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Written by: Kayvaan Ghassemieh
Today, we kick off our Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC. Among the many cool announcements happening this week, we are excited to be sharing more information about some amazing new capabilities coming to BPOS in the near future. We want to make sure that you, our customers, have this information early enough to get ready and make the most of the new stuff that’s coming.
Some of the new capabilities you’ll see in this next update include unified messaging and voice mail with Exchange, enterprise social networking with SharePoint, and Office Web Apps as well as platform-level capabilities such as single sign-on (the #1 most-requested feature!), identity federation, Powershell scripting and much much more. The list below includes some of the features and capabilities that are coming to BPOS. We’ll have more detail on these in the coming months.
With the launch of Exchange, SharePoint and Office 2010 earlier this year, we began the work to update BPOS with the new capabilities that these products deliver. We started with our largest customers in dedicated cloud environments, and many of them are now fully deployed on the 2010 wave of products. Now, we are beginning the work to update the broad base of BPOS customers.
In this next update, we are making huge strides bringing decades of on-premises innovation to the cloud, and we get very close to parity with our server solutions. We expect a preview of these capabilities to be available later this year, with most customers deploying over the course of the following year and beyond, if they so choose.
I don’t have details to share on how the new capabilities will be packaged and priced, but I do know we’ll continue to offer the best bang for your cloud buck.
Customers should take the following steps to start preparing for the next major service update:
1. Make sure you receive the latest communications!
2. Determine if you need to upgrade any client software
3. Decide how you want to leverage new identity and sign-on options.
For now, let me know if you have any questions in the blog comments. Thanks for your business, and I hope you are as excited as I am about the awesome things coming to the next generation of BPOS!
Best, Kayvaan
* Additional features will be available based on Communications Server “14” as part of ongoing service updates.
* Windows XP Home and Windows Media Center edition are supported but will not support federated identity. ** Office client is not required for customers who choose browser-only access. We are currently investigating Office 2003 support and will publish a list of supported capabilities in the future. Office Communicator ‘14’ will be generally available later this year. *** OWA Light is designed to optimize the OWA experience for slower connections and alternative Web browsers. For more information about the differences between OWA Premium and OWA Light, see TechNet: Client Features in Outlook Web Access.
* Windows XP Home and Windows Media Center edition are supported but will not support federated identity.
** Office client is not required for customers who choose browser-only access. We are currently investigating Office 2003 support and will publish a list of supported capabilities in the future. Office Communicator ‘14’ will be generally available later this year.
*** OWA Light is designed to optimize the OWA experience for slower connections and alternative Web browsers. For more information about the differences between OWA Premium and OWA Light, see TechNet: Client Features in Outlook Web Access.
Mac Messenger 9? Version 8 isn't out yet, or have I missed something? :)
Do we have to expect all the new capabilities in the next release? Is this new update scheduled for october 2010?
I'm keeping my eyes on those Office Web Apps and of course will be testing out the OWA real soon!
IMAP? Is it standard yet? PLEASE?
We have been anxiously awaiting this announcement and are very excited to see the inclusion of VM/UM capabilities to BPOS. We've been using Ex07 UM with our Cisco phone system and have always figured we would be locked into having an on-premise Exchange server. We are currently not MS Online customers, but would be very interested in getting involved in the first wave of the new updates. Who would I need to contact for this?
Would be great to see the schedule for release of these features. Looking forward to the updates!
This is all very, very exciting! Especially the Voice Mail and Unified messaging. However, I have been under the impression (and have been telling my users) that a major update was coming by the end of the year. In this post, it says "We expect a preview of these capabilities to be available later this year, with most customers deploying over the course of the following year and beyond," that doesn't sound very promising - did this stuff get pushed back?
What are the requirements for ADFS? Is Server 2003 R2 supported? Is there a requirements that we have Active Directory running on Server 2008? All servers running native mode or just one servier wtihin the domain? This is another important long-term planning step that we can get started on now.
Exchange Online enhancements are greate !!
but, please Office Web App enhancement for safari on iPad.
I hope use Office Web App full features from iPad when out side the my office.
@Michael Pitt - Thanks for you comment. You are correct that neither Mac Messenger 8 or 9 are out yet. They will be coming out. I am working on getting more information on that and will comment back on here shortly.
@Cristian Vallarino - yes, these are all capabilities coming in the next major service update. The next major service update will preview in the Fall.
@Richard - Yes - plan is to support IMAP connectivity with Exchange Online in the next major service update. Just to be clear, it will NOT be supported broadly UNTIL then.
@Jason, @Jake and others asking about timing. At this point, all we can comment on is that the preview will be available later this year (fall timeframe). Stay tuned for more information. :)
@Dean - requirement is ADFS 2.0. More info here: technet.microsoft.com/.../adfs2(WS.10).aspx
Your ADFS 2.0 server role will require WS2008. But I don't think the rest of your AD has to be on WS2008.
We'll have lots more info on planning for federated identity with Microsoft Online Services later. Stay tuned ( I know, I've been saying that a lot :)
@SHIMSOFT - thanks for the feedback!
Any plan on integrating Project Server to the Online lineup?
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