Microsoft have today made available the first public beta of Silverlight 4. Targeted specifically at developers this release brings with it dozens of new features and improvements that are likely to accelerate the uptake of Silverlight by the software and web development community.

As well as improvements for running in the browser, Silverlight 4 also brings major integration with Windows and also Office on the desktop for standalone Silverlight applications. Webcam/Mic support, Hardware acceleration and Multitouch support are in this release too.

The question is what impact will this have on Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR? The number of desktops with a Silverlight client is increasing by millions each week, but clearly the installed base is still much smaller than that of Flash (Microsoft suggest 45% of internet connected devices have Silverlight installed today). For many applications however Silverlight is just a better platform to develop on - especially for those who are already developing with Microsoft's toolset of Visual Studio, etc.

I expect 2010 to be the year in which Silverlight on the web becomes almost commonplace. Today the bulk of consumer sites that leverage Silverlight technology are ones from Microsoft. The brilliant Zune.net site is an example which stretches your music collection out from your PC and Zune player to the cloud so you can access your music anywhere.

So when will Silverlight 4 be finalised for full public release? During the first half of 2010 is what we've been advised. Likely that means May or June.

The following are the highlights of Silverlight 4 according to Microsoft...

What's New in Silverlight 4 Beta?
Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences. Silverlight provides an ideal platform for developing and deploying modern business applications for both customer facing and staff-facing applications.

Business Application Development
Silverlight 4 consolidates its position as the natural choice for building business applications on the Web:

New Features for Application Developers

• Comprehensive printing support enabling hardcopy reports and documents as well as a virtual print view, independent of screen content.
  
• A full set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, styleable components. New controls include RichTextbox with hyperlinks, images and editing and Masked textbox for complex field validation. Enhanced controls include DataGrid with sortable/resizeable columns and copy/paste rows.
  
• WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications including transactions, paging of data, WCF and HTTP enhancements.
  
• Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages.
  
• The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
  
• Enhanced databinding support increases flexibility and productivity through data grouping/editing and string formatting within bindings.
  
• Managed Extensibility Framework supports building large composite applications.
  
• Exclusive tooling support for Silverlight, new in Visual Studio 2010. Including a full editable design surface, drag & drop data-binding, automatically bound controls, datasource selection, integration with Expression Blend styling resources, Silverlight project support and full IntelliSense.

Developer tools

• Fully editable design surface for drawing out controls and layouts.
  
• Rich property grid and new editors for values
  
• Drag and drop support for databinding and automatically creating bound controls such as listbox, datagrid. New datasources window and picker.
  
• Easy to pick styles and resources to make a good looking application based on designer resources built in Expression Blend.
  
• Built in project support for Silverlight applications
  
• Editor with full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages.

Empowering richer, more interactive experiences
Silverlight is already in use as a comprehensive platform for building rich experiences both for application and pure media scenarios including HD quality, interactive video through Smooth Streaming. Silverlight 4 introduces additional capabilities to enable creation of ever more rich, appealing high-performance interactive experiences and innovative media experiences:

• Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects.
  
• Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications.
  
• Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing.
  
• Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop.
  
• Long lists can now be scrolled effortlessly with the mouse wheel.
  
• Support conventional desktop interaction models through new features such as right-click context menu.
  
• Support for Google's Chrome browser.
  
• Performance optimizations mean Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application.
  
• Deep Zoom enhancements include hardware acceleration to support larger datasets and faster animation.
  
• Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences.
  
• Multicast networking, enabling Enterprises to lower the cost of streaming broadcast events such as company meetings and training, interoperating seamlessly with existing Windows Media Server streaming infrastructure.
  
• Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady.
  
• Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection.

Move beyond the browser
Silverlight 3 pioneered the delivery of a new class of Rich Internet Applications to work on the desktop without additional code or runtimes. Silverlight 4 extends this capability:

For Sandboxed applications

• Place HTML within your application enabling much tighter integration with content from web servers such as email, help and reports.
  
• Provide support for 'toast' notification windows, allowing applications to communicate status or change information while the user is working on another application through a popup window on the taskbar.
  
• Offline DRM, extending the existing Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady technology to work offline. Protected content can be delivered with an embedded license so that users can go offline immediately and start enjoying their content.
  
• Control over aspects of UI include window settings such as start position, size and chrome.

For Trusted applications

• Read and write files to the user's MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) for example storage of media files and taking local copies of reports.
  
• Run other desktop programs such as Office, for example requesting Outlook to send an email, send a report to Word or data to Excel.
  
• COM automation enables access to devices and other system capabilities by calling into application components; for instance to access a USB security card reader.
  
• A new user interface for requesting application privileges access outside the standard Silverlight sandbox.
  
• Group policy objects allow organizations to tailor which applications may have elevated trust.
  
• Full keyboard support in fullscreen mode richer kiosk and media applications.
  
• Enhancements to networking allow cross-domain access without a security policy file.

To learn more about these features, visit the PDC09 site to view sessions from the conference!

You can down the beta and associated development tools now from here.

This week Microsoft are making available new products in a range of areas this week. Of interest to many will be the beta release of Office 2010. This is available for download now for both Technet and MSDN subscribers. I have been running the 'Technical Preview' version of Office 2010 and have been impressed at the improvements which make me more productive. Planning meetings in Outlook 2010 is one area that stood out for me.

Also available this week Microsoft's replacement/upgrade for ISA Server 2006 - the new product is called Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (or Forefront TMG 2010) and offers significant improvements to it's predecessor such VOIP support, Internet connection load balancing and redundancy, support for 64-bit Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Should be available soon for download by licensed customers along with Technet and MSDN subscribers. In the meantime a trial is available for download now.

Also released this week was an upgrade for Xbox 360 users which provides extra features for Xbox Live Gold subscribers - Facebook and Twitter support. It also delivers the stunning Zune video marketplace for streaming TV and movie downloads in High Definition 1080p for users in numerous countries.

Today Microsoft have announced dramatic reductions in the price of their hosted editions of Exchange Server, SharePoint and Office Communications Server.

Microsoft's reductions in the cost of BPOS (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite) which consists of Exchange Server, SharePoint and Office Communications Server are by 33%, and they are reducing the price for hosted Exchange Server by 50%. Discounts refer to pricing for commercial customers - I am still investigating whether there is any additional discount being offered to not-for-profit organisations. At they same time they are increasing the size of hosted mailboxes to 25gb per user.

While the market for cloud hosted email, file storage and associated services is far from mature, it appears Microsoft is committed to positioning themselves as the market leader and 'default choice' as the market grows. Current estimates indicate it could be some years before even 5% of business email is hosted in the cloud.

Within the next week it is expected Microsoft will make Exchange Server 2010 available for download. Organisations signing up for BPOS and Exchange Hosting from Microsoft in the U.S. will be delivered Exchange Server 2010 going forward. It is understood however that customers in other countries such as New Zealand may have to wait up to 9 months before they can access the hosted edition of Exchange Server 2010.

Microsoft's huge pricing restructure is expected to have a big impact on the competition - especially Google who's hosted Email is now only fractionally cheaper than hosted Exchange (though it does include hosted apps also).

Competitive cloud based email and applications vendors have been pushing hard to get organisations to adopt their hosted email/office products - especially Google who are rumoured to be giving away their products in order to 'win' reference customers. My experience however is that there is a lacking in functionality, performance and ease of use of Google's offerings compared with the newest offerings from Microsoft. This is not a surprise as the web is a fairly young platform for applications and many apps have yet to be well translated to the web.

A key that Microsoft holds is a large user base - and users are very familiar with their products as most have been using Microsoft Outlook and associated products for years. Naturally many are not keen to move from powerful PC based applications to dulled down web based products which don't have the look and feel they're used to.

In time the picture of web based apps and cloud offerings will change, but my immediate predictions for now are:
- Most existing businesses will keep the majority of their applications and data hosted in house
- As time progresses organisations will move more data to the cloud
- Organisations who are already running Microsoft Servers and products in house will typically choose to move to Microsoft hosted services. They will do this as they recognise productivity benefits of current versions of Exchange/Outlook, Microsoft Office, OCS, etc when compared to competing applications.
- Small organisations and start-ups who are more cost conscious rather value focussed are likely to choose Google Apps rather than Microsoft's hosted offerings despite the disadvantages
- Businesses started by those who use Gmail for their personal email so are already familiar and comfortable with the Google online offering
- Traditional hosting companies (Application Service Providers) and 'break fix' IT support firms will suffer

Certainly we're entering an exciting time as the pace of technology development and competition will continue to increase in the coming years. Who will actually lead the market in years to come is not clear. But I would suggest those predicting troubles for Microsoft should look at the last decade or so where they have competed aggressively with various Linux and Open Source vendors. They seem to have seen solid profits and steady market share in that period. I am certain they will be even more aggressive as they face off against Google and other providers in the Cloud arena over the next decade. And who's complaining because we'll all benefit from the incredible advances that competition brings between now and 2020.

Research in Motion (RIM) are in the process of launching their second generation touch-screen handsets - the Blackberry Storm 2. The new model includes Wifi and improved ease of use and will initially be available in the UK (via Vodafone) and the US (via Verizon). Availability elsewhere around the world is expected in the coming weeks.

The UK edition of the Storm2 is officially available from 26 October (pre-order available now), and features 2100mhz UMTS/HSPA and quad-band GSM. The US version being released by Verizon will be configured for the CDMA network rather than GSM.

The handset which is based on also features a 3.2 megapixel camera (with flash and video recording), a 3.25 inch colour display (480x320), Assisted-GPS, 2gb built in storage, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and 3.5mm headphone jack. It can be expanded with MicroSD storage by up to 16gb.

Initial models available will be the Blackberry Storm2 9520 and Blackberry Storm2 9550.



Visit the Blackberry site for more.

Microsoft have been working towards replacing their ISA Server products for a number of years. They are finally now coming close the release of two products that will replace ISA Server 2006. The products will not be called ISA Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise, but instead they will launch under the following names:
- Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG 2010) - Available in Standard and Enterprise editions
- Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 (UAG 2010) - a higher end product aimed at larger enterprises and also incorporating the features that were previously part of the Forefront Intelligent Application Gateway 2008 (IAG 2007)

Both Forefront TMG 2010 and Forefront UAG 2010 are part of Microsoft's 'Stirling' security suite and are now in Release Candidate form which suggests the final released products should be out either very late 2009 or early 2010. As these products have taken a long time to come to this stage, I'm somewhat hesitant to predict more specific release dates. (Update Microsoft have advised both products will ship before the end of 2009)

Each product includes a raft of new features which benefit networks from a security and performance perspective such as URL filtering and antimalware inspection as traffic flows over the wire. In addition they have made the move to running on 64-bit Windows Server 2008.

Two new features that have been included in this release and have generated considerable attention are:
- Internet connection load balancing and redundancy
- SIP VOIP traffic support


Downloads here:
- Forefront Thread Management Gateway RC
- Forefront Unified Access Gateway RC0

Microsoft have today confirmed what was aluded to in a WindowsFutures tweet yesterday - Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 has been released to manufacturing (RTM). A post on The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog confirmed the news today.

The Exchange team have advised that the RTM code will be sent initially to early adopters to test, then will be become broadly availably in early November.

See my story earlier in the year on key Exchange 2010 features.

Of key note with the RTM product is the dramatic reduction in disk related I/O for this version which can lead to a 70% improvements in IOPS compared to Exchange 2007 and up to 90% compared to Exchange 2003. This change is based on the Exchange team's focus on support larger mailboxes on lower cost storage (such as SATA drives and even JBOD storage when mailboxes are replicated over 3 or more servers).

Exchange Server 2010 also delivers dramatic improvements in clustering and high availability.

In recent days I've been reading about the frustration some have with the new WTV file format that Windows 7 Media Center uses. I was pleasantly surprised however when I tried to sync some TV programmes to my Zune HD so I could listen to or watch them while away from home.

So far I have tried synching 3 programmes from NZ's TV3 (all via Freeview) and they have been successfully coverted by the new Zune 4.0 media player/client. The only frustration at the moment is the time it takes for the Zune app to squeeze a 2gb+ TV programme down to an appropriate size for the Zune HD. I've found the best way is to leave it running overnight as it can take an hour or more. The ease of use of this capabilty certainly trumps trying to do something similar on the iPod or iPhone right now.

I have tested a TV programme broadcast in 1080i HD and this was also able to sync to the Zune and worked perfectly - and is automatically downsampled to your preferred resolution.

On a side note, if you have a Zune then the 'Zune Pass' is very cool and something worth trying out if you buy lots of music or have multiple Zunes in your house (A Zune Pass can work across up to 3 Zune devices as well as on 3 PCs and the Xbox). I was surprised how quickly I became addicted to unlimited legal downloads for a fixed subscription.

One of the interesting facts that was announced during TechEd this week in New Zealand was that there now is a team of 1000 people working on Windows Mobile 7. That's a fairly sizable team and suggests to me that Microsoft are really going to pull something solid out of the bag for this release next year.

It looks as though Microsoft might well not be stopping at 1000 staff on WM7 either as there are currently 65 job listings for new Windows Mobile related jobs listed here.

My thoughts are if you throw together what's in Windows Mobile 6.5, the Zune HD, a new Office 2010 client for Windows Mobile, Silverlight + Flash, plus whatever cool new tricks are up Microsoft's sleeves and they have a great chance of delivering an incredible release in 2010.

That said, I'm actually quite pleased with the features of my latest Windows Mobile (the HTC Snap from Telecom NZ attached to the Vodafone network), and will be even happier if they release Windows Mobile 6.5 for it on Oct 6.

Microsoft's newest Zune MP3 player has launched today, and the big news for this multi-touch device is all software in Microsoft's Applications store for Zune will be free. Initially the most apps are understood to be games, however Twitter and Facebook apps are coming amongst others.

According to The Seattle Times who quote Microsoft's Zune Marketing Manager, Brian Seitz, the major apps won't actually be available until November - including 'Project Gotham Racing'.




Zune HD details from Microsoft:
- Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver so users can listen to higher-quality sound than traditional radio on the go. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD. If you don’t like the song playing on your station’s HD channel, switch to its HD2 or HD3 channels for additional programming.
- The bright OLED touch screen interface allows users to flip through music, movies and other content with ease, and the 16:9 widescreen format display (480x272 resolution) offers a premium viewing experience on the go.
- The HD-compatible output lets Zune HD customers playback supported HD video files from the device through a premium high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) audiovisual docking station (sold separately) direct to an HD TV in 720p.*
- Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
- Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.

Price: 16GB US$220, 32GB US$290 

As the Zune is not being released outside of U.S. (at least not initially) it will be a few more days before I have my hands on one to review in more detail. Stay tuned... I expect it to arrive in under a week.

More here: www.zune.net

The leading tape backup technology - LTO Ultrium is expected to be launched in its fifth generation in the first half of 2010. LTO technology which is developed by the LTO Consortium (made up of IBM, HP and Seagate) was first launched in late 2000, followed by LTO-2 in mid-2003, LTO-3 in late 2005, LTO-4 in mid-2007.

The longer gap between the fourth and fifth generations of LTO seems is thought by some to be a reflection of a lacking demand, however many businesses seem keen to take advantage of the increased capacity and performance the new technology will deliver.

The native capacity of LTO-5 media will double as it has with previous generations to reach 1.6 TB (1600 GB), and with 2:1 compressible data this will allow 3.2TB of information to be stored on the media.

Performance also improves – increasing from 120 MB/second for LTO-4 to 180 MB/second for LTO-5 (and for compressed data this can rise to 360 MB/second). This is faster than typical servers today can deliver data to a tape drive. The introduction of new hard drive and solid state drive technology will make this less of an issue going forward however. The performance boost will certainly be valuable in disaster recovery situations that rely on tape storage.

So far the only formal public announcement of LTO-5 product has come from Imation who make LTO media and they advise LTO-5 media is due early 2010. It is predicted that initial full height LTO-5 drives will be launched in the first half of 2010, with broad global availability being the second half of 2010. (Update: one key backup supplier has advised us that despite the announcement from Imation they don't expect LTO-5 hardware to ship in 2010. We'll continue to monitor this and provide updates here as information comes to hand)

Many wonder whether businesses still need tape backup with options such as online and disk based backup becoming an increasing part of the market. For now the answer appears to be a resounding 'Yes' – however this picture is sure to change as the market changes, Internet speeds increase and more data moves to the cloud.

Although a 6th Generation of LTO technology exists as part of the official roadmap it is unclear how far away the release of LTO-6 will be, or if it will be released at all. Come back to me on that subject in 2012 or 2013.