A Random Number Generator For Dynamics CRM 2011

This blog is a bit of a departure in that it centers around a bit of code. I am not a coder. I cannot write jscript, .Net or register a plugin. I know CRM from a functional perspective and where code can be used to augment the functionality. I leave the actual writing of code to others. The advantage of this is it gives me great motivation to come up with unusual ways to solve problems. An example of this was my global search / universal search tool for CRM. Totally codeless, reasonably practical and very easy to maintain and configure.

Today I am looking at a random number generator.

For those of you still adverse to the curly braces and semi-colons, you can skip to the section where I talk about updating the random numbers en masse, which is codeless.

Why Do We Need a Random Number Generator?

It is an excellent question. I personally need it for another blog post I am planning to do on network analysis but another reason might be to create a random sample of contacts for a marketing campaign, or some other business case where a representative sample of records are needed but it would be impractical to use the entire set of records. Another reason might be to populate data for the testing of reports, dashboards or graphs.

Why Did You Abandon the Righteous Path of the Codeless?

I did try to do it without code using workflows (e.g. populating a number field with the current date and time) but this was not possible. With the ability to create custom workflow assemblies with the next major update I imagine a whole new world of workflow fun will open up. Now all we need are synchronous workflows, calculated fields and the dialog DB Query function in workflow and we are set.

How Do We Do It?

The first thing we do is create a field to hold the random number. In my case I have created the imaginatively labelled ‘Random Number’.

For transparency I added this to the form and to the default view.

Now we need the code.

The jscript Code

Thanks to Rhett Clinton, another aussie CRM MVP for the key bit of code:

var num = Math.floor(Math.random()*101);

While an aussie, he lives in the UK, so his quiet demeanour and respectful attitude often mean people confuse him for being English or a New Zealander.

So what is happening in this code line? Well we are taking a variable ‘num’ and setting it to a value. Starting from the inside and working out, Math.random() returns a number BETWEEN 0 and 1 i.e. never equal to them. Multiplying this by 101 gives us a number between 0 and 101. Math.floor rounds the result down and, as the result will always be greater than but not equal to zero and less than but not equal to 101, the result is a number between 0 and 100.

Next we need to assign this value to the field we have added to the form. To do this, I Binged about and came across Hosk’s Javascript Xrm.Page basics. Other than through his active online presence, I do not know Ben Hoskins. His blog suggests he likes a beer and calls it as he sees it which means I like him already.

Combining the gems from Hosk’s site with Rhett’s code and with the input of my colleagues Bhavin Mehta and Rafael Urbano you get the following:

function RandomNumber()
{
var num = Math.floor(Math.random()*101);
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_randomnumber").setValue(num);
}

Putting this into a web resource, we then attach it to a form event e.g. OnLoad and we are good to go.

Using OnLoad means every time the form is opened, the random number value is changed. This also means the form wants to be saved, even if nothing else has changed. If this proves impractical you could use the OnSave event instead.

The result is a field whose value changes every time you open the form, although it only triggers on the opening of the form (for OnLoad) or the saving of the form (for OnSave). The bulk edit form or changing values through other methods, such as workflow, do not trigger the script.

 

Other Approaches

Another approach would be a plugin. This would remove the need to open the form and could be triggered off, for example, the ticking of a box on the form. Therefore we would tick the box via mass editing or workflow and the random number code would be fired.

Mass Updating Values

The biggest problem in using jscript is when you need to update multiple records at the same time. Because jscript will only fire when the form is opened it means that you need to open up the form for every record you want to update. Another approach is to use data enrichment. The advantage of this approach is you can insert a random number onto the records with no code whatsoever.

Firstly hit the ‘Export to Excel’ button on the list of contacts you want to update.

For static exports you will see the option to re-import the data

Once we have it in Excel, we can use the Excel RANDBETWEEN() function to generate our random numbers. The function RANDBETWEEN(0,100) does the trick.

We then import our data with the import wizard and our records have random numbers associated to them.

NB: The numbers in the previous two screenshots are different only because I took the pictures over different runs. Usually they would be the same.

This approach is a little manual but has the advantage of not requiring the jscript to generate the random numbers.

Conclusions

There you have it, the ability to add a random number to a record. Using jscript the number will change every time you access the form or, via re-importing, the number will change every time you export and refresh the random number via Excel functions. Using a plugin allows for more options for updating the field. Enjoy!

Salesforce First Quarter Results For 2012

Salesforce just released their first quarter results for 2012 (what they call 2013 Q1) so I thought it would be interesting to see how salesforce kicked off the new year. Obviously the growth in revenue is the main push of their messaging but the numbers show a few more things.

For previous analysis (of which there is a fair amount, use the search engine on the left with the keyword ‘salesforce’. The last analysis was on the full year results).

Where Do I Get My Numbers From?

There was a recent LinkedIn survey asking which CRM will be the leader in five years. In that I put in my five cents regarding my fears for the long term prospects of a company failing to make a profit and was challenged on where I was getting my numbers from. As usual, all financial numbers come from the detailed financials on salesforce’s own web site. I use the GAAP numbers (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) rather than the non-GAAP numbers used in salesforce press releases.

What is the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP? GAAP financials follow conventions adopted by bodies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so that different companies can be compared on an equal footing. Non-GAAP means the company in question deviates from these conventions, limiting the ability to compare them to other companies.

Often the reason cited for such a deviation is because the company believes their model is unique and that usual accounting does not accurately reflect their prosperity. Another reason companies deviate from the GAAP path is because of ‘one-off’ events skewing results (what is called pro-forma accounting). While certainly a pioneer in cloud software, I am not convinced they need to deviate as they do such that substantial losses and negative free cash flows turn into non-GAAP profits and non-GAAP positive cash flows.

In other words, if you want to hear about ‘unbooked work’ and ‘deferred income’ or about non-GAAP EPS go to the salesforce press center. Here I use the numbers salesforce report to the SEC.

Revenue Growth

Here I will bring in some addition data, taken from money.msn.com ten year summary for salesforce. The annual revenue growth was:

To January 2004: 88%
To January 2005: 84%
To January 2006: 76%
To January 2007: 60%
To January 2008: 51%
To January 2009: 44%
To January 2010: 21%
To January 2011: 27%
To January 2012: 37%

We see that, like many small start ups, initial growth was massive but tapered as the company grew larger. More recently, with Benioff’s strong focus on revenue, growth has picked up again. Looking at the numbers from salesforce’s detailed financials we see the nature of this new-found growth.

The black line is a two-period moving average. Moving averages tend to smooth out the bumps to give a clearer picture of the underlying trend. In this case we see that whatever Marc was doing to generate the growth in sales is starting to wear off with the curve flattening.

Margins

Again, using the ten year summary, we see margins (income as a percentage of revenue were):

To January 2003: –19%
To January 2004: 4%
To January 2005: 4%
To January 2006: 9%
To January 2007: 0%
To January 2008: 2%
To January 2009: 4%
To January 2010: 6%
To January 2011: 4%
To January 2012: –1%

So while revenues increased over the past couple of years, margins have suffered and are back in the negative which has not been seen since the  company’s early days.

Again, the quarter-by-quarter graph from the salesforce detailed financials is even more damning.

To compare to the revenue growth, about the same time revenue started improving (2010 Q1) was the same time margins started suffering. The situation now being such that for every $100 of revenue, the cost to the business is $103.

Profitability

Back in February I suggested that while the business was losing money, the bleeding seemed to be constant and not getting worse. This has proven to not be the case.

While the drop in margin is small (about 2%) because the revenue has increased so much, the loss this quarter is greater than the combined loss of the previous three quarters combined. Let me write this in bold, large letters to drive home the point.

THIS QUARTER’S LOSS FOR SALESFORCE IS GREATER THAN THE LOSS OF THE LAST THREE QUARTERS COMBINED

Salesforce managed to make a loss of $19m compared to the $12m lost of the previous three quarters. Part of me wonders whether there was some creative accounting done to keep the previous quarter in line with the others to round off the year, pushing the bad news to this first quarter, giving another three quarters to make up for lost ground before the next annual report. If this is the case I would expect to see the next quarter recover slightly from this dreadful result.

What surprised me is, in the announcement call for the quarter, Benioff describing the quarter as a “great start…absolutely spectacular” and the CFO, Graham Smith, describing is as “excellent start…better than we expected”. If this is a good start I would hate to see a bad one. I understand Benioff is focussed on revenue growth but when he said in the previous quarter’s call he was ‘committed to  increasing our margins’ I was thinking he would put the company towards profitability not sink in further into the red.

What surprised me more was not one analyst on the call for this quarter picking him up on it. Everything was about the ‘deferred income’ and ‘unbooked work’. Here is the thing:

SALESFORCE CAN HAVE AS MUCH AS THEY LIKE IN NON-GAAP INCOME BUT IF THEIR MARGINS ARE NEGATIVE THEY ARE STILL STUFFED

Selling $10 bills for $9 does not make for a healthy business and lately, to get the revenue growth up, they have been selling them for $8. The analysts are asking how many $10 bills are likely to be sold next week when they should be asking “why are you selling yourself short?”

Stock Sales

Back in February I asked what the directors of Microsoft and salesforce were thinking. I looked at the messages they are sending to the market compared to their personal share sales. Graham Smith, CFO, despite lauding the praises of the company in every quarterly announcement (this one included) continues to offload his ownership of the company. Here are the numbers if you are interested. Every week Graham exercises some options and also has an automatic share sale in place. The automatic shares netted him around $2.7m in April and the share options generated around $320,000.

While there is an argument to say share ownership and options aligns an employees interest to that of the shareholders, there is also an argument that says if I am exercising options and selling shares every week I will, within my ability, do whatever it takes to convince the market the share price should remain as high as possible. The difference in these goals is the difference between the long term prosperity of the company and telling the market what they want to hear to maintain the share price in the short term.

While I have no doubt Graham is acting with all appropriate care in his capacity as CFO, I can also understand if he feels conflicted in his role and I do not envy his position in this regard.

Subscription Numbers

Unfortunately salesforce kept tight lipped about the enterprise deals they did this quarter and about their subscription numbers, so I, again, have to speculate based on their revenues. My best guess, assuming they are maintaining a revenue per subscriber per quarter level of around $150 is that they have 4.6m subscribers. Assuming the average company size is still around 35, this means the number of customers is about 132,000. The bad news is, if these numbers are correct, each month each subscriber costs salesforce $1 ($1 * 4.6m users * 4 months = the approximate loss for the quarter).

Conclusions

I understand Marc is keen to capture market share but it seems the price for doing so is proving very high to the point where the health of the business is being jeopardised. While the trend of tapering growth as the size of a company increases has been rebuffed, the cost has been margin to the point that the company is making significant losses.

The question I have is “where to from here?” Being in the red is simply not a sustainable position, otherwise every company would do it and pay no tax. Salesforce are quick to point out there is plenty of revenue in the pipeline but this is only of benefit if they can make a profit from it. Will salesforce raise prices? Will they find new efficiencies in the business to reduce operational costs while maintaining service? Will they slash sales and marketing spend, killing revenue growth, cruise along on subscription income but inevitably sacrifice share price? Time will tell.

Moving To The Cloud: Update

How the world can change in a month. Back in mid-April I wrote about moving my data to the cloud. In previous parts I talked about using Office 365 and moving ten years of e-mail across to the cloud Exchange server.

So what has happened since last month? Microsoft has released their SkyDrive App and, while Mesh is still operational, with Microsoft announcing the death of the Live brand (of which Mesh is a key part) it is probably a fair speculation to suggest it is a product on the way out.

To this end, my cloud data strategy has shifted somewhat.

So What Is In the SkyDrive App?

The application itself is pretty simple. Once you install it, it copies the entire contents of your cloud SkyDrive to a local folder of your choosing and then keeps it synched. Given Microsoft were giving 25G for free (new signups only get 7G), this had the potential to fill up one of the 32G drives on my PC tablet so I have only installed it on the old laptop.

It is like the old Mesh but with less fine control on what gets brought down and where it goes. There is also no option for synching shortcuts but, apparently, this will be a standard part of Windows 8.

The 100M limit has been increased to 2G, although for larger files you can still use Gladinet to chunk them (I am not sure it is worth it as for files larger than 2G, I’d probably go with a-drive if they are simply family photos or movies).

Finally, if you have really long folder paths and file names, they may get picked up when SkyDrive starts copying down files. In this case it suggests you rearrange things and start the app again.

What About Mesh?

I used Mesh for a couple of purposes. The first was to do what the SkyDrive app does i.e. keep a local copy of information. The second was to sync certain folders onto my wife’s computer and also to my work computer. Short of copying EVERYTHING down to those other machines this is no longer possible. The best that can be done is sharing folders online via a shortcut. While do-able, this is little more than a workaround.

I have now killed Mesh. It was actually fairly simple. I copied the folders to a new folder in my SkyDrive called Mesh, turned off Mesh for all computers and then took a backup in case things go awry. I can always browse online if I need a folder at work and I have given my wife the appropriate shortcuts for the stuff she needs. It is a little clunkier than before but workable.

What About New Stuff?

Essentially, I have the SkyDrive folder in the My Documents area. Anything new is held on the desktop and moved across when things get too crowded. With the relatively complex folder structure of a Windows user account, this is not a great solution but I will see how it goes. My fear is something being dropped into another Documents folder and being overlooked.

Hopefully, either the app will improve over time or Windows 8 will simplify the user account structure.

Conclusions

I am not the biggest fan of the new SkyDrive app but transitioning to use it was relatively straightforward and I am sure the feedback from the web will coax Microsoft into tweaking it. With devices becoming more cloud-friendly for data storage I am not sure forcing a user to dump down their entire SkyDrive is the greatest choice and my prediction is this will be the first to go.

Vote For Leon. Shining Like A Shaft of Gold When All Around is Dark

It is that time of year again when the vague promise of a vote will guarantee a free beer/lunch/shoe shine.

If you find my random mental eruptions influential, feel free to vote: http://www.dynamicsworld.co.uk/top-100-voting-page-5/ If not, vote for everyone else.

If I make the cut, I promise to continue to write handy tips and tricks, do the odd book review (hint, hint publishers) and highlight why the rudderless SalesForce ship is lurching unsteadily onto the rocks of bankruptcy and ruin, while the SalesForce executives jump into their golden lifeboat crafted lovingly from relentless share sales. If you are a SalesForcer and are gnashing your teeth, that means I’ve influenced you so do the right thing. If you are laughing because you know it is true, vote for me as a beacon of light and purity in a world of marketing hype and hyperbole.

Otherwise vote for Matt Wittemann. He’s a good bloke and will keep me in Mac and Jacks on my next visit to Seattle if he gets up

Outlook’s Best Kept Secret: Shortcuts

I am quite a power Outlook user and, given the tight integration Dynamics CRM has with Outlook I often find myself poking around in people’s inboxes. One feature, which is often overlooked, and which is indispensible to me, is Outlook shortcuts. If you loved using Outlook favourites with CRM but have discovered this is no longer an option in 2011 (short of registry hacking) this is a great alternative.

If you are unfamiliar with Outlook shortcuts, it is the little icon at the end of the other icons

Clicking on it shows a big screen of nothing.

Not impressive so far.

So What Is It Good For?

Essentially, you can add any folder as a shortcut. This can be a search folder, an RSS feed, a Calendar, a CRM folder or anything else within the Outlook folder structure. No more jumping around to find the right information.

Configuring Shortcuts

To configure them, you create a group and then add shortcuts to it. Right-click on existing group to do this.

Most of the options are quite self-explanatory, so I will not go into more detail.

Once set up you will have the dozen or so folders you reference in a day with nothing else to get in the way. Once you have added a new group, you can even delete the default Shortcuts group.

The only other trick is making Outlook start in shortcuts by default. This is achieved by right-clicking the icons at the bottom and selecting Navigation Pane Options.

Move Shortcuts to the top and you’re done.

Here is a shortcut group I have prepared combining Outlook and CRM elements.

Combined with Outlook rules, it becomes easy to route e-mails to different folders and display them for review. Then with quicksteps, moving e-mails out of the folders to the right archive folder, once they have been read, is as simple as a click.

Here is my shortcuts on my work machine (no CRM in this one as it is a new machine and I have not got around to installing the client yet).

In this case I am combining folders from two different sources; my work e-mail server and my personal e-mail server (yes, I am a little behind in my personal e-mail) and splitting them into two shortcut groups. No more browsing through two trees to find the folders you want. Shortcuts include e-mail folders, tweet lists (via TwInbox), my tasks, RSS feeds (via searches to further refine what is returned to only those which are unread) and my calendar.

Conclusions

Using Outlook shortcuts is a great way to display and access the information you need. In combination with Outlook rules and Outlook quicksteps, it becomes a case of clicking a folder, reading an e-mail and clicking a quickstep to pass it on to the right archive. If, like me, you are looking to move to a slate/tablet world, this combination essentially eliminates the need to right click or drag and drop and will save you significant time in reading and actioning your e-mails/checking your CRM Opportunities etc.

Moving To The Cloud Part Three: Shifting Data

For those that are still unsure, my last post ‘Microsoft’s Polar Data Centres and World Wireless System’ was posted on 1st April with good reason. It was an April Fool’s posting. I am glad to say Microsoft took it in good humor so I am still an MVP, for now.

The post is the final part in a series of three postings about my experience of moving to the cloud. In part one I outlined my problem. Essentially I was carrying around too much data (10 years of e-mails in a PST, 35G of historical data, much music) on my laptop and it was a data-loss disaster waiting to happen. Other frustrations included:

• time being eaten up in doing regular backups and maintenance
• having to haul my personal laptop everywhere to read my personal e-mail

I signed up to Office 365 with an intention of using this to solve some of my issues.

Part two talked about migrating my 12G pst file across to the Office 365 Exchange server. This was an excellent decision and, four months later, I have no regrets. I still have the niggle of the ‘on behalf of’ for mail sent out on gmail but this pales to the benefits. Mailbox usage is now at 7.4G

meaning I have gobbled up about 0.8G in four months which means I have about seven years to go before I reach my quota.

In this part I will talk about my movement of the 35G of data (plus music).

Going All-In With a Tablet

I live in Outlook. It is my one-stop shop for e-mails, rss feeds and tweets. Everything is in the one spot and, with Outlook rules, filtering what is important and what is ‘nice to read’ is relatively simple. I often see tablet devices, such as android tablets and the iPad but, without Outlook, their use for me is limited. Sure, you can read e-mail and then, with another app, you can check your calendar but the ‘dashboard’ of Outlook gives it to me in one hit. For me, it just works. I love the form-factor of these devices but the OS kills me.

To this end, I decided to take the plunge on a PC tablet aka slate. This is a device which looks like an iPad but runs Windows. CSG, where I work, has an annual gadget allowance of $500 so, as long as I could find a tablet for $500 or less, I could test the waters and not be out of pocket.

This gave me the opportunity to test out a site I have known about for a while, AliExpress. This is a retail site for the slightly more well-known Alibaba.com. Alibaba is a front-end for those manufacturing factories in places like China. If you want something, and brand is not so important, you can buy it on Alibaba; from bookmarks and necklaces to high-end electronics, it is there. In the case of Alibaba, you deal directly with the manufacturer and, generally, you will need to buy multiple units. Aliexpress deals mostly in single unit purchases and offers an escrow service as standard. In other words, when you pay, aliexpress holds the money and, when you receive the item and confirm it is what you paid for, they release it to the manufacturer. You get the goods at factory prices and there is no risk; everyone wins.

In the end, for US$472 I got:

• 10 inch touch-screen tablet running Windows 8 Consumer Preview edition
• Intel N570 dual core processor
• Wi-fi, bluetooth
• 2G RAM and 2*32G solid state drives and a micro-SD expansion slot

The memory was a bit low but, of all the machines on alibaba it was either high memory or a multicore processor but not both. My current laptop had 4G RAM but a single core processor and it drove me nuts so I was happy to try this configuration instead.

The transaction went without a hitch and I now use the tablet as my personal laptop. Generally I connect a USB mouse to it as my fingers are too large to interact with the screen on the higher resolutions, but this is fine and there are plenty of mini-mouses on the market. In hindsight I should have got 3G capability over bluetooth (it’s one or the other) but I can still tether to a device via USB so no big deal and wifi hotspots are becoming more and more commonplace.

So what does this have to do with moving the cloud? Well, a few things:

• This is a no-brand machine direct from a factory in Guangzhou, China. Quality is not guaranteed.
• It is running a beta operating system (Windows 8 Consumer Preview)
• It has only got 64G of space

These factors means I have a strong motivation NOT to store any data locally. For what its worth, after a couple of weeks, the hardware has had no issues and the OS has only blue-screened once. With the page file and search index files moved across to the second drive, and Office 2010 installed, I still had about 15G spare on the primary drive, so lots of rooms for programs.

Using the Right Cloud Solution For The Right Data

Another recent purchase was a Windows Phone, a Nokia Lumia 800. As well as the clear parallels in the interface between Windows Phone and Windows 8 Consumer Preview, another clear message is that the SkyDrive is going to be a big part of the plan. If you are not familiar with SkyDrive, Microsoft offers 25G of storage space, in the cloud, for free. The ability to easily access SkyDrive is baked into Windows 8 and Windows Phone with the clear intention that this become the central store for all devices.

There are a few issues to consider with SkyDrive

• There is no local cache of the data, so if you have no internet, you have no data
• File sizes are limited to 100M (this may be increased to 300M in the future)
• It is really only designed to handle certain file types i.e. pictures, videos and office files

The second two issues can be overcome by using Gladinet. Gladinet is a front-end to many different cloud storage services, including SkyDrive. It will auto-chunk larger files to comply with the 100M limit i.e. break them up for storage but still allow them to be re-constructed later and it will allow any kind of file to be uploaded with no auto-conversion which SkyDrive can do for things like picture files.

I got the Professional version through a scheme where you sign up for some online service in exchange for getting the software. In my case, I signed up for a trial online brain-training program and got the software for free. The Professional version made uploading my files much easier via the backup function.

After a couple of weeks, I had filled the 25G of space.

Via Gladinet, I can access this as a drive on my laptop (I have not installed Gladinet on the slate yet, but can still access the SkyDrive easily) and via WinDirStat can browse this drive to see where all the space is being taken up (although, as you can see above, the online interface to SkyDrive is also quite friendly in this regard).

So What About Data You Need When Offline?

One aspect a lot of cloud-zealots fail to cover is the issue of being offline. While SkyDrive is an excellent repository for archived data and things you need when online, there are some data you need offline. For example, I have a list of blog topics in a Word document. If I am on a flight with a few hours to spare, it is likely I will not have an internet connection but could use the time to write a blog article. This is where Mesh comes in. Mesh is part of the Microsoft Live Essentials. Mesh gives you 5G of additional storage which can be accessed in the cloud (think of it as a mini-SkyDrive) but it also syncs with a local folder on a PC or laptop.

I imagine SkyDrive and Mesh will eventually merge but, at this stage, this is not the case.

So, all up this gives me 30G of data for free, all in the cloud with the option of 5G of it being synced to a local folder. This is 5G short of my 35G of data which means I can use a third-party product like dropbox and a-drive, review whether I really need all my data or wait until Microsoft offer additional SkyDrive storage for a price. As you can see above, almost 5G of my SkyDrive is taken up by ‘Multimedia’. This is photos and videos of the kids. There are plenty of sites out there which house this for free so I am not overly concerned.

What About The Music?

For my music collection I am using Google Music, now Google Play. This lets me load up to 20,000 songs for free, all of which can be played via a browser. Although there is only an app for Android, I can happily play my music via Internet Explorer on my Windows Phone and set the web page as a tile, turning it into a pseudo-app. Hopefully, Google will extend Google Play to cover home movies, meaning I will have a one-stop shop for my music and movies. For those of you outside of the USA, when you initially sign up for Google Play, Google checks whether you are connecting from a US machine or not. If not, you are not allowed to use the service. Using TOR servers and web proxies do not fool it. Therefore, you may need a friend in the USA to help you with the initial log in. Once you set it up that first time, Google never checks your location again.

Conclusions

While it is still early days, I could not be happier with my decision to ‘go cloud’. E-mail, past and present, is available anywhere. My large backlog of data is only a browser away and, for those data which I need offline access for, this also is being auto-synced to the cloud and to all my other devices (personal slate, work pc, wife’s laptop etc.) Any one of my devices could catch fire tomorrow and I would not care. Also, moving to a new device is simply a case of telling it about my Office 365 account, telling it my live ID (for SkyDrive) and setting up Mesh. All the associated file movements happen automatically.

If you are considering doing something similar the barriers are quite low from a cost perspective (all of this is costing me just US$6 per month for e-mail and nothing for data/music) and there is nothing stopping you having your data in both SkyDrive and on a local store to see how it goes. My recommendation is give it a try and, like when you buy insurance, my prediction is you will feel a zen-like relief that all the worries are now someone else’s problem.

Microsoft’s Polar Data Centres and World Wireless System

 

Introduction

This past month has been quite unique for me with many messages going back and forth between myself and various Microsoft departments. Microsoft, being the reasonable people they are, has given me the green light to talk about one of their major projects. They were planning to announce it at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) but are happy for some information to be leaked early as a bit of a teaser i.e. what was talked about at the MVP Summit plus a few bits I have gathered from the net to put the pieces together.

How It All Began

Back in December, Microsoft announced the dates of the MVP Summit and sent out their usual pack of information about what products were going to be covered, the agenda, likely topics etc. My pack had an additional insert referring to a ‘special feedback session’ on the Wednesday (29 February). As I discovered a little later, only a few of us in the CRM MVP group had this. It also included a ‘special NDA’ agreement.

I am yet to discover how it happened but, in their rush to put the inserts in the pack, Microsoft appears to have used one of their standard journalist embargo documents as a template. The upshot being while the standard MVP NDA essentially says I can say nothing until Microsoft makes information public, this one just restricted public disclosure for 30 days i.e. until the end of March.

Here is the first page of the document (I’ve blurred out the body as it mentions dates and deadlines for the project which Microsoft do not want to be made public yet.)

Essentially you signed the document either physically or online and you were good for the three-hour session on the Wednesday morning.

How Did the Session Go?

The session was attended by MVPs across various ‘Microsoft cloud products’ e.g. SQL/Windows Azure, Dynamics CRM etc. but many may not have realised the loophole yet but, once they see my article, I imagine they will all be writing a piece on their take on the session.

The plan was for key Azure staff to be present but the Azure Leap Year bug meant all were out of action. However, key staff on the project, including some who had been on site, were there to present. We heard from two speakers mainly, both from Microsoft’s research division; Dr. Charles Lippit who specialises in transmission technologies and Max Bosgrove who was one of the pioneers of the server container design used by Microsoft throughout its data centers.

So What Is The Big News?

In short, Microsoft are halfway through building two major data centers at the north and south pole and using the Earth’s magnetic field for transmission. The centers will be complete near to the time of WPC (July this year), thus the announcement timing.

Given the technical nature of the subject, Microsoft only invited MVPs with an established physics or electrical engineering background. Of the CRM MVPs, two of us qualified. Myself (my university degree was in quantum mechanics) and George Doubinski (whose background is in nuclear physics).

Where Specifically Are They Located?

While the magnetic poles do shift over time, Microsoft has located the bases as close as they practically can to the magnetic poles’ current locations. In the Antarctic, this is Vostok Station. Its proximity to the south pole and existing magnetic research equipment there made it ideal. Drilling towards the magnetic pole, and also towards the essential thermal vents, had been started by the Russian researchers with drilling stopped last year with only a few hundred meters of ice to go (http://www.jalcnews.com/?p=3204).

In the Arctic, construction has begun on Ellesmere Island. The northern facility is starting from scratch, with learning from the construction of the southern base feeding into the design on the northern base.

How Will It Work?

Microsoft’s aim is for the stations to be self-operating, given the remote location. No ice trucks in Antarctica. Fortunately, Microsoft has already worked on a similar project with Antarctica New Zealand and extended it for remote management.

The container server farms, used by Microsoft in their data centers, were built to allow for scalability. A secondary advantage is that they are easy to ship and are ‘rugged-ised’ making them perfect for remote locations. Initially Microsoft is planning four containers at each location, giving a total of 8,000 servers. As Dynamics CRM Online runs on 1,000 servers (which seems incredulous to me), this should be plenty for an initial trial. Data will be backed up to the other station for redundancy.

Obviously cooling will not be a problem and the low temperatures will allow the servers to operate very efficiently. The lack of moisture in the air and the high wind means, in the case of Vostok Station, the air is blown directly through the server cluster. The plan is to emulate a similar setup at Ellesmere. The containers are traditionally water-cooled so to make them air-cooled required some minor modification.

In terms of power, while Vostok has its own power station, this would need to be manned for refuelling which rules it out. Both locations have geothermal sources so the plan is to use steam from these to generate power, as well as harness wind power, if available. After a bit of digging on the internet, I found this research with Microsoft’s Paul Allen as one of the investors. I am guessing this may be the source for this innovation. The heat removed from the servers will be recycled to either assist with steam generation or to heat the living quarters of the researchers.

In the case of the southern station, the thermal source lies underneath Lake Vostok. The plan is to work with the researchers to continue the drilling, ensure the lake remains untouched, while accessing the heat source for power generation. In return, Microsoft is funding all research conducted on Lake Vostok by the governing body, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Ellesmere has sulphur springs which will be used in the same way, funding research and working with the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America.

How Will Transmission Work?

This is the part of the project that piques my interest the most. In short, a large magnetic coil will be placed in the ground and be used to modulate the Earth’s magnetic field in much the same way a transmitter modifies a carrier wave to send a signal.

It turns out that the power required for this is quite small as the Earth is already generating the ‘carrier signal’ and the coil is merely fluctuating it to transmit data. While Microsoft believes they could cancel the magnetic field altogether, they see no benefit in this (and given the magnetic field of the Earth protects us from solar radiation via the Van Allen belt, that is probably a good thing). They also mentioned the ‘inductive feedback’ had a remote chance of reversing the magnetic poles but this was also dismissed as extremely unlikely.

The ‘signal’ then goes everywhere where a compass works. While large iron and magnetite deposits can interfere with the signal it is believed this will only affect a small fraction of urban areas.

Microsoft is referring to this as the WWS or World Wireless System. With exclusive access to the poles and a transmission system which can reach the world with minimal overheads, Microsoft sees this as their ‘next big thing’.

When Will The Project Be Complete?

This is the bit that Microsoft is very quiet about and thus the blurring of the NDA document. Construction can only really happen in the locations in the local summer, assuming weather conditions are right. This is why the Vostok data center compound is all but finished but Ellesmere is just beginning. Power generation via the thermal vents will be likely finalised next year but Microsoft is making no commitments on this.

Conclusions

My thoughts are this is an example of everything that makes Microsoft the great organisation it is. Innovative, game changing design combined with collaboration with government bodies and research organisations to generate a positive outcome for all involved. While Microsoft’s heritage is with traditional, on premise servers, this play, much like the Kinect play in the game console market, has the potential to put them in a commanding position of both the PaaS and SaaS markets.

Microsoft have created a web site for the WWS project with a lot more details which can be found here. Have a great day