David Overton's Blog

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• Where in the world has David been?

  I’m really sorry that everything has been so very quiet on the blog front – work has just been maxing out and I even took some personal time out – I’ve now been married for just over ten years and to celebrate Mrs Overton and I visited Niagara Falls for the weekend. It was a wonderful time and worth the break, however I now need to get my skates on. Niagara Falls from our hotel room American and Honeymoon Falls from hotel room Before that I was planning and helping an ”EBC” or Enterprise Briefing Center with... Posted May 21 2008, 02:29 PM by David Overton with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Personal, ISV

• Silverlight Adoption Expected to Triple .. especially when you look at what is in V2

  Forward looking statements are always risky, but I do see Silverlight popping up all over the place. Even the next rev of the theme for this website will be based on Silverlight. in a recent article Evans Data claimed that Silverlight Adoption Expected to Triple . Evans Data official says Microsoft's support of its products will drive the growth of the company's alternative to Adobe Flash over the next 18 months. Despite Adobe Flash's dominance in the world of rich Internet applications, Microsoft's... Posted Apr 15 2008, 08:59 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Microsoft, Internet and Web, Silverlight, ISV

• ISVs can learn about Microsoft’s strategy and products and how they fit into selling solutions – come to the events in TVP and Manchester on the 10th and 24th April

  One of the biggest criticisms of Microsoft by our ISV partners is that they don’t know where we are going… well this even should help solve that – see you there perhaps: Introduction 09.30 - 10.00 Registration & coffee 10.00 – 10.15 Welcome & Introduction Deliver Innovative Solutions 10.15 – 10.45 Microsoft strategy direction 10.45 – 11.30 Microsoft technology roadmap 11.30 – 11.50 Coffee break Increase your opportunities 11.50 – 12.15 Marketing & sales initiatives Close more sales 12.15 – 12.30... Posted Apr 04 2008, 08:01 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Community, Event, Microsoft, Licensing, ISV, Strategy

• Understand the key security engineering activities that you need to be aware of in application development. Written by a Microsoft UK employee - "The Developer Highway code" as a download or a traditional book

  It you write code then you need to understand how to write secure code. If you want to understand how to write code that is secure by design then you need to seek the help of people who "have been there". Microsoft has helped thousands of people write applications that do not leak information and Paul's book has helped even more. The Developer Highway Code , written by Paul Maher of Microsoft, is a concise handbook that captures and summarises the key security engineering activities that should... Posted Mar 19 2008, 03:43 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Security, Microsoft, Documentation, ISV, Visual Studio

• PhotoZoom using Silverlight and DeepZoom (aka SeaDragon) technology - mine is on Star Wars, but we could create a SBSC one

  The above technology is built using Silverlight 2.0 beta that was announced at MIX08. You can upload photos or import via an RSS feed. I did the later, bit it occurred to me that we should start something like this for SBSC and ISV partners. To see the effect, go to http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com/Album.aspx?alias=Doverton&album=1 and then zoom in and out using the +/- in the top left corner or the scroll wheel on your mouse. It is quite amazing! Hat tip to Steve for this one ttfn David Technorati Tags:... Posted Mar 11 2008, 02:13 PM by David Overton with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Developer, Live, Fun, beta, Microsoft, Silverlight, ISV

• 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

• Application Resources for Windows Server 2008 Launch (2 days to go)

  I was asked the other day about how to make sure if an application is likely to work on Vista or Windows Server 2008 and this blog entry has some of the answers. You may notice things like the App Compatibility toolkit and the cookbook. Between these, you should get all the information you need to ensure applications that work on current and future platforms. Resources for Windows Server 2008 Launch We at Microsoft are on the verge of releasing one of the most powerful and reliable products in the history of... Posted Feb 26 2008, 01:59 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Support and Tools, Windows Longhorn, Developer, Microsoft, Documentation, Windows Server 2008, ISV

• Study: .Net overtakes Java

  I saw this and thought I would share it. It gives some positioning of .Net vs Java. There is more to the article that that listed below, but the interesting statements for me was .Net >50% and Java 20%. Oh, and additional to that pure .Net @ 12% while pure Java was at 3%. Ouch!! Study: .Net overtakes Java Microsoft's .Net software development platform is more popular than Java in the enterprise, according to one industry analyst firm's report detailed on Wednesday Info-Tech Research Group said its... Posted Feb 23 2008, 11:35 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Microsoft, ISV, Competition

• Time to Nominate your solutions for the Awards at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference!

  You may remember people who have one awards at the Worldwide Partner Conference before - is it your time now? I saw Steve Morrow (my boss) has put some great information on the UK ISV blog and while he is thinkking about it from a purely ISV point of view, you could apply under any of the categories. Time to Nominate your Applications for the Awards at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference! Time to submit your entry for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards program! This is a great way to get... Posted Feb 05 2008, 11:45 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Developer, Community, ISV, Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)

• Heroes Happen Here - Where are you?

  If you don't know about the Heroes Happen Here :: Home campaign then you are very much behind the times. The Launch events for SQL Server 2008 (errrm), Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 are fast approaching and so is your customers ability to buy and use them - do you understand what, why and when? If not, go to the website and see how your customers can benefit and why you should learn more about the product and what you can do to improve your business with these products. ttfn David Technorati... Posted Jan 29 2008, 11:50 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Support and Tools, Windows Longhorn, Virtualisation, Developer, SQL Server, Community, Event, Training, Tips, x64, Partner, Terminal Server, Windows Server 2008, ISV, IIS, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio

• Where Customers may obtain License Keys for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

  I've been asked this a few times, so attached is the response I got from the nice Product peeps here in the UK. Since the easiest way to share was a picture - here it is :-) It covers the following license types: Trial MSDN/Technet MSPP MAPS VL BRL SPLA ISV Royalty Again, see http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/320 for more information on MS CRM and http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2008/01/17/microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-ready-for-download.aspx for download information. ttfn David Technorati... Posted Jan 18 2008, 12:32 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: CRM, SBSC, Partner, Licensing, ISV

• Saw this last year - how right they were "In memoriam: the ISV" - Oracle announces purchase of BEA and Sun announces purchase of MySQL

  So here we are on the day (or a day later) that Sun (JAVA) decides to buy MySQL, finally putting a blow against Oracle who had self selected Linux (personal opinion was Oracle saw the deal having the same money, just less for the OS, so more for them) and BEA gets welded to the Oracle Fusion integration story. Consolidation is indeed the way forward... unless the European Union think that there is too few companies in which case companies will have to give away some corporate asset in order to not be too successful... Posted Jan 17 2008, 12:08 AM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Business, ISV

• If you are a Virtual Earth wannabe, then you need to know about the UK Partner Day

  This is a simple "if you care about this" posts, but a few people have asked me about MapPoint / Virtual Earth. James has published details at James.Random() : Virtual Earth UK Partner Day on how to integrate Virtual Earth into your applications. Virtual Earth UK Partner Day The Microsoft Virtual Earth EMEA team are holding an event on 6 th February 2008 at the Great House at Sonning to provide you with all the information you require to integrate VE into your business offering. Never before has it... Posted Jan 11 2008, 03:31 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, ISV, Virtual Earth

• Office 2007 SP1 is here and it does more than just update the desktop - SharePoint gets AJAX for example

  I'm sure you have heard that the Office 2007 Service Pack is here. Darren Strange has documented what is in it and how to get it at Office 2007 sp1 ready for download today and OfficeRocker! : More detail about sp1 . In answer to Susanne's post at here , hopefully this post has some more info in it One of the little things he puts that I like is: Some other factoids about sp1 There are roughly 2500 fixes in SP1. This an average size for a service pack, but the issues fixed are very important to our customers... Posted Dec 13 2007, 03:05 AM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Windows SharePoint Services, Developer, Security, VoIP, Office 2007, Documentation, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Service Pack, SharePoint, If you only read one post today, ISV, Office Communicator

• Free Developer Events (IIS7, ASP.net 3.5, SharePoint, Windows Server 2008, Web services, SOAP, REST, Windows Live Platform, Visual Studio 2007, Silverlight and Smart Client development)

  Free Developer Events for Customers & Partners: MSDN: Microsoft’s Web Platform. IIS7 and ASP.NET 3.5 Date: 08 January 2008 Location: Reading MSDN: Sharepoint for Developers Date: 10 January 2008 Location: London MSDN: Windows Server 2008 for developers Date: 17 January 2008 Location: Manchester MSDN: Windows Server 2008 for developers Date: 23 January 2008 Location: Edinburgh MSDN: Windows Server 2008 for developers Date: 24 January 2008 Location: Edinburgh MSDN: Building Services: .NET FX 3.5, SOAP, REST... Posted Dec 04 2007, 01:28 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Longhorn, Windows SharePoint Services, Developer, beta, Event, Internet and Web, Partner, SharePoint, Silverlight, Windows Server 2008, ISV, Visual Studio