN / Live accounts and change between them

  I have lots of e-mail accounts I use - @msn.com, @hotmail.co.uk, and @live.co.uk and Windows Live Mail enables me to read them all, however now when I am in e-mail I can access my linked e-mail accounts. I simply go to https://account.live.com/ and then add accounts to my linked accounts and then I can change accounts by a simple drop down in the windows live mail site ( http://mail.live.com ). More information can be found at Link Your Live IDs Together! or at http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007... Posted Nov 06 2007, 11:58 PM by David Overton with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Hosted, Live, Software plus Service

• Windows Live Hotmail will soon bring you more of your requests, better performance, huge amounts of storage, de-dupe of contacts, message forwarding, Out of Office and much more

  You can tell from the title the favourite things I have found testing the latest version of Hotmail - well it is now public - we start rolling these features and more out over the Hotmail clusters. For more information look at the Ellie Powers-Boyle blog post Your mail is here, come and get it!: August: Hotmail will soon bring you more of your requests, better.performance . Obviously if you are a Office Live customer then you will also see these changes coming to you. For the international of us, I have called... Posted Aug 14 2007, 10:23 AM by David Overton with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Hosted, Live, Office Live, Tips, Small business

• Microsoft launches beta of "skydrive" - a disk in the cloud (and now you can use it in the UK too)

  Another "it is here" moment. Skydrive gives you, today, 500MB of storage in the cloud, free of charge. You can set up permissions to control who can read and write files. I love it. In fact, I love it so much that I have put all my demo videos that I recorded recently up there. The Skydrive team blog can be found at http://skydriveteam.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!977F793E846B3C96!124.entry . Click for the Training Videos to be downloaded as videos. Top features for me are: Upload and download documents... Posted Aug 10 2007, 12:14 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Hosted, Live, Fun

• Microsoft, web services, new business models and small business

  In the IT market the term "change is the only constant" has been around for years (well, certainly since I left ICL where change was not constant, but that was due to the contract that dictated that everything did not change, so fell behind). Note, this post is purely the ramblings from my mind, not a statement from Microsoft in an Official or Unofficial capacity We've seen big iron, then smaller systems, the rise of SMP, the reduction in IT hardware and software costs for solutions, the rise of... Posted Aug 09 2007, 12:00 PM by David Overton with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: Business, Community, Hosted, Software as a Service, VoIP, Microsoft, Marketing, Small business, Internet and Web, Partner, Software plus Service, If you only read one post today

• Worldwide Partner Conference - WPC in Denver - what I know so far - Dynamics CRM Live

  Microsoft Announces Product Offerings and Customer Early Access Program for Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM - This could be huge - $44 per calendar month per user for Professional CRM and $59 for Enterprise edition (Professional Edition plus offline support)!!! Then, when you thought it was not so good for partners, look at the models: With the new Live service, partners in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM ecosystem will have new opportunities to deliver value to their customers and to drive revenue for their businesses... Posted Jul 10 2007, 11:50 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: CRM, Community, Hosted, Live, Microsoft, Small business, Partner, Licensing, Software plus Service, Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)

• Peering inside the network with Network Monitor (netmon V3), debuging WMI and other systems problems

  I often spend time debugging systems when things go wrong. Besides the tools at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx these are the others I use: Microsoft Network Monitor 3 Network Monitor 3.0 can co-exist with older versions of Network Monitor. NM3 installs in %program files%\Microsoft Network Monitor 3.0, so there is no conflict. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aa8be06d-4a6a-4b69-b861-2043b665cb53&DisplayLang=en Debug Diagnostic Tool v1.1 The Debug Diagnostic... Posted Mar 18 2007, 10:32 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Support and Tools, Internet Explorer, Hosted, Documentation

• What to use to replace FrontPage (Expression Web or SharePoint Design) and get a free trial

  I asked my mate James Akrigg what to do for all those people who use FrontPage 2003 today to edit web pages and wish to progress - here is his response: If I am not modifying SharePoint sites then I would suggest Expression Web .. I have been using this for creating simple sites and creating Vista gadgets. It’s bang up-to-date with all things webified And so if you do have SharePoint then use SharePoint Designer .. without a doubt... At first glance Expression Web and SharePoint Designer look very similar..... Posted Mar 03 2007, 11:56 PM by David Overton with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Windows SharePoint Services, Hosted, Office 2007, Office Live, Expression, SharePoint