Tony Bain

More Redrock Jobs

We are looking for a few more committed individuals to join our team.  Two immediate openings are:

- SQL Server DBA (Sydney, NSW)

- Senior .NET Developer (Melbourne, VIC) will consider other locations for the right person

If you are interested please contact me via email: tony@tonybain.com

Has Microsoft's SQL Server missed the boat

From IDM.NET.AU

Has Microsoft's SQL Server missed the boat?
Nov 17, 2005: With five years between updates Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is out, but can it deliver in the face of energetic open source competition?

What this article fails to mention however, is that I haven’t really seen any wide spread critical demand for SQL Server 2005 from existing SQL Server 2000 customers.  There are two key drivers for upgrades, new applications and problems with existing platform.  The existing SQL Server 2000 platform, for the majority of users that I know, had very few issues and weren’t really too concerned about when the upgrade was going to become available.  In fact a few years of platform stability has been a welcome luxury.  Now that it’s released, many organizations plan to start looking at it with a view to implement mid 2006. 

New applications one the other hand is the current driver, but the development of these tend to align with the product release cycle.  Sure we have rolled out a number of Analysis Services 2005, Integration Services 2005 and Reporting Services 2005 applications but only because this line up with the release schedule provided by Microsoft.  Don't get me wrong, there are many great benefits in 2005, but I see these being mainly for new apps.

Some of the more major “left field” features introduced in SQL Server 2005, .NET integration, XML data types, Service Broker, are not yet even fully understood by many and I only see pockets of demand today for such features.  But again, I expect this to change rapidly mid 2006 as the business benefits start to become apparent, and best practices are developed through others successes and failures.

MobileSelect Launch

One of my Australian customers, MobileSelect has recently launched their e-commerce site, offering mobile phone plan and handset sales. What I like about Mobile Select is they have produced a good looking, simple to use, site offering competitive choice.

2-3 years ago a service like this may have had less of an impact as many consumers were “first time mobile users”, buying the phone was a big deal and the ability to look and touch the phone in a physical store would have been very important. But with an estimated 85% (around 19 million users according to some source) market penetration today in Australia, I suspect the majority of sales are in the handset / plan upgrade market. This is a different type of consumer, they are educated and are looking to get the features and service they require in the most cost effective format. With the rollout of 3G, other network services and trends such as mobile only (no land line) expecting to increase significantly over the next 5 years, the upgrade market will, I suspect, increase significantly.

Air NZ BOEING 777-200

Flew one of Air New Zealand’s new Boeing 777-200 planes the other day, Auckland to Melbourne.  These planes have in seat entertainment systems, interesting is that they seem to be running Windows CE/embedded.  How do I know, well mine seemed to crash and reboot itself and I saw the start button and windows task bar!  It is an okay system, but not up there with Emirates ICE system.  This is really the benchmark against which all others should be compared.  Emirates ICE has over 500 channels, not sure how many Air NZ had, but it was more limited.

What I found most disappointing is that Air NZ did not enable the in-seat entertainment system until 15-20 minutes into the flight, then turned if off 20 minutes before landing. Emirates ICE system is on from the moment you step on, until the moment you step off.  This is probably the most boring part of the flight for me as you can’t use your laptop etc, why not leave the entertainment system operational?

NZ/WLG Hotel Broadband 2

Just a quick follow up on the prior posting.  I was at a major hotel in Wellington on Tuesday, and noticed they have wireless access in that hotel for quests, but you have to purchase a pre-paid card from reception.  But it was almost NZD$50 for 24 hours of access, this is the most expensive hotel broadband that I recall seeing anywhere before. 

I don’t know the specifics of the hotel mentioned above, but generically assume 10 guests a day use such a service 4 days a week, then revenues of around $102k could be pulled.  An in house hotel wireless service shouldn’t be costing more than $15-$20k per year to run…

Broadband in New Zealand

Frank & Rod discuss hotel broadband in New Zealand:

http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr/archive/2005/11/13/492239.aspx#comments

http://www.drury.net.nz/

I spend a lot of time in New Zealand and actually book hotels based on if they have broadband or not.  Thankfully www.wotif.com makes this process easy by having this explicitly listed as a hotel feature.  However this criteria limits you to only a handful of hotels in Wellington and Auckland.

The interesting thing is New Zealand actually led the way with broadband for quite some time.  Telecom did a great job of getting this out to the masses early, a few years ago you were much more likely to be able to get ADSL in a the suburbs in NZ than in Australia for example (our exchange in a Melbourne suburb was only enabled < 12 months ago).

However the ball has been really dropped when it comes to continuing the trend and providing ubiquitous access, and Australia has overtaken from this perspective.  Most “business” class hotels in NZ don’t have broadband, almost all in Australia do.  Most airports in NZ don’t have wi-fi (at least I haven’t been able to find any providers, apart from a café-net connection in WLG airport if I stood in exactly the right place), whereas all the majors (Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane) do.  I also use iBurst which gives me 15GB of high speed mobile broadband and this works in all the capital cities, this even works when traveling in taxis etc.

So this post is not supposed to be a NZ vs Australia rant.  Just re-enforcing the point, NZ blazed the trial then dropped the ball, which happens all too frequently.  But this brings opportunity for smart cookies, there is clearly, in my opinion, a gap in the market that a smart player could fill.  Sure, building a mobile broadband network is an expensive option, but putting reliable, cost-effective and easily accessible wi-fi into the major airports and hotels isn’t.  Drips and Drabs isn’t going to work, no one wants 10 different accounts for every different airport and hotel.

Okay maybe the airports and hotels won't play ball, but with technologies like this do you need them to?

IBM Database Winback

As an incentive to encourage qualified customers to move from non-IBM database servers to DB2 Universal Database or Informix Dynamic Server, IBM is offering special pricing on new licenses of IBM database servers to replace competitive licenses.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/info/winback/

SQL Server 2005 RTM Shipped

In case you haven't already heard, SQL Server 2005 RTM has shipped.  MSDN subcribers can download the developer edition from the subcriber downloads section.

With over 5 years between releases, this is certainly an exciting release from Microsoft.  And the good news is that it appears pretty stable, many of our customers have being ruuning SQL Server 2005 in some form or another in production since BETA 2.