On behalf of the SBS team, I am extremely pleased to announce that Windows Small Business Server 2008 software has been finalized! Today both SBS Standard and Premium are being released to manufacturing, which means we begin the process of finalizing international versions, creating media, building packaging, delivering the product to distribution channels and handing it off to our OEM partners, so it will be widely available by our November 12 launch. (More information about launch will come in the future.)
As you can imagine, this is an exciting day for me and the rest of the team. Development of SBS 2008 has been a big effort here at Microsoft and the software has undergone extensive testing within Microsoft, by our partners, private tech beta participants and our Technology Adoption Program members. We are proud to say we have truly heard and incorporated input from our partners and customers throughout product planning and development. As a result, we feel very confident that this new release builds on the success of SBS 2003 R2 and makes the power of enterprise IT accessible and affordable for small business, helping them increase productivity and grow. And, just as important, SBS 2008 provides solution providers with a great platform to meet the needs of their small business clients.
Source- Technet Blog
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Desktops v1.0: This new utility enables you to create up to four virtual desktops and to use a tray interface or hotkeys to preview what’s on each desktop and easily switch between them.
Autoruns v9.33: This Autoruns update adds command-line options for automatically scanning and exporting scan results, as well as a number of bug fixes.
Source- Sysinternals blog
Yesterday a new product category for Windows 7 Client was published to Windows Update and was made available to WSUS (another one for Windows 7 Server should be appearing soon as well). As with all of our other new product categories, this is for Microsoft teams who are publishing Windows 7 beta drivers/updates in the near future. In the future, we’ll try to let you know about new categories ahead of time.
Source- Technet Blog
Microsoft is opening up the MSDN, TechNet, and Expression sites to the community, so that technical professionals can better connect with each other, share knowledge, and succeed. Tagging - and especially social bookmarking - are essential ingredients for making this happen.
Back in May, just before TechEd North America, we released a preview version of our new social bookmarking app for MSDN, for TechNet, and for Expression. Since then, thousands of technical professionals from around the world have begun using it to save their web favorites online, share them with others, see what other technical pros are favoriting, and connect with others.
We also got a lot of great feedback on the app itself (thank you!) and I’m happy to say that in early September, we plan on releasing a full version of the app - v 1.0. Here are some new things to look for:
- Subscribe to Tags or People: Find a tag you want to follow? Or a fellow bookmarker that bookmarks really good stuff? With the new app, it will be easy to get an RSS subscription for that tag or person (as in, click the orange button).
- Browse & Find Users: Search or browse to find people by their display name (e.g., mine is "johmar") and other criteria.
- Import Tools: Recognizing that a lot of people already have favorites saved in their browsers or in other social bookmarking sites, the new app will provide a tool for importing your favorites from Microsoft Internet Explorer and from Delicious.
- Bookmarking Widget: If you have your own blog or other website, our new bookmarking widget will make it easy for people to bookmark your pages directly to their social bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet, or Expression. You’ll get traffic from Microsoft when your bookmarked page is published in "social feeds" on our global sites.
- Availability in 12 Languages: With the September release, the social bookmarking application will be available in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
Source- Technet Blog
If you’re running Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in a virtualized environment or if you’re planning on doing so in the future, you’ll want to be aware of this, and since this involves changes to our support policy I wanted to share it with all of you here. My own personal one line summary would be that if you’re running one of the applications mentioned in KB957006 then you’ll get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that you would get in non-virtual environments, plus we’ve made licensing easier to accommodate these scenarios.
Here is a link to the announcement that went out this morning:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080819/aqtu037.html?.v=60
There are a few Knowledge Base articles mentioned but the big ones are below:
897615 - Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
957006 - Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments
Source- Technet Blog
While Microsoft has made a few public and well-calculated moves to prepare the way for Windows 7, the company has said almost nothing (at least intentionally) about Office 14.
On August 15, however, there was mention of an Office 14 alpha release on one of the Microsoft blogs that I read skim regularly. That post, about PerformancePoint Server, mentioned the Office 14 (O14) alpha TAP (Technical Adoption Program) release. The monitoring and analytics component of PerformancePoint Server (Microsoft’s business-scorecarding server) will be part of the O14 TAP, the posting said. And the alpha process for that O14 TAP is slated for November/December 2008. From the post (which since I blogged this has disappeared):
“The Alpha process will begin in the November/December timeframe this year. When you submit, please identify as a PPS M&A candidate. The deadline for submissions is August 28th.”
Microsoft opened up its Office 14 TAP nomination program in mid-May 2008.
Source: blogs.zdnet.com
Microsoft today rolled out the highest level of its enterprise support programs to date, adding a new offering called "Microsoft Services Premier Ultimate." The offering builds upon the company’s existing Premier services program.
Ultimate has much the same support elements as the Premier program, which is described here (PDF). One difference is that Ultimate provides "pre-agreed proactive services — with unlimited problem resolution support" for a fixed price, according to a press release issued by Microsoft.
However, the so-called unlimited problem support is not without a hitch. Microsoft’s announcement states that it "may be subject to restrictions," without elaborating. The Ultimate support package contains basic features in Premier, including "proactive IT health assessments" plus account management — all on a 24-hours, seven-days-a-week basis.
In general, Microsoft’s support programs have four components to them, according to Paul DeGroot, senior analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft. One of them pertains to break-fix issues. Another is proactive advisory support, where nothing is necessarily broken but you want it to work better. A third is called account management in which a person is on the case and can escalate the problem. The last component is do-it-yourself assistance, including Web support through TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network. Premier programs mix these components, depending on customer need, he added.
Source: ENT News
With Windows Server 2008 being released only 6 months ago, i’m sure it’s natural for people to wonder “what’s next?” As I have been combing through various blogs this weekend, I found it exciting to see so much interest and speculation over the next version of Windows Server. While I’m bound by company NDA to not talk about features or functionality for the next version yet, I would like to take a moment to clear up a little confusion about the name and cadence of the next version of Windows Server.
Throughout the launch of Windows Server 2008 we said we would be keeping with a 2/4 year major/minor release cadence with the next version of Windows Server. So it is appropriate that the name of the next version reflect that - Windows Server 2008 R2. (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/roadmap.aspx)
That release cadence is indeed still the plan for the Server team. I believe a lot of the fuel for speculation comes from the internal development codename: "Windows Server ‘7′ or Windows ‘7′ Server" and what we will be calling it publically: "Windows Server 2008 R2."
It is important to note that Windows Vista shipped a year earlier than Windows Server 2008, so the client version of Windows 7 will have an extra year of development. The client in fact will be a major release, but, as we’ve said before, compatibility with previous versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is a design goal.”
Source- Technet Blog
Ankur Mittal | August 22, 2008
