Today at a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division announced the availability of Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for businesses of all sizes in the United States.
These subscription services offer businesses a new way to purchase, deploy and manage the industry-leading e-mail and calendaring solution, and the industry-leading solution for portals and collaboration.
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online (coming soon).
These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. Your business benefits from always up-to-date technologies that are deployed rapidly, maximizing your valuable IT resources and reducing your need for infrastructure investments.
With no upfront costs, the program provides easy access to software development tools and technologies to build solutions spanning the PC, Web and phone.
Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Microsoft BizSpark a global program designed to help accelerate the success of entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. BizSpark provides startups and entrepreneurs with fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and production licenses of server products with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.
BizSpark also provides technical support and market visibility. BizSpark is structured to take advantage of the resources and support of a global network of hundreds of organizations such as economic development agencies, university incubators, hosters and investors, including The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). These BizSpark Network Partners provide guidance, mentorship and resources to help drive startup success.
“Entrepreneurs play a vital role in driving innovation and creating the kinds of new jobs that are essential to sustainable economic growth,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “Microsoft BizSpark is an exciting way for us to help provide business startups with the development tools, advice and exposure they need. We look forward to working with organizations and development agencies around the globe to foster entrepreneurship and help new companies succeed.”
Microsoft Corp. today kicked off its second annual Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) Conference 2008 by announcing groundbreaking new technologies that will enable enterprises to bring the power of BI to information workers organization wide.
The company introduced new managed self-service analysis capabilities code-named “Project Gemini,” and self-service reporting upcoming in the next release of Microsoft SQL Server focused on BI — code-named “Kilimanjaro.” Alongside this Microsoft will also deliver advanced data warehousing functionality being developed under the project code-named “Madison.” These new tools will empower companies to extend the benefits of BI across their ranks to information workers with minimal reliance on IT to help drive smarter, quicker decision-making, free up IT staff for more valuable activities, and dramatically drive down deployment costs.
“Microsoft’s goal is to transform the way companies think of BI through familiar and intuitive business-friendly tools that help them unlock the power of BI across their organizations,” Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division told the more than 2,500 conference attendees. “If you know how to use Word and Excel, then you’ll be able to use our BI — that’s our commitment to customers.”
Microsoft has renewed their Ultimate Steal promotion. It offers students or anyone with a .EDU email address its Office Ultimate 2007 package for $59.95. The retail for this package is $680.
Microsoft will also add Microsoft Visio Professional 2007 design package, Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 and Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade beginning September 8, 2008.
Software Specifications
Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 (USD$59.95): Perpetual license, which includes the following applications:
- Access® 2007
- Accounting Express 2008 *(see Obtaining Software below)
- Excel® 2007
- InfoPath® 2007
- Groove® 2007
- OneNote® 2007
- Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager
- PowerPoint® 2007
- Publisher 2007
- Word 2007
The Technical Specialist (TS) exam, Exam 70-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring, is in development. The expected release date is August 2008.
When you pass Exam 70-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring, you complete the requirements for the following certification: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Server Virtualization, Configuration
There currently are no Microsoft Press books available for 70-652, however classroom course 6411, and E-Learning clinics 5935 and 6536 are offered.
Skills measured by Exam 70-652
Installing Hyper-V (14 percent)
- Select and configure hardware to meet Hyper-V prerequisites.
This objective may include but is not limited to: evaluate the existing environment, disk/logical unit number (LUN), memory requirements, correct CPU/BIOS, networking/Network Interface Card (NIC) - Configure Windows Server 2008 for Hyper-V.
This objective may include but is not limited to: identify requirements, deploy Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool, install on Full, install on Core - Configure Hyper-V to be highly available.
This objective may include but is not limited to: fail over clustering, disk structure (RAID, quorum, shared storage), network
Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s systems-management product will be released commercially in September according to Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer.
These remarks are in contrast to those made by Diane Prescott, product manager for System Center. She said on the team blog that Virtual Machine Manager 2008 would be released in the fourth quarter of 2008. This however contradicted what Microsoft said back in April, that VMM would ship 30-60 days after Hyper-V, which was released on June 26th.
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is Microsoft’s long-awaited answer to VMware’s systems management product. VMM is the management companion piece to Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. Not only will VMM support Hyper-V, but also hypervisor technology from VMware and Xen.
On July 1st Microsoft announced a new licensing program designed for large organizations with multiple affiliates. Called Select Plus, it is another sign that Microsoft is trying to reign in its complex licensing system.
If a company has several affiliates in different locations, Select Plus will enable your affiliates to take advantage of price-level adjustments that are based on the actual purchase volume for your entire organization.
Registration has been simplified to one page making it faster and simpler to register each affiliate. Under the plan your company can purchase software licenses at any time, easing planning and deployment as your needs change.
The Select Plus licensing program is due to start up in October 2008
Microsoft lists these as the top five reasons to choose Select Plus:
Microsoft is preparing a security update for the June 10, 2008 patch Tuesday with seven bulletins, including three rated “critical” for issues affecting Internet Explorer, DirectX and Bluetooth. In addition to the three critical fixes, there are three important and one moderate.
Critical Fixes
1. Bluetooth Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
2. Internet Explorer Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
3. DirectX Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
Important Fixes
1. WINS Bulletin - Elevation of Privilege
2. Active Directory Bulletin - Denial of Service
3. PGM Bulletin - Denial of Service
Moderate Fixes
1. Kill Bit Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
Innovation in an organization increases performance and growth through improvements. Innovation is not just about having good ideas. Innovation is a team effort where all areas of an organization contribute. Microsoft is attempting to address this with its Innovation Process Management Solution.
The Microsoft Innovation Process Management (IPM) Solution is built on the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, and the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution. It facilitates the following three aspects of innovation process management.
Ideation and Knowledge Capture
The ability to capture and share ideas easily and rapidly to promote a culture of innovation by increasing first the quantity and then the quality of ideas contributed
The capability to collaborate to solve problems, gain incremental benefit or break new ground in a product, service or process by garnering feedback, gauging interest, forming teams and further developing concepts to transform them into well-thought-out ideas
In a recent address at the Digital Lifestyle Consortium, Microsoft founder Bill Gates gave his view of the future. “I see Windows, a major new version of Windows every two to three years.” Now we can look forward to OS changes every 2-3 years?
For an IT department this would be a nightmare. For Microsoft it would be a 2-3 year injection of money as users are forced to shell out for upgrades to get the latest and greatest Microsoft OS features.
With the poor acceptance of Microsoft Vista the rumors of Windows 7 appearing as early as 2009 are running wild. Mr. Gates seems to have validated those rumors in his speech. What some may not realize is that Vista was not an upgrade of XP. It is the core of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft is not about to start all over with a new core. Windows 7 will be an upgrade to Windows Vista, not a replacement. This may be the model that Bill Gates speaks of.
