Welcome to another round of featured news items from around the web. Each week, we handpick articles for our community related to cloud and enterprise technology. We welcome your suggestions for next week’s round-up— share your links in the comments section or tweet a link to us at @msproductivity.

Microsoft Introduces Solutions to Help Partners Build New Business With Cloud Computing 

"Cloud computing is as big a transformation as we have ever seen and, together with our partners, Microsoft will help customers through the shift," said Satya Nadella, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "By betting on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to cloud computing, partners can embrace this transformation and build strong and vibrant practices that will advance how business gets done."

Office 365: What a Rush

As discussed today during Steve Ballmer’s keynote at the conference, the American Red Cross will move 66,000 people to Office 365 email this year, across its 620 U.S. chapters. Email is a big deal to the American Red Cross; it needs to be reliable, secure, and fast, to help the organization support disaster response, supply nearly half the nation’s blood supply, teach lifesaving skills, provide international humanitarian aid, and support military members and their families.

What CVP Joe Matz Describe How Volume Licensing Enables Customers and Partners to Become Cloud Ready

Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Worldwide Licensing and Pricing Group, Joe Matz, sat down recently to share Microsoft'sperspective for how Volume Licensing is enabling customers and partners to become cloud ready. Recent changes to the Enterprise Agreement and Software Assurance provide the flexibility, manageability and cost-effectiveness to create the right licensing solution to address the breadth of customer scenarios: on-premises, virtualized, private or public cloud.

WPC 2011 Thoughts

This past week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference I had the opportunity to hear Sir Richard Branson as the guest keynote speaker.  He shared some of his success and wisdom with the audience – and I found it to be very interesting and motivating.  One of the key statements he made involved his approach to life: “Screw it, let’s do it”.  He is all about taking risk (calculated and controlled) but taking action.  Far too often we sit back thinking about ideas rather than getting after it and making things happen.

Microsoft Commits Multibillion-Dollar Partner Investments

“Winning together with our partners today, and long into the future, means delivering incredible world-class technologies to meet customer needs, as well as the right partner incentives, tools and training, which will ultimately drive business growth for them,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, speaking before more than 15,000 attendees from around the globe at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference. “We are bringing our partners to the cloud with us — they can use the tools and skills they have now to take their clients to the cloud.”