Brett Goldstein, Chief Information Officer, City of Chicago (photo Code of America Creative Commons license)

The City of Chicago will be installing Microsoft Office 365 on the cloud for its 30,000 employees with an expected savings of $400,000 per year.

Brett Goldstein was hired in 2011 by newly elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel to make the City of Chicago more transparent and open.

In 2013, Goldstein is moving Chicago’s three mail systems to The Cloud with Microsoft Office 365. 

30,000 employee email accounts and office applications will standardize on Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud based release of Office.

Score a big hit for Microsoft in the government market, against Google.

With employees scattered across the City, it makes sense to put their applications on the cloud. Microsoft’s recent release of cloud-based Office 365 makes that a sensible solution.  Office 365 changes the license from a per-seat perpetual license with high capital costs to a monthly per user subscription with communication, data storage and maintenance Microsoft responsibilities.

“I’m actually going to be getting better service, better functionality, at a lower cost, and that’s particularly important when you are in municipal government,” said Goldstein. The City of Chicago projects savings of  $400,000 per year over its 4-year agreement with Microsoft. (ComputerWorld)

“Data is at the core of how we are doing and going to continue to do government better,” said Goldstein. “I don’t believe in five-year ROIs And any project has to have a relatively quick payback.”

Cities, like many large organizations, tend to run as divisions or silos. In a City, police may talk to fire but not to water and sewer, taxation or administration.

Goldstein sees data integration as the key. He told Government Technology, ”One is the open data piece. Open data — transparency — that’s part of my portfolio.

“We have CityofChicago.org along with the federated MetroChicago site, where we are piping that data.”

“The other two areas are a little more subtle. The second piece is bringing data in a quantitative and empirical approach to government.  My job is to make sure we’re incorporating an empirical methodology as to how we’re looking at that issue.”

“I think we all know that many of the issues facing government are cross-departmental, and historically, we might not have been very good at doing that. Things would have stayed within siloes rather than a collaboration — that’s one of the pieces we’re working through.”

Microsoft has Office 365 solutions from 5 users and up to almost any sized organization. Aquilium Group can help your organization decide if cloud based services are right for you.

Windows 8 start screen (photo TechRadar)

The reality is that Fujitsu is not making computers that people want.

The tech media are falling all over themselves reporting the misleading statement by Fujitsu president Masami Yamamoto.

He said that Windows 8 has depressed sales of his company’s computers.

Does Fujitsu make a Windows 8 tablet, smartphone, laptop or desktop with touchscreen?

Not that we could find.

Acer, however, has jumped into production of Windows 8 computers making some of the best and earliest available tablets and touch screen monitors. Their President Jim Wong predicts Windows 8 will revitalize the PC business.

“Touch machines are actually selling above expectations,” said Bob O’Donnell, a program VP at IDC.

Demand for Windows 8 computers with touch screens is so hot that there are stock outs. I’ve predicted this all year. After people can play with a touchscreen, they will not want to go back to not having the feature.

Once the iPad shipped and people could experience touching the screen, sales of non-touch tablets nose-dived. The same sales effect is happening with computers.

“Some vendors are actually facing shortages because touch panels are in limited supply. Vendors are saying they can’t get as many touch-based machines as they would like to meet the demand that they’re seeing.”

“We’ve talked to a number of PC makers that are having trouble obtaining touch panels and some of the vendors I’ve talked to said they can’t keep them on the shelf,” said Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at IHS iSuppli. (CNET)

Fujitsu making excuses

Fujitsu President Masami Yamamoto

The retail channel is empty of Windows 8 computers from Fujitsu. Checking Best Buy, Amazon.com and Tiger Direct I could not find a single Windows 8 computer for sale.

In retail, if you don’t have product customers will buy something else from your competitors.

Bloomberg reported this story without question. “Fujitsu Ltd. (6702), Japan’s biggest provider of computer services, said the company will miss its annual shipment target for personal computers amid slow demand for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows 8 operating system.”

“Initial appetite for the software, introduced in October, is “weak,” Fujitsu President Masami Yamamoto, 58, told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. Slumping demand in Europe amid the sovereign-debt crisis will also erode sales, he said. PC deliveries for the year ending March 31 may be more than 6 million units, compared with an October estimate of 7 million, he said.”

Press like to repeat stories without research

The Fujitsu/Bloomberg story has been repeated around the world without questioning its validity.

The media are lazy and spend most of their time reprinting press releases or repeating each others stories.

I found almost the same bad reporting and logic in TechRadar, CNET, AllThingsD, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Verge, BusinessInsider, Neowin and dozens of other media outlets.

Gallup found distrust of the public for journalists is at an all time high. In September 2012, they reported 60% of Americans place little or no trust in the media. That would put the media about the same trust level as politicians and slightly ahead of user car sales.

Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky announces June Windows 8 Preview

The Windows 8 Operating System just got another page written when Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky dropped the shoe in Japan at Windows 8 Dev Days.

The new and hotly anticipated operating system will get another preview in the first week of June 2012.

There was not press release, no blog entry – just this photo posted on Twitter and the usual short Twitter message “Announce…Windows 8 Release Preview first week of June. Here’s the announce from Japan’s Windows 8 Dev Days.”

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is already twice as popular as the beta of Windows 7. People, like myself, are using Windows 8 everyday and finding it an exciting improvement over earlier versions.

That’s not to say Windows 8 is perfect. After all it is a beta.

The first week of June release of another preview shows how strong Microsoft is in meeting their unannounced shipping date of August for the last build and October for commercial release.

Windows 8 is going to integrate the desktop, laptop, tablet and smart phone devices with one consistent touch interface. Windows 8 will be the most revolutionary release since The Rolling Stones sang “Start Me Up” for Windows 95. Ironically, the Start Button will disappear in Windows 8.

Windows 95 commercial featuring The Rolling Stones singing “Start Me Up”

SkyDrive update

Over on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky posted news of an upgrade the Cloud services for Windows 8 SkyDrive.

In February, we told you about our goals for connecting your apps, files, PCs, and devices to the cloud with SkyDrive and Windows 8. Since then, we have provided the App Preview of a Windows 8 app to get access to SkyDrive, and we’ve updated the SkyDrive web experience. Today, we are delivering new capabilities for SkyDrive across the Windows platform.

The new apps are Windows 7 and Windows 8 compatible, along with Mac, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone.

I’ve just downloaded them for Windows 7 and everything looks great on a first look basis. SkyDrive now shows up in Windows Explorer, where it should if The Cloud is going to be transparent.

This is a strong pre-emptive strike against iCloud and Google Cloud.

The current version of SkyDrive, before this new app, left a few things to be desired such as it couldn’t open files with MS Office apps if they were 64-bit encoded and protected. The new apps which are available for download, include a whole suite of integration features including,

• “SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
• Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
• SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get extra paid storage as their needs grow.
• SkyDrive for other devices. We’ve updated the SkyDrive apps on Windows Phone and iOS devices, bringing better management features and sharing options to those devices. We’re also releasing a new preview client for Mac OS X Lion, letting you manage your SkyDrive right from the Finder.”

Check out the video.