The planets in the Microsoft Solar system are starting to align to provide an event that comes along rarely in the IT Industry. The effect of this solar alignment will inevitably put a dint in the IT Universe as more than 6 major Microsoft products are scheduled to be released to market which will cumulate in a big bang in the first quarter of 2013.

Windows 8 has been launched and Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, Lync and Exchange 2013 released to manufacturing. On the hardware side we have the first release of  Surface RT (ARM based) and the Surface Pro (Intel based) will be coming soon to be followed by Windows Phone 8 early next year. 

Some organisations have gained early access to these new products and are already starting to explore the promise of a seamless interface across desktop, notebook, tablet and smartphone devices.  These new hardware devices are driving the new metro interface which also appears in the new versions of Exchange, Lync, SharePoint and Office.

These major changes are also reflected in the cloud offerings of Office 365. Some customers are currently being upgraded to these new versions of Office 365 at the time of writing.

At the official launch of Windows 8 on October 26 Microsoft showed off a galaxy of tablets, touchscreen portables and desktops. There are some rising stars that are set to change how we use our portable devices, such as tablets that transformed into notebooks, laptops that become tablets and ultrabooks with rotating screens that morphed every which way. For those who find the flip hinge too arduous there are even models with double-sided screens that can be each set with varying displays. 

Worried about losing your keyboard after you’ve removed it to transform notebook into a tablet? Never fear with the Dell XPS 12 as you can flip the monitor over 180 degrees to function as a hardy keyboard protector.

A real super nova in this big bang will be the new 7” version of the Microsoft Surface Tablet is also slated for release by 2013 to match the form factor of the Google Nexus 7 and newly launched iPad mini. The new Surface will provide an enterprise friendly version of a mobile device that can be integrated and managed by your existing IT Infrastructure.

One of the major hurdles faced by Microsoft is the inertia of their existing products. Looking at their existing install base, the challenge faced by Windows 8 its actually the remaining users of Windows XP that will represent the biggest headache, which according to this survey still represents 41% of the world’s Desktop Operating System Market. 

Microsoft is serving up an application and OS smorgasbord in 2013 with a bewildering array of courses.

However the operating system selection has actually been simplified from Windows 7, with only four items on the menu as users face a choice between Windows 8 RT (for ARM devices), Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise. 

The Enterprise version of Windows 8 also includes Windows To Go, a new feature that allows enterprises to provision a full corporate environment that will boot from a USB drive.  

The size and scale of Microsoft’s revolutionary offerings does present the risk of confusing users and developers alike, notes Frank McKenna, CEO of Australia’s KnowledgeOne, developer of the .Net EDRMS platform RecFind.

“Someone is dreaming if they think it will be seamless. Have a look at the differences (and end-user disappointment) between the Surface RT and the Surface Windows 8 Pro. You can’t run your Windows apps on the Surface RT – you can only run apps from the Windows Store – basically this means the Surface RT is useless for corporate users unless all they run is web based apps.

“How about the version of Office loaded on RT that corporate users can’t use? Who understands why MS did this? I don’t know anyone who clearly understands the difference between Office 365 and Office 2013 and all the permutations – and let’s not even try to understand the licensing and costs.

“Seamless generally means compatibility and you will not have application compatibility between the plethora of Windows devices available (e.g., phone, surface RT, Surface with Windows 8 Pro, etc.).

“We have to develop our applications for this smorgasbord of devices and versions of Windows 8 and we (like all other developers) are struggling to understand how it all works. This is the most complex and most confusing array of Microsoft products I have ever seen.

“However, we have taken the ‘easy’ path and are concentrating all of our efforts on web based solutions (i.e., our applications running in a browser). This at least protects us from the vagaries of the different versions of Windows 8 and the different Implementations and limitations across the spectrum of Windows 8 devices.

“We do have an integration module to SharePoint so updating this for SharePoint 2013 is on the schedule as is finding a way to update our RecFind 6 Button to support Office 365 and Office 2013.

When it comes to cloud storage, the enterprise user will be looking towards SharePoint 2013 (on--premise or Online) for cloud storage and collaboration whereas small business will be offered many of the same capabilities with SkyDrive Pro in tandem with the new breed of Office 365 and SharePoint Online. Consumers will turn to the regular SkyDrive, and all three can be added as Favorites in Windows Explorer.

There are features in SharePoint 2013 and Windows Server 2012 to prevent corporate and government users from transferring data to home PCs via SkyDrive.

Office 2013 will be offered in three different forms, as a traditional desktop application, as a streamed version via Office 365 or running in the browser as a Web app.

Office 365 is already available in beta for Windows 7 or the Windows 8 OS in 32-bit or 64-bit; and Windows 2008R2. It will be offered in a number of different editions for consumer, small business and enterprise use. Each edition comes with a different set of applications and products included, depending on how much you will rely on the cloud.

A survey of 500 IT managers from US-based companies with 500 employees or more found 25% are already anticipating a migration to Windows 8.

Malik Saadi, Principal Analyst at Informa estimates indicate that, by the end of 2014, more than 70% of users will be on Microsoft Windows 8 and 36% will use new hardware supporting touchscreen. 

“The unified user experience of Windows 8 across various types of device also faces a number of challenges, most notably in the mobile market where Microsoft is a new entrant. How will the software giant manage its partnership with mobile OEMs and create a single marketing message? How will it aligning its platform roadmap with reference designs and points of differentiation of the various vendors? These are not simple tasks, they will require significant investment in terms of time, money and human resources,” said Saadi.