From our General Manager, Paul Rellis:

Today is a great day for Microsoft in Ireland!.

An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen T.D. officially opened Microsoft’s newest data centre in Dublin, Ireland, expanding the company’s cloud computing capabilities for business and consumers in Europe.  This represents an investment which is a mind blowing $500m USD!.  This investment solidifies Microsoft’s commitment to Europe and to Ireland,  and demonstrates the importance of data centres as a cornerstone of the company’s cloud services offerings and how Microsoft is investing today for the future of cloud computing.  

The first mega data centre built outside of the U.S. is more than 300,000 square feet and represents the next evolutionary step in building out the company’s infrastructure to meet the demand generated from Online, Live, and Cloud services.  

The Dublin Data Centre (DDC) represents a breakthrough in data centre facility design and efficiency.  It has been developed with sustainability in mind – being 50% more energy efficient than traditional data centres.  The cool winds and rain help ! After 24 years in Ireland we are still investing.   

The Cloud has a Silver Lining for Irish Customers!    The launch of this Data Centre in Dublin offers us a fantastic opportunity to bring the message of Cloud computing to our customers like never before.  Customers have options to embrace the cloud, and Partners can build businesses, through:

- Packaged applications hosted in the Cloud and managed directly by Microsoft or Partners e.g, Eircom.  These services are typically: Exchange, SharePoint and OCS/Live Meeting -  Customers are already seeing cost reductions of up to 45% across the globe with over 1m users signed up.  In Ireland, Chernobyl Children's Project International is an Irish based example of an organisation using Microsoft Online Services (email and collaboration), in order to connect their 2,000 volunteers in Ireland and around Europe.  The charity has seen dramatic time saving of more than 20 hours per person per week for office based staff and seen their communication costs plummet by using Live Meeting instead of traditional conference calls.

- Creating and running their own applications in the Cloud using our Windows Azure Platform - We already have customers in Ireland who are embracing Software + Services solutions.   In recent weeks we have worked with Aer Lingus to help support its objective of improving the customer booking experience while also supporting the business objective of encouraging them to look at more offers from the airline.   We helped them to develop new booking models for customers, utilising a pay as you go model where costs are directly related to the size and scale of the solution - they are now in a position where they can scale for success without having to worry about forecasting or additional investment. No additional hardware provisioning was required and bandwidth provision is no longer a concern as they now have global reach.   In addition, Eirgrid is already using the shared computing resources provided by Microsoft’s Data Centres, and as a result believe all electricity users will benefit from increased security and reliability of supply.

We are also very excited to be working with a group of BizSpark companies many of whom are early adopters and are developing and hosting services in the cloud.  These are the innovators and entrepreneurs who will be at the heart of Ireland’s future economic success and part of the Smart Economy.  In addition to the launch, we are also hosting 30 of our BizSpark companies at an exciting event in the Data Centre, and announcing to them an Azure Academy which we will be running in October in conjunction with the NDRA.   This will be a very exciting event as this group are the optimistic and focused groups we at Microsoft have seen in recent times.

There has been a great deal of work going on in the background to improve the experience on the NI Innovative Teachers Network site and it’s all starting to pay off. Check out the new Welcome Page:

Better, cleaner graphics thanks to my colleagues in the UK (Gordon, Kristen, Stuart and Ray). The hard work of getting the site upgraded has fallen to Robin Smallbone, and I couldn’t be happier. The navigation is much quicker and the upload and download speeds should also be greatly improved.

Make sure you revisit  or register if you’re not already and remember- Northern Ireland is in the country list. That’s got to be a 1st !!!

While you’re there, take some time and join one of my communities (or start your own) :

• Global Climate Mystery
• Computing and Developer Skills

You can also access all of the Tips and Demos and keep up to date with this year’s Innovative Educators Forum Competition.

Remember- you have to register in order to see all of the links 

Came across the latest version of the Did You Know presentation and thought I’d share it with you because I’m seeing the change towards understanding the impact and value of Social Networking. It has an American focus but the message translates to whatever country you live in. ENJOY!

The Cop15 game in Climate Mystery is up and running and students from across Western Europe are already collaborating. Give it a try and let me know how you’re getting on. I’ll be logging on most days and I hope to see some activity from Northern Ireland schools

Tomorrow sees the launch of Climate Mystery. You’re probably asking yourself, “what is Climate Mystery”?

It’s a product developed by the creative company Congin and has been funded by Microsoft and the Discovery network. From the 14^th September the climate mystery website will become the home of an interactive drama in which participants will virtually 'live' in an exciting story in which they will work to prevent environmental disaster.

Over the course of the 16 episodes that will be released periodically in the build up to the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. Participants will engage with constantly changing video, photographs, games, interactive chat and blogs all of which will ensure a health debate around climate issues.

This is a great opportunity for your students to learn about relevant environmental issues in a fun and motivational way, and we hope that the teacher materials will make participating in The Climate Mystery even easier for you and your students.

You can register on the Climate Mystery website and you can get access to all materials and content on the Northern Ireland Innovative Teachers Network (ITN NI) website. All materials are in the Global Climate Mystery Community. you must be registered on the ITN NI site.

Any schools wishing to participate should contact me at i-tomj@microsoft.com. There is not strict requirement to participate in all 16 weeks. You can pop in and out as you see fit. Each of the 16 episodes will have supporting materials to let you know what is covered in that episode.

Should you choose to fully participate, I will be available to assist with any questions  you may have. The programme finishes to coincide with the UN Climate Change conference, held in Copenhagen, from December 7th to December 18th, 2009.

For those schools wishing to familiarise yourselves with the programme and consider participating in the New Year, i will be holding a workshop in late November/early December if informed this would be of interest to you.

You can also join the Worldwide Innovative Teachers website by registering and joining their Global Climate Mystery Community.

For those Math Teachers out there that want a simple tool for creating sets of math problems for their students, our friends at Microsoft Education Labs may have the answer for you. They’ve created the new Math Worksheet Generator. In their words:

“Do you spend a lot of time searching for worksheets with practice problems to give your students? Now you can easily create your own in just a few seconds with the Math Worksheet Generator. This is a tool that generates multiple math problems based on a sample, and then creates a worksheet that you can distribute. By analyzing the math problem you provide, or one of the built-in samples, the generator determines the structure of the expression and provides similar problems. We tack on an answer sheet too.
The Math Worksheet Generator works best with Word 2007. If you have that, then the tool creates a Word document and the expressions are editable. If you have an older version of Word, we still create a document, but the expressions are small images that aren't editable. (This is because Word 2007 and higher has more built-in support for inserting Math equations.) If you don't have Word at all, the tool will create HTML versions of the worksheet and answer sheet. If you have a Mac, we didn't forget you, so stay tuned - we're working on a web version that should come out later this year.
The tool supports everything from basic arithmetic through algebra. We tried to get the most useful question types supported, and we'd love to hear from you about what we got right and what we need to work on. It's built on top of the foundation from Microsoft Math, so we had a lot to start with. Use the Discussion forums or the Feedback link below to let us know what you think.”

Make sure you take a minute to watch the video walkthrough of how it works