I’ve just stepped out from the first Mix Keynote I’ve attended as a consultant rather than a Microsoftie.  There was no real shocker in there, but it was a solid keynote and I am enthused by a couple of exciting announcements

Ray Ozzie began by saying he sees Mix08 as one of several milestones on a path culminating at the PDC event in October. The evolution he sees happening around the web are organized around 3 core principles:

1. (impact to the individual:) Think of web as hub (social)
- linking, sharing, ranking, tagging will become as familiar as file, edit, view

2. (impact to the enterprise:) Power of choice as enterprise moves to embrace the cloud
- enteprrise based software, partner-hosted services, and services in the cloud
- distributed, federated services between enterprise data center and the cloud

3. “Small pieces, loosely joined”

Connected Devices
– “Personal Device Mesh”
- unified device management where devices can report in for management, health, location
- an app plat cognisent of all your devices
- software+service offering

Connected Entertainment
– license your media once, and enjoy the media anywhere you want

Connected Productivity
– Office, Office Mobile, Office Live
- Office Live Workspace – wide public beta yesterday

Connected Business
– “inevitable shift toward utility computing in the Enterprise”
- Exchange Online, Office Communications Online, Office Commnications Server, SQL Server Data Services

Connected Development
– .NET offerings

More to come over a couple of posts.