From time to time a storm sweeps across the IT landscape and transforms the landscape. We've seen this before with the PC, the Windows operating system, the internet, and object oriented programming to name a few.  There have been a lot of other technologies of course in the mix, but the latest technology that has this kind of authority is the movement of on premise services to the cloud.

The three few years, I've been working in Partner Technical Readiness for Business Productivity Online Suite and it's been a wild ride watching from the inside as Microsoft and our partners come to terms with the new opportunities and challenges presented by cloud services.

While Microsoft has been learning the ropes along with the rest of the industry, Microsoft started this rope course a while back with online services like Live Meeting and Hotmail. And don't forget there are a million or more at any time using Xbox Live!  One of the busiest services on the planet - Windows Update runs reliably day in and day out worldwide keeping system up to date and downloading more content than most any free public service. Since these services debuted, many other services have since arrived including BPOS (SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Communications Online, and Live Meeting Online), Azure, SQL Azure, Dynamic CRM Online, Exchange Hosted Services. Recently, Microsoft System Center Online Desktop Manager announced a beta as well (http://www.microsoft.com/online/system-center.mspx).

I work on the BPOS product team and the momentum we're seeing is truly extraordinary And while I can't say much about it, I can say that with the next wave or services that are coming online are going to bring an unprecedented set of services to the market. Yeah, I know I'm a a bit over the top on the enthusiasm scale, but I come about it honestly as I believe that technology is what's going to create new wave of business momentum in the world that will result in even greater productivity,  improved  ROI, and predictable costs.

As a hard core IT Pro I know there are lot of tech guys out there worried that the cloud is going to move their jobs out of the enterprise into the data center. And for some that will be true, but for others, the challenges simply move from managing mailboxes and resetting password to doing truly productive work. A lot of shops have upgrade plans for applications, networking infrastructure, optimizations, and even security work that have languished under the burden of routine system administration. Once you outsource those tasks to Microsoft, your expertise can be put to work implementing changes that can have much more dramatic impacts on your organizations efficiency.

Toward that end, a lot of IT Pros need to get up to speed about what BPOS is and how it differs from the on premise version Exchange and Sharepoint. While they share the same name and many of the same core features, it would be a mistake for a SharePoint administrator to assume since they know SharePoint on premise, they know SharePoint online.

Where to start? Here are some good resources that will get you going:

• Service descriptions at http://microsoft.com/online. These are really great references that are kept up to date. You should be sure to review these periodically.

                               o    Exchange Online

                               o    SharePoint Online

                               o    Office Communications Online

• Microsoft Online Services Team Blog - You MUST subscribe to this blog for the latest announcements, service updates, webcasts etc. For example, we recently posted new details on updated Blackberry services This is the fastest way to stay to up to date.
• Infrastructure Planning Guides for Microsoft Online Services - Great guides for walking you through deployment planning
• Webinars

        • And of course, for Partners: https://www.quickstartserviceonline.com which is produced by my team.

There's a lot more to come - so stay tuned!