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Hitachi Consulting Acquires UK IT Consulting Firm, Edenbrook Ltd.
LONDON - April 8, 2009 - Hitachi Consulting, the global business and IT consulting company of Hitachi Ltd., today announced that it has acquired Edenbrook Ltd., a United Kingdom-based IT consulting firm which specialises in delivering Microsoft and Oracle solutions.
The consolidation of the Microsoft partner community conntinues to happen in the UK.
http://www.hitachiconsulting.com/UK2/newsDetails.cfm?EID=302
Congratulations to all involved. I'm sure you'll make a great team.
The Partner Readiness Development and Online Technical Teams are delighted to announce the launch of the next generation UK Training & Events page on the Partner Portal.
Responding to feedback from partners, the page has been developed to include the following new benefits and features:
1. No login required: Allows Partners to browse training without having to sign into the Partner Learning Centre
2. New Layout: New intuitive page layout with separate tabs to search for Live (classroom and Live Meeting), Recorded and Academy training
3. Integrated into the Partner Portal page layout providing a seamless experience for Partners
4. All PLC/Academy/MSDN/TechNet courses visible in one place
5. MSDN & TechNet: A separate tab to expose courses on TechNet (for IT professionals and Evangelists) and MSDN (for developers) which is currently not showing results as this is in planning phase
6. Expanded Search and Save capability: Allowing partners to select their search based on Product, Role and Level which is then automatically saved for future searches.
7. RSS component (in the right-hand zone): Allowing major courses to be highlighted to partners visiting the page
Take a look HERE
copied from http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/14/microsoft-sharepoint-14-is-now-microsoft-sharepoint-2010.aspx
You have probably seen the news announcement today where we announced the public beta for the new Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. As part of that announcement, we also talked about some of the names for the “14” wave of products including Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. I wanted to answer some questions that I think will inevitably pop to the top of your mind:
What happened to the Office piece of the name? We love MOSS. . . .
The first thing you’ll notice is that the MOSS acronym goes away with the new name since Office is no longer in the SharePoint official name. No one should worry that SharePoint doesn’t work great with Office 2010 since we removed Office from the name, just like people didn’t worry whether SharePoint was a great portal product when we removed Portal from the 2007 name.
The primary reason why we took Office out of the name - lots of folks associate the name Office with the Office client. We wanted to take the opportunity to reestablish the Office name and brand to be synonymous with the client suite. I say “Give the people what they Want” so everyone should immediately think of Microsoft Office = Office apps.
Don’t try to acronym Microsoft SharePoint Server to MSS since MSS is already taken by Microsoft Search Server. Just remember, SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint.
What about Windows SharePoint Services?
When you read through the announcement, you may be wondering what happened to Windows SharePoint Services. While we didn’t announcement anything new for WSS, and I want to assure you that we’re definitely working on a new v4 version of the product. It’s too early to drill into any of the details but WSS is getting a lot of new features and will be a great release. We’ll talk more about WSS at a later date.
So, what was announced?
Here are my key takeaways from the interview with Chris Capossela:
• Exchange 2010 will lead the way for the 2010 (previously referred by its codename “14”) wave of technologies and it will be available in the second half of 2009. You can download a beta today.
• Using Office Web applications, customers will be able to create, edit and collaborate on Office documents through a browser.
• IT professionals will be able to choose to either deploy and manage on-premises or hosted as a service.
• For developers, we are working on Open APIs, deep support for industry standards and developer tool support with Visual Studio 2010.
You can read the entire interview here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
Amazing, beautiful, spell-binding, inspirational, a tearjerker and it truly promotes hope. This is a worldwide phenomena which we need right now in this troubled, shallow, strife torn world. Her hope, tenacity, spirit and heart are exemplary to all of us. A few people will never get this, the haters, it is their loss. This is a cultural/social paradigm shift across the globe. Over 31,000,000 hits and still rising.
Thank you Susan.
copied from http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/
Office Service Pack team announced Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 would be available on April 28th. It provides many fixes and performance improvements, as well as some new features. Also with the new service pack, Internet Explorer 8 will be added into browser support matrix as level one, and Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 as level two. We recommend every customer to start planning their patch window to apply this service pack. Please look out for more details on April 28th.
Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies on TechNet, www.microsoft.com/sharepoint, Office Sustained Engineering blog and SharePoint Team Blog will be updated once the downloads are available on download center. Please check these resource when they go live for download links and installation guides.
Call to Action
Since Service Pack 2 improves performance, stability and availability for SharePoint server farm, and it is also a requirement to upgrade to SharePoint 2010, we encourage everyone to talk with their customers to start planning to apply Service Pack 2 on their server farm.
KB Article Links
Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953338Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953334
Download Links
Please check KB articles, Office Sustained Engineering blog and SharePoint Team Blog for download links when they go live.
Installation Steps
Please check SharePoint Team Blog and Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies when the articles go live.
Related Resources
About Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Product and Technologies (marketing doc, talks about benefit)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148551
Service Pack 2 Overview (TechNet article links, very useful)http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148374
Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologieshttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx
The full list of changes in SP2 (Excel 2007 format)Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 Changes2007 Office Servers SP2 Changes
Customers can also go to this KB article for a full list of downloads for Office System 2007 SP2 (client & server).http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170
Quick Q&A
Q: Why is the new STSADM upgrade checker operation important for my customers?
A: The upgrade checker is a stsadm operation that scans server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to SharePoint 2010. It does so by identifying issues that could present obstacles to the upgrade process. It provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment, together with information on how to resolve any issues that the tool discovers. It also check operating system requirement for Windows Server 2008 and 64bit.
Q: Which browser will be added into support for SP2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0?
A: Internet Explorer 8 will be added into level 1 browser support, and Firefox 2.0/3.0 will be added into level 2 browser support.
Q: Which operating system will be added into support?
A: Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be supported on their release.
Q: Can customer skip other updates and directly apply SP2 in their server farm?
A: Yes. SP2 includes SP1 and Infrastructure updates.
Q: Will there be a MOSS slipstream build with SP2?
A: There’s no plan for official MOSS slipstream build with SP2. An official slipstream guide will be provided so customers can create their own slipstream build based on their patch needs. WSS with SP2 slipstream builds are provided on download center.
Q: Are we announcing the full system requirement for SharePoint Server 2010 this time?
A: No. The information you can give to the customer now is Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit.