SharePoint 2010 - The Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web and the virtual road from here

• I’m gearing up for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 now that we’re into Beta phase
• Office 2010, especially Outlook 2007 and Excel 2007 look like great products and the web based versions look like they will parry nicely with the main fat clients.. more here
• I blogged back in 2005 that Microsoft would probably move into a semi client/web based environment sooner or later and that licensing would just become a click-once exercise via the web via an online shopping mall. And now that hosted versions of both the server and client applications are here or nearing completion, Microsoft will have one of the largest and most mature online suite of server/apps available compared to any other vendor. So you can either use fat clients, or slim clients via Terminal Services pointed at either the web or the companies intranet, hosted by way of Server 2008R2 hyper-v. If you take a peak behind Virtual PC 2007 RC1 you see that the active window is in fact a Terminal Services window into a Terminal Server 2003 hosting XP as an Operating System.. just change the Start menu to Classic:

• This is a neat trick, although I noticed that Communicator 2007 R2 (trial) would not install because it detects the RDP session into the Virtual PC Terminal Server. So unlike Virtual PC 2005, or Virtual Server 2005, where you are actually in a proper Virtual PC (client/host) environment, VPC 2007 RC1 is really a remote RDP session in a single-user license Terminal Server (TS). This is so that you can launch any of the installed applications in the VPC2007RC1 environment, either in the TS session or as a standalone application on the Windows7 desktop, called App-v, or Application Virtualisation
• This same technology can be leveraged via Server 2008 R2/Hyper-V utilising MEDV, instead the server behaves as the TS host that streams the application over the wire to an RDP client interface on the PC, so App-V over the wire rather than Windows7 (localised MEDV). Clever use of existing technology when parried with client or server, you just choose if you want local access or remote access to the application and data. This is what I call a split virtualisation architecture, allowing you to either have local access or remote access. In the future you won’t care where the applications or data reside, it will just work, and when we have total network coverage via technologies like WiMax and the like over mobile networks
• Cisco have just bought a data streaming specialist Navini Networks as a precursor to the explosion of mobile applications of which no doubt virtualised apps will form a large part. As both Google and Microsoft have invested heavily in data centres and the fabric underpinnings are largely in place, it only remains to be seen who will win out in the world of virtualised network providers and their respective service offerings. It stands to reason that IBM may also play a part in this, as they have invested heavily in services over the wire and have some pretty impressive hardware which can be farmed out. I see some interesting partnerships forming over the next few months and each of the big guns lines up to carve up this lucrative market
• Just think, you buy four laptops and go online to buy your software, you ask for a small business server with 25 licences, server based apps and a server based workspace environment. The local OS ends up being a shell which then launches applications in the cloud that just appear on the desktop in seconds via TS like windows spawned locally, but served remotely. Data can be local or remote, your choice, security can be locally handled or encrypted via BitLocker locally or in the cloud.. Will this happen? For sure it will, because one big concern corps have is privacy concerns (government snooping) and of course loss of valuable data. I mean there’s no way I would put my data into the cloud knowing that someone can break the encryption when ordered to do so my some remote government.. Not that shouldn’t be able to do so, but it would have to be by mutual agreement.. not by proxy
• Here’s an interesting video from the guy responsible for BitLocker’s deployment

Trampoline Systems – skills mapping/mining software.. a hot topic for smart corporate’s
SharePoint 2010 - The Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web