Nitinsha - Sharepoint , Cloud & Microsoft

How to Learn Microsoft Office 365

2012-09-29T18:39:00Z

Knowledge Required for Office 365 : Deoployments / Administration

Following is the list of topics with which you should be faniliar and have some working knowldege on some of the products mentioned in each line i..e. AD, ADFS, Exchange server ( latest version)

, Lync , DNS , Sharepoint latest version, Powershell 2.0, Office latest version, Intenet technologies / browsers , bandwith usage /optimization, Certificates , Firewalll technologies /proxies and many more related ones . Besides you should be familiar with Office 365 plans , offerings amd FAQs.

This is lots of stuff for anybody .But you must be familiar with these things in relation to office 365 atleast .

In my upcoming posts , i shall provide resources and discussions on how we can learn these mentioned topics in relation to office 365.

Knowledge and proficiency in the following Microsoft server technologies:

Active Directory Domain Services
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) 2.0
Microsoft Exchange 2010/2007/2003/2000 or 5.5
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Or Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Office SharePoint Server 2007
DNS
Windows PowerShell

Knowledge and proficiency in the following Microsoft client technologies:

Microsoft Office 2010/2007
Microsoft Internet Explorer and other Internet browser technologies
Windows Update/Microsoft Update
Windows Phone and mobility

Knowledge of the customer network topology:

Active Directory sites, trusts, and topology
Wide area connectivity: on-premise networks and equipment
Wide area connectivity: internet bandwidth and latency
Firewall technologies

Additional areas of knowledge:

SSL Certificates
Lotus Notes Domino
Novell GroupWise
POP/IMAP/SMTP based systems
Archival systems
Email encryption
Project Management

Color Code your Sharepoint 2013 Calendar Items based on Category or any column values

2012-08-16T21:57:59Z

I referred to following blog which is for sharepoint 2010

http://davidlozzi.com/2012/01/26/color-code-your-sharepoint-calendar/

its great help and it just works the same way in sharepoint 2013 on the cloud or on premises .

Amazing feature of calendar overlays .

Thanks to David Lozzi

Sharepoint 2013 IT pro training Videos with demos are here

2012-08-07T23:18:20Z

SharePoint 2013 training for IT pros

Find IT pro-focused how-to training and walkthrough videos with this interactive course about SharePoint 2013 including changes and new features for search, social, plus deployment and performance/scalability.

Downloadable links for the presentations (.pptx) for each module are available later on this page. You can also download all presentations.

Important: These videos are based on an earlier preview version of SharePoint 2013 and Project Server 2013 so you might notice a few discrepancies

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/fp123606

sharepopint 2013

2012-07-21T00:37:00Z

Similar Arch. as 2010

New platforms and capabilities:

Shredded storage : Minimize actuila file size. Send only those changes which users are making and not complete doument to the server

SQL 2012 as DB server

App fabric caching -store informatio in farm level cache over all servers

request mgmt : to redirect request to sharepoint server to diiferent servers for load sharing or specifc servers with specific workloads

GUI modification options are enhanced and made easy :

Information sharing made easy and quick : more easily share sites ..

SA Arachitecture has reamined same and we take advanatage of alreday solid architecture

added few new SAs

Once change is that Office webappas is nota SA now its a separate product and installed on separate server irrespective of sharepoint i.e. can be used by Documents in Exchange 15 , filesystem or Lync 15. Sharepoint is not a required component for office web apps.

Webanalytics is also now noa SA bu has been made part of serach itself and can now better understand teh users queries made ofr ceratin keywords and of rspecific criteria , thsu analytics become more precise.

Lots of improvement on ECM perspective

Now we can ahve site l;evel retention policies to track whch site are acreated , how they are cleaned and track when they are deleted and what workflows are executed once they are delted etc and also the retention policies can be imposed on mailboxes axssociated with site.Thus can arcahive the site at a arcahival location.

Also discivery cases and hold s acan be crarted not only for site but for anything at obne single place.

We can export information from files sytem, , exchange or even sharepoint for legal holds or otherwise for information purpose.

Exchange 15 and shjarepoint 15 are tighly integrated .

Tere are some tjing called theme folders and which stores documents opr emails and can be used either with sharepoint or owa or outlook to browse this info.

On WCM perspective , lots of improvements i.e. you can use any tool for workflow or designining site which can understand HTML . as sharepoint pages uses HTML rendering approach . designer need not underatnd Sharepoint to modify theier site , as its supports hTML rendering and these designers can use html templates to manipulate these site .they can alos iuse any HTMl i.e HTML 5 . Anoter advantage is taht sharepoint pages for rendering webparts are not yusing table tags but using >Div> s for renndering web parts which make it easy for HTMl rendering.

variation shandling : support for content translation. Individual label owners can see changes on master site and message translation can take plae in sharepoint . Translation happens in cloud based servive=ce nd integrated into sharoiint sites

=================

wait fo more info in next post

Sharepoint 2013 - IT Pro Training Videos

2012-07-20T23:53:03Z

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/fp123606.aspx

Sharepoint 2013 - IT Pro Training Videos

Microsoft Surface is coming ..............

2012-06-20T19:52:59Z

Please follow the link : www.surface.com

Office 365 Bandwidth Requirements

2011-08-20T21:43:58Z

There are many variables to consider when estimating network traffic. Some of these variables are:

 The Office 365 service offerings that your company has subscribed to.

 The number of client computers in use at one time.

 The type of task each client computer is performing.

 The performance of your Internet browser software.

 The capacity of the network connections and network segments associated with each client computer.

 Your company‘s network topology and the capacity of the various pieces of network hardware.

For helpful information to estimate the network bandwidth your organization will require when using Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, see the TechNet article Company Network Requirements. For information regarding bandwidth requirements for Lync Server 2010 conferencing, review the TechNet article Defining Your Requirements for Conferencing.

Look for BPOS Bandwidth Calculator

http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/3dea7174-a521-4442-a7c5-5d540e09b20d.htm

Office 365 Services Cost estimator

2011-08-20T20:02:42Z

http://www.microsoft.com/business/office365tools/estimator/cost-estimator.aspx

FISMA for BPOS

2011-08-20T18:29:35Z

FISMA was passed in 2002 and created a process for federal agencies to certify and accredit the security of information management systems. FISMA certification and accreditation indicates that a federal agency has approved a particular solution for its use in line with the level of security established by that agency.

The certification and accreditation has resulted in an official “Authorization to Operate” (ATO) issued on April 19 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services-Federal, which includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communications Online. It follows a similar authorization issued by the USDA in November for the Microsoft data centers that will deliver these services to the USDA.

For Office 365 Security and Compliance certifications refer to following links:

Security, Audits, and Certifications

http://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Security_Audit.htm

Standard Response to Request for Information – Security and Privacy

This White Paper describes how Office 365 fulfills the security, compliance and risk management requirements as defined by the Cloud Security Alliance, Cloud Control Matrix.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26647

Certifications general Description

· EU Safe Harbor

The European Union, through the EU Data Protection Directive, has stricter privacy rules than the U.S. and most other countries. To enforce these rules, the EU prohibits personal data from crossing borders into other countries except in circumstances where the transfer has been legitimated by a recognized mechanism, such as Safe Harbor certification.

To allow for the continual flow of information required by international business, the European Commission reached agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, whereby U.S. organizations can self-certify as complying with the “Safe Harbor” principles that track loosely to the requirements of the Directive.

· ISO27001

The Microsoft Online Services Information Security Policy aligns with International Organization for Standards ISO 27002 augmented with requirements specific to online services. An organization may obtain an ISO 27001 certification on its Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), which is typically based on the ISO 27002 Information Security Standards. ISO has been the foundation of the BPOS Services and its supporting infrastructure since 2009 and has been certified by the British Standards Institute (BSI).

· FERPA

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provides privacy assurances for students of educational institutions that receive federal funding.

· GLBA

GLBA stands for Gramm Leach Bliley Act, and sets minimum security and privacy requirements for financial institutions in the United States. There is no such thing as a software or service that is “GLBA compliant”, because GLBA compliance also requires procedures and policies. Some software companies – particularly small ones – will state they are themselves “GLBA compliant”, but what they presumably mean is they are able to be used by a company that is subject to GLBA regulation. There are two principal regulations under the GLB Act that affect Microsoft cloud services: the Financial Privacy Rule - which governs the collection and disclosure of customers’ personal financial information by financial institutions and the Safeguards Rule - which requires all financial institutions to design, implement and maintain safeguards to protect customer information, whether they collect such information themselves or receive it from other financial institutions.

Under GLB, financial institutions must:

Exercise appropriate due diligence in selecting service providers.
Prohibit service providers that receive nonpublic personal information from using that information for any other purpose than it was originally provided.
Require service providers by contract to implement appropriate security measures “to meet the objectives of” the safeguards rule.
Monitor service providers’ compliance with these contractual terms.

· PCI

Microsoft Online Services’ ordering, billing, and payment systems that handle credit card data are Level One PCI Compliant, and customers can use credit cards to pay for the services with confidence. TrustWave performs third-party PCI-DSS audits and determined the Microsoft Online Commerce Platform (OCP) has satisfactorily met the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) version 1.2.

· FISMA

The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source.

FISMA, along with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 (Clinger-Cohen Act), explicitly emphasizes a risk-based policy for cost-effective security. In support of and reinforcing this legislation, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through Circular A-130, Appendix III, Security of Federal Automated Information Resources, requires executive agencies within the federal government to:

1. Plan for security

2. Ensure that appropriate officials are assigned security responsibility

3. Periodically review the security controls in their information systems

4. Authorize system processing prior to operations and, periodically thereafter

· SAS70

Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70 is an audit standard set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and is geared towards service organizations. Service organizations are typically entities that provide outsourcing services that impact the control environment of their customers. Examples of service organizations are insurance and medical claims processors, hosted data centers, application service providers (ASPs) and managed security providers. The SAS 70 audit is an independent verification of compliance with security controls and effectiveness of security controls.

At the conclusion of a SAS No. 70 service auditor's examination ("SAS 70 audit"), the service auditor renders an opinion on the following:

Whether or not the service organization's description of controls is presented fairly.
Whether or not the service organization's controls are designed effectively.
Whether or not the service organization's controls are placed in operation as of a specified date.
Whether or not the service organization's controls are operating effectively over a specified period of time. (Type 2 only)

· HIPAA

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a U.S. law that requires HIPAA covered entities to meet certain privacy and security standards with respect to individually identifiable health information. To comply with HIPAA, in certain cases Microsoft must sign a business associate agreement (“BAA”) with HIPAA covered entities which assures adherence to certain privacy and security requirements.

Certifications for BPOS-S

· EU Safe Harbor

· ISO27001

· SAS70 Type I

· FERPA*

· GLBA*

· PCI*

Office 365–3 Unique Value Propositions to add to Productivity

2011-08-20T16:53:00Z

. Office 365’re focused on providing the best productivity experience across the PC, the phone, and the browser with Microsoft technologies. Other solutions focus on the PC and they have no browser and no phone story. Some of them are completely browser-based. They have no rich client and they have no phone. Office 365 believe that your users, and you as users, really do want to use the PC, the phone, and the browser in your daily world. You want to be able to get to your email, no matter what device you’re using. You want to be able to get to your Office documents, no matter what device you’re using. And Office 365’re making that possible with Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Exchange Server 2010, and Lync Server 2010. Office 365 want you to be able to work on your documents, and when someone touches it in the browser, they don’t clobber all of the things that someone did in the rich client. Office 365 round-trips the Office documents from the PC, to the phone, to the browser, and back, and nobody else does that. Your investment in Office documents is huge; you do not want to lose that.

Office 365 also lets you do things in the PC that are unique from the phone and the browser. You do things in the browser that are unique from the PC and the phone. And you do things on the phone that are unique from the PC and the browser. Office 365 hasn’t just taken a long list of capabilities and turned a bunch of stuff off and stuck it in the browser. When you’re in the browser, you get unique value that the browser brings to you. When you’re on your mobile phone, you can take photos; you’ll automatically drop those photos into your OneNote digital notebook, and that gets synced up over the cloud, and people who are using their PCs and their browsers see those photos. Office 365 don’t have that capability on the PC. So, PC, phone, and browser—the best experience for each one of them.

2. Office 365 give you the cloud on your terms. Office 365 don’t give you a technology ultimatum where you must move to the cloud to use our technology. Office 365 give it to you on your terms. What does that mean? It means that if you’re like Starbucks, you may continue to use Office in your headquarters operation on-premises. But Starbucks has rolled out 18,000 laptops to all of their cafes in the United States. Those 18,000 laptops are running Windows 7. And those 18,000 laptops are using Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. And it’s integrated in with their headquarters operations. So you can send email to anyone in the company. But the 18,000 new users, who’ve never had our technology before, now are using our cloud, and the rest of corporate headquarters are actually using the traditional on-premises technology. Other Office 365 customers like Coca-Cola Enterprises, have gone 100 percent to the cloud and they’re not using any servers when it comes to Exchange and SharePoint. And so you can have the cloud on your terms. Office 365 believe that is very, very important, and Office 365’re dedicated to helping you think about how to use the cloud in the most effective way.

3. Finally, the third reason Office 365 believe that you should bet on Microsoft Office 365 is because it is part of the broadest vision for what productivity actually is. Productivity is not about desktop documents. It’s not about word processing and spreadsheets. That was tOffice 365nty years ago. Modern productivity combines the things you see at the bottom of this slide in a very seamless experience.

- Enterprise Search: Modern productivity means enterprise search, great people search, finding people inside your company.

- Collaboration: It means great collaboration

- ECM: It means enterprise content management. Why do you have different publishing systems for your intranet, and your extranet, and your Internet? You want people to use the office tools they’re familiar with and integrate those with your single enterprise content management system.

- BI: Self-service BI means Excel, SharePoint, and SQL Server, all making it incredibly easy for you to visualize data, democratize data within your organization.

- UC: And of course modern productivity means unified communications.

=================================================================

Office 365 delivers the power of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping to save time and money and free up valued resources. Office 365 combines the familiar Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of next-generation communications and collaboration services from Microsoft: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. Office 365 is simple to use and easy to administer – all backed by the robust security and guaranteed reliability you expect from a world-class service provider. (Access from mobile devices depends on Wi-Fi capability or mobile network availability.)

The services provided by oFfice 365 are :

Microsoft Office Professional Plus

The world’s leading productivity tool now seamlessly connected and delivered with cloud services – for the best productivity experience across the PC, phone, and browser.

Exchange Online

Cloud-based email, calendar, and contacts with always-up-to-date protection from viruses and spam.

SharePoint Online

Cloud-based service for creating sites to connect colleagues, partners, and customers.

Lync Online

Cloud-based instant messaging, presence, and online meeting experiences with PC-audio, video conferencing and screen sharing.

Key Office 365 Benefits:

•Anywhere-access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device.

•Work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs your users already count on every day.

•Business-class features including IT-level phone support, guaranteed 99.9% uptime, geo-redundancy, and disaster recovery.

•Pay-as-you-go pricing options that give you predictability and flexibility for all or part of your organization.

you cannot use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol with an Office 365 hosted public site+ you can use vanity domain for sharepoint online website

2011-06-23T00:06:58Z

Use a vanity domain for your SharePoint Online public website address

When you host your company website on Microsoft SharePoint Online, as an administrator, you can choose to change the site to use a vanity domain name instead of continuing to use the domain you chose when you signed up for Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses: for example, contoso.sharepoint.com. Changing the domain name for your public site enables customers to access your site by using an existing domain name that you own, or a new domain name that you’ve chosen and purchased for your business.

To use your vanity domain with Office 365, you first add your company’s registered domain name to the service. For more information, see Add and verify a domain. After you’ve added your domain, you can configure Office 365 to use the domain name for your public Office 365 website. For more information about setting up a website on SharePoint Online, see Set up a public Website.

You can host one website with your Office 365 account, and you can point only one domain to the website. Also be aware that you cannot use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol with an Office 365 hosted site.

After you configure Office 365 to use your vanity domain for your website, you can easily change the site to use another vanity domain name or change back to the original domain name that you used (for example, contoso.sharepoint.com), by following the steps provided in this topic. Or you can, if you like, choose at a later time to move the site to be hosted by another third-party service.

To configure Office 365 to use a vanity domain for your public website, follow these steps.

On the Admin page, in the left pane, under Management, click Domains.
Click Change address, and then step through the wizard.

Note
After you have finished adding the DNS records to your domain, it can take up to 72 hours for the changes to take effect. Be aware the certain DNS records must be overwritten by Office 365 to change the website to use your vanity domain. For example, if you have a DNS record named www, Office 365 must update that record to point to SharePoint Online.

Office 365 Plans

2011-06-09T15:16:50Z

Go to links and find more details:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/office365/enterprise/subscription-plans.aspx

http://www.office365advantage.co.uk/Downloads/Office-365-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Office 365 plans

Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products with the latest version of our Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop suite.

What's included

Microsoft Office 365 for midsize businesses and enterprises

Get the predictable costs, guaranteed reliability, access from virtually anywhere, and the enhanced capabilities of powerful cloud-based productivity tools, while you maintain control of IT services that drive your business.

Learn more >

Microsoft Office 365 provides four plans for enterprises: Office 365 (Plan E1), Office 365 (Plan E2), Office 365 (Plan E3), and Office 365 (Plan E4).

Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses

Price: $6 (USD) / €5.25 / ¥600 / $7 (CAD) / £4 per user per month

Access your email, important documents, contacts, and calendars from virtually anywhere and on almost any device with a pay-as-you-go subscription to Office 365.

•Access email, important documents, contacts, and calendar on nearly any device, including PC, Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry Internet Service

•Office Web Apps for viewing, editing and sharing documents

•Large 25 GB mailboxes for each user and the ability to send attachments up to 25 MB

•Industry-leading, automatically updated antivirus and anti-spam solutions

•Integrated IM, presence and online meetings with audio/video conferencing and multiparty data sharing

•Financially-backed, guaranteed 99.9% service uptime

•24x7 moderated community-based support

Learn more >

Plans for kiosk workers

Many people in larger businesses do not have a dedicated computer. Office 365 has solutions for the
“kiosk worker”, giving them access to e-mail and company information. Plans start at $2 /user /month for
basic e-mail. Kiosk plans can help organizations reduce costs and provide people just what they need.
Benefits include:
 500 MB email storage per mailbox
 POP3 access for mobile connectivity
 Outlook Web App for email access on a PC
 Ability to view SharePoint sites to stay informed
 Office Web Apps (with certain plans)
 Single IT management console to easily add
users and administer between plans

Microsoft Office 365 for education

Office 365 for education
Cloud-based services for educational institutions that can help save money and give students access to
familiar, next-generation productivity tools – while helping educational institutions free up resources. By
eliminating the time and effort spent managing servers, IT staff can deliver the latest services to students
while still maintaining control. Availability is to be announced.
Benefits:
 Large 25 GB mailboxes and the ability to send attachments up to 25 MB
 Anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendar on nearly any device,
including PC, Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry
 Works with the programs students know and use most – Microsoft Outlook®, Word, Excel®,
PowerPoint®, and OneNote®
 Student access to Office Web Apps for viewing, sharing and light editing of documents
 Team sites to share, manage and search for information and resources
 Industry-leading, always-up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spam solutions
 Optional student access to 25GB of free online storage on Windows Live SkyDrive
 Latest version of Microsoft Live@Edu , which has thousands of schools and millions of student users
today
Solutions for K-12:
K-12 institutions have a very specific set of requirements for cloud-based messaging and collaboration.
Office 365 for education brings together a rich set of free online solutions built to help provide child safety
and security to the K-12 market.

Learn more >

Join the Beta

Join the beta program, and experience Office 365 for yourself.

JOIN THE BETA

Are you a professional or small business?

Office 365 has a unique plan to meet the needs of professionals and small businesses.

Visit Small Business
website >

Find a Microsoft Partner

A Microsoft Partner can support your transition to the cloud by helping you assess your needs, choose the right services, and get them up and running. Find the right Partner today.

Transition from BPOS to Office 365

2011-06-09T14:58:23Z

Thought of sharing : summarized process for transition from BPOS to Office 365 as many partners are having this question nowadays. See link below for Transition guide –good one.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/E/B/FEB0E713-51CE-4896-9856-28D9B66FF124/BPOS_to_Office_365_Customer_Transition_Guide_4-26-11.docx

BPOS to Office 365 Overview

===========================

The transition from BPOS to Office 365 does not represent a new version or product for Microsoft Online Services customers. Office 365 is an evolution of BPOS. The transition does, however, represent a major architectural shift for Microsoft’s Online Services architecture from on-premises servers adapted to the cloud, to a fully-rearchitected service-oriented design. This is the reason that there are some impacts in terms of system requirements and configuration of optional features such as federated identity and rich co-existence.

One of the key values of Microsoft Online Services is that customers are not required to re-deploy or upgrade server software, nor are they required to migrate data when new features and capabilities are available or services are updated. This will hold true for the transition process that enables the new features and capabilities of Microsoft Office 365. All server infrastructure updates and data migration will be handled by Microsoft. Microsoft is committed to ensuring that the transition from BPOS to Office 365 is simple for customers, will minimize disruptions to end-users, and will maintain the security and integrity of customer data at all times.

The underlying 2010 server technology that drives Office 365 was architected to run as a service in the cloud and to enable seamless updates to the service. This new architecture means that future major service updates to the Office 365 service should have an even lower overall impact on customers than the transition from BPOS to Office 365.

The attached guide includes information that existing BPOS customers will need to prepare for the transition from BPOS to Office 365. Trial customers and customers who have not yet deployed production data on BPOS should consult “Appendix - Transition Scenarios for Trial and Undeployed Customers” first.

Transition Roles and Responsibilities

Microsoft Responsibilities

· Inform the technical and administration contacts (as listed in your BPOS tenant) of the transition

· Work with you to schedule a transition date

· Provide you with information and guidance about the transition

· Prevent any disruption to email flow during transition

· Migrate any and all customer data as required for a full transition

Your Responsibilities

· Be responsive to Microsoft requests to schedule a transition date

· Update end-user computer software to meet the system requirements

· Configure end-user computer software if required

· Re-configure end-user Active Sync devices

· Inform and train your end-users as needed

· Optional: deploy an on-premise Active Directory Federation Services server if you choose to implement ADFS-based single sign-on.

· Optional: deploy an on-premise Exchange Server 2010 CAS role if you have a hybrid on-premise/cloud Exchange deployment and want to share free/busy and other information across servers

Availability and Timeline Overview

Microsoft understands that you need the flexibility to determine when your organization will enable significant updates to the online services you purchase from Microsoft. You will have up to twelve (12) months, beginning several months after the Office 365 launch, to transition to the new service.

The following table provides a high-level timeline of key milestones for Office 365.

What	Availability Date	Comments
Beta of next major service update	Spring 2011	For existing customers, the Beta is only intended as a preview: you will not be able to merge your beta tenant with your production service.
Office 365 launch	2011	The final Office 365 launch date has not been announced at this time.
Exchange Online Mailbox Pilot Available	After Office 365 launch	Existing customers can enable a small group of users with the features and functions of Office 365.
Transitions Availability Begins	Roughly four months after Office 365 launch	This date represents the period when Microsoft will be able to transition most BPOS customers. Microsoft will contact you 60 to 90 days prior to a proposed transition date. You can accept the date or request a new one.
Transition Availability Ends	Transition Availability + 12 months	You must transition by this date – i.e. 12 months after Transition Availability begins and about 16 months after Office 365 launch).

BPOS to Office 365 Trainings for Partners

==============================================

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_ActDetails.aspx?UserMode=0&ActivityId=737036

BPOS to Office365 Transition Training for Partners

Microsoft® Office 365 is an evolution of BPOS and combines the familiar functionality of the Office desktop suite with cloud...of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes...your customers with the transition from BPOS to Office365 by participating...

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_ActDetails.aspx?UserMode=0&ActivityId=744603 - 1 KB

Capacity Planning for Enterprise Search–Part 1

2011-04-06T08:56:10Z

One of the factors that will determine the ongoing success of the enterprise search solution is whether you are able to plan for and specify disk space requirements for full-text catalog files and search databases. These space requirements are affected by many factors, including the characteristics and size of the corpus being indexed.The relationship between a corpus and the disk space requirement for full-text catalog files is very complex. Although the relationship is generally governed by corpus size, there are many other factors that can cause considerable variation in this relationship.Furthermore, there is a complex relationship between a corpus and the disk space requirement for the search database.

Corpus Size

The most apparent (although by no means only) factor that governs the full-text catalog space requirements is the size of the corpus. Therefore, you must attempt to determine the corpus size before you calculate disk space requirements.

Measuring Corpus Size

You can attempt to measure the corpus size by adding up the size of all files and other items to be indexed. For example, you can investigate the disk space used in file shares, and you can retrieve the file sizes for Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 items and other content. However, because content sizes for similar files vary by system, this approach may yield misleading data. For example, if you measure SharePoint content database sizes, the figures can vary depending on your versioning strategy for documents and other items. Also, this approach can be unnecessarily time-consuming.

Estimating Corpus Size

A more typical, and probably more robust and manageable, approach is to estimate corpus size rather than measuring it. You can simply estimate corpus size by:

· Categorizing the different content forms, such as files, Web pages, lists items, database items, and so on.

· Multiplying the average size of each content form by the number of items in each form, to obtain size estimates of each content form.

· Adding together all of the size estimates.

Expected Growth

When you have either estimated or measured the corpus size, you must also estimate corpus growth characteristics. You can start to base these estimates on past growth patterns, but you must be aware that content creation patterns for any organization vary over time. So you must also attempt to gather expected growth characteristics from analysts and other people in the organization.

-------------------------------
Content Characteristics

Although the main governing factor that affects full-text catalog size is the size of the corpus, the relationship is not a simple one. The characteristics of the content in the corpus can affect this relationship in many ways.

File Formats

One of the factors that affect the ratio between total file sizes and full-text catalog size is file format.

To help you understand this concept, imagine that your entire corpus consists of the text for the novel War and Peace. Now imagine that the text is stored in a plain text file, and that the size of that file is 10 megabytes (MB). Then, suppose that you index that file, and that the resultant full-text catalog is around 1 MB in size. The ratio between corpus and full-text catalog is, in this case, about 10:1.

Now imagine that the text for War and Peace has been typed into a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation file, instead of the plain text file. Imagine that formatting has been applied to the text, and that the presentation consists of multiple slides representing pages of the book. The file size will be considerably larger for the same textual content than the plain text file. For this example, imagine that the file size is 50 MB. Suppose that you now index that file. It is likely that the full-text catalog will still be around 1 MB in size, because the same words have been indexed. The ratio between the corpus and the full-text catalog, however, is now about 50:1.

File compression can also affect the ratio between corpus size and full-text catalog size. For example, the compressed nature of the Microsoft Office Word 2007 format will result in a smaller file size than if the equivalent content is stored in an Office Word 2003 file.

Content Density

Another factor that affects the ratio between corpus size and full-text catalog size is the ratio of textual content in files to embedded objects. Continuing with the War and Peace example, imagine that the PowerPoint version described previously includes an embedded picture file on each page to illustrate a scene in the novel. The resultant file size will be much larger than the previous 50 MB because of the embedded graphics. But the textual content will be the same, and indexing the file will still result in a full-text catalog of about 1 MB.

Content Uniqueness

A further factor that affects the ratio between corpus size and full-text catalog size is the uniqueness of the content being indexed. Office SharePoint Server 2007 tokenizes indexed words for efficient storage and lookup; the less unique the words being indexed, the lower the ratio between the corpus size and the full-text catalog size.

This factor applies both to uniqueness of words within files, and to uniqueness of content between files. As an example of this first concept, a 10-MB file containing technical content about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Search is likely to have many occurrences of the words SharePoint, search, Microsoft, enterprise, document, file, server, index, query, and so on. Because of the tokenizing of these common words, the space required to index the file will be smaller than that required to index 10 MB of a novel that has a rich and varied vocabulary.

As for the second concept, indexing a corpus that consists of many unique documents about various subjects will result in a full-text catalog size that is larger than a corpus consisting of many copies of similar documents. For example, imagine that your organization stores a copy of terms and conditions in each project site within a site collection. The terms and conditions are likely to be very similar for each project, with perhaps only minor variations on a project-by-project basis. The words within these documents will be tokenized by the indexer and so will result in a smaller full-text catalog than if each file had relatively unique content.

Diminishing Uniqueness

Because all vocabularies are essentially limited, there is a relationship between total corpus size and the ratio of that size to the full-text catalog space requirements. This is simply a statistical phenomenon: 10 terabytes of data will usually contain less unique content as a proportion of the corpus size than 1 terabyte of data. To illustrate this point further, as a corpus grows, it tends to include more and more occurrences of words that have already been used elsewhere in corpus, until at some point the corpus contains every word in the organization’s vocabulary. Further additions to the corpus will not introduce new words.

As an extreme example, imagine that every French speaker in the world writes a novel. Over all the content, imagine that 98 percent of common French words have been used. Then imagine that these authors all write a second novel. The size of the content will double, but the additional content will largely consist of words that have already been used in the first set of novels. This concept applies to organizations and their common vocabularies as much as it applies to a written language.

---------------------------------------

Content Metadata and Crawled Properties

The amount of data stored in indexed and Managed Properties affects the ratio between the size of the corpus and the sizes of both the full-text catalog and search database.

Crawled Properties

Crawled properties are simply those attributes that are discovered and indexed at crawl time. Crawled properties include attributes from content source systems, such as the last modified date for files in file shares, and the column data for items in SharePoint lists and libraries. They also include embedded property values from the property sheets of specific file types, such as Microsoft Office documents.

Crawled property values are stored in the full-text catalog and so can affect the ratio between the size of the corpus and the size of the full-text catalog file.

By default, Office SharePoint Server discovers and indexes textual crawled properties. For SharePoint content, you can specify precisely which properties are indexed by setting the indexed properties of site columns.

Managed Properties

Managed Properties, as previously described in Module 1, represent a virtual mapping between multiple and various indexed properties. Managed Properties and their corresponding values for each item are stored in the search database. Therefore, the number of Managed Properties and their mappings to indexed properties can affect the ratio between the number of files in a corpus and the size of the search database.

Access Control Lists

Permissions are retrieved for each secured item when content is crawled, and they are then used at query time for security trimming. Access control lists that represent permissions are stored in the search database for each secured item. Therefore, the ratio between the number of items in the corpus and the size of the search database varies depending on whether those items are secured.

Access control lists are not retrieved in every scenario, even for secured files. For example, if you have a non-SharePoint Web site that provides links to Office documents stored in a file system, and those items are secured, the indexer will not receive security information because the HTTP protocol handler does not retrieve permissions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Content Versions

Another factor that affects the ratio between corpus size and full-text catalog size is the versioning strategy in the farm.

SharePoint Versioning and Indexing

The indexer only indexes one version of each item, so it is not possible to index all versions of files in a document library, or all versions of items in a list.

On a related point, if you want to index all versions of files, you must implement some sort of authoring process (perhaps with workflows) where new documents are created at each step in the process, rather than relying on versions of single documents.

Versioned Corpus and Index Ratios

If your corpus is characterized by many versions of items in SharePoint lists or libraries, the ratio of the entire corpus (including all item versions) to the size of the full-text catalog file will higher than if you disable versioning in SharePoint lists and libraries. You should remember this if you are measuring corpus size based on content database sizes.

Content Access Accounts and Versioning

You must be aware of the effect that the content access account has on the versioned content that is being indexed (although it does not affect the ratio between corpus size and index space requirements).

SharePoint technologies can maintain multiple versions of a page or document and will present specific versions to different users based on their roles. For example, if you have checked out and modified a published page and then saved it but not checked it back in, the next time that you request the page, you will be presented with your saved version. Anyone else who requests the page will be presented with the latest published version. Then, imagine that you make further changes and check the page back in and submit it for approval. The next time that you request the page, you will be presented with your edited version that is waiting for approval. And any person who is in the approver’s role will also be presented with that version. All other readers will still be presented with the latest published version.

The point is that when the indexer requests a page or file for indexing purposes, SharePoint technologies will present the version of the item that is appropriate for the account being used to perform the crawl. While there is no fixed rule for selecting content access accounts, you must be aware of this behavior so that you can specify an appropriate account for the crawl. In general, if you want to ensure that only approved, published content is indexed, you should use a reader’s account to crawl SharePoint content. However, if you want to index unpublished content, perhaps for a volatile authoring environment, then you can consider using an editor’s account or approver’s account, or another administrative account.

In Next Part –Part 2 , I shall talk about planning the schedules, architecture and topologies for Enterprise Search Capacity Planning

Office 365 – SharePoint online Extranet Invites

2011-04-05T14:07:10Z

Office 365 – SharePoint online Extranet Invites

The office 365 SharePoint online has Extranet feature to invite external people (without any online license) to access your site and work on it ( as Visitor or as contributor etc) . By default you get 50 such users invites free and you can opt for more if required by paying very little amount as compared to regular online SharePoint licenses. For this you have to send invite to people on their live email account and give them permissions using their live email account for example you can give permissions to externaluser@hotnmail.com and send him email . once he receives email , he can click on link in the email and logon to online site using his live email account and will be able to access

Open the Portal.microsoftonline.com using admin credentials and click on Manage under SharePoint online

Click on Manage Site collections

Select the Site collection on which you want to give access to external users

lick on Settings and select Manager External Users: Allow the access to external users in popup dialog

Goto Site – Actions – Find External users permissions- Click on that

Type in the external users live email accounts, type a message to be sent in email and click Ok

Go and check the external live meeting account email … you would have received an email from Tenant Administrator of Online Account . open it . it will have a link to external SharePoint site and button to accept the invitation. Click on Invitation. It will open the browser for logon to online account where you have to provide your live account email address . if you are already logged into your live account , it may not ask for credentials and will log you on to the site directly.

The above screen shot shows how the logon service responds when you type in your Hotmail account emailid for logging into online portal site of Office 365

Also refer to : http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/share-a-site-with-external-users-HA102476183.aspx

Deploying SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites with Social Media Features , SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search Server: Turn Assets into Revenue (Level 200)

2010-10-26T22:30:26Z

TechNet Webcast: Deploying SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites with Social Media Features (Level 200)

Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Pacific Time

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032466048&Culture=en-US

SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search Server: Turn Assets into Revenue (Level 200)

Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010: How Do I: Search Capabilities and Features in SharePoint 2010: Part 1 (Level 200)

Learn the Benefits of Microsoft in the Cloud

2010-10-26T22:27:12Z

Learn the Benefits of Microsoft in the Cloud

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/cloud.aspx?tab=overview

Learn how the world's most widely used software is now available in the cloud. Access these online resources and find out how Microsoft and our partners are committed to delivering a broad set of enterprise-ready products and services that build on what you already know. Also, discover the many benefits that moving to the cloud model can bring to your organization, including greater business and resource agility, better managed costs, and a smaller carbon footprint. Interested in the potential of cloud computing for your business? Join us for a series of webcasts to learn how Microsoft cloud solutions provide enterprise-class services, consistent connected experiences, and the power of choice.

Free E-books from Microsoft Press : Windows 7 , SQL 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2010

2010-10-26T17:47:11Z

From Microsoft Press web site

After the release of Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 in September, here’s an updated list of some of our free eBooks:

Free eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (10 chapters by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines)

Free eBook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (10 chapters by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner)

Free eBook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) (6 chapters by Charles Petzold)

Free eBook: Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 (Special Excerpt 2) (newer than the eBook above; 11 chapters by Charles Petzold)

Free eBook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft (8 chapters by Katherine Murray)

Free eBook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) (6 chapters by Mitch Tulloch)

Free eBook: First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (14 chapters by Katherine Murray)

Free eBook: Windows 7 troubleshooting tips (short eBook by Mitch Tulloch)

Free eBook: Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (9 chapters by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker)

Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (10 chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and 6 TechNet articles)

We hope there’s something in this list for you to use and enjoy!

Microsoft : Office 365 Services : SharePoint Online /Exchange Online /Office Online

2010-10-20T20:08:56Z

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6c6ecc6c-64f5-490a-bca3-8835c9a4a2ea

Lost PassPhrase for Sharepoint 2010

2010-10-20T17:20:26Z

From your Start menu select “SharePoint 2010 Management Shell” or Start, “Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products”, “SharePoint 2010 Management Shell”

Then enter:

C:\PS> $passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText -Force

C:\PS> Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm

After running these commends it aks for new passphrase value which a Farm admin account can set.

SharePoint 2010 Standalone not supported on DC :Gives error message while upgrade : You cannot install SharePoint In standalone mode on a domain controller

2010-09-26T01:49:00Z

Q: When I install SharePoint on a domain controller(DC), Setup doesn’t give me any option to choose from server farm/standalone installation.

A: This is a designed behavior. SQL Server Express 2008 is not supported on a domain controller, so the standalone mode of SharePoint installation is removed when administrator tries to deploy on a DC. If you really want to override this behavior for demo/dev purpose, you can try:

setup.exe /config FILES\SETUP\config.xml

This will install a SingleServer(Standalone).

A complete list of the parameters can be shown with setup.exe /?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/opal/archive/2010/04/25/faq-sharepoint-2010-rtm-installation.aspx

http://www.dev4side.com/community/blog/2010/4/26/sharepoint-2010-does-not-support-standalone-installation-on-a-domain-controller.aspx

it's on DC box and the UI doesn't show me the option whether to install Standalone or Farm mode (looks like the UI is skipped), is there a workaround to install standalone even though it is not supported?

If you install on a machine that is a domain controller we don’t give you the option of installing standalone since it’s not a supported.

I was trying to install Sharepoint 2010 standalone, but during installation it never asked me whether I want to install Standalone or not (which I thought it’s standalone), but when the installation is done and running the configuration wizard, it asks me this option below. I pick “Create a new server farm” which then it asks me to enter the database server. Since I didn’t install SQL Server (SQL Express is there), how do I proceed here?

Developing Applications for the Cloud

2010-09-21T14:34:30Z

Microsoft patterns & practices is excited to announce the release of a new guide:

In this e-mail:

Links & Downloads

On MSDN:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff966499.aspx

On Codeplex:

http://wag.codeplex.com/

Customer Value

How can a company create an application that has truly global reach and that can scale rapidly to meet sudden, massive spikes in demand? Historically, companies had to invest in building an infrastructure capable of supporting such an application themselves and, typically, only large companies would have the available resources to risk such an enterprise. Building and managing this kind of infrastructure is not cheap, especially because you have to plan for peak demand, which often means that much of the capacity sits idle for much of the time. The cloud has changed the rules of the game: by making the infrastructure available on a "pay as you go" basis, creating a massively scalable, global application is within the reach of both large and small companies.

The cloud platform provides you with access to capacity on demand, fault tolerance, distributed computing, data centers located around the globe, and the capability to integrate with other platforms. Someone else is responsible for managing and maintaining the entire infrastructure, and you only pay for the resources that you use in each billing period. You can focus on using your core domain expertise to build and then deploy your application to the data center or data centers closest to the people who use it. You can then monitor your applications, and scale up or scale back as and when the capacity is required.

This book is the second volume in a planned series about Windows Azure™ technology platform. Volume 1, Moving Applications to the Cloud on the Windows Azure Platform, provides an introduction to Windows Azure, discusses the cost model and application life cycle management for cloud-based applications, and describes how to migrate an existing ASP.NET application to the cloud. This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud by using the latest versions of the Windows Azure tools and the latest features of the Windows Azure platform.

What’s in the “Developing Applications for the Cloud”

Component

Description

The Guide

"The Tailspin Scenario" introduces you to the Tailspin company and the Surveys application. It provides an architectural overview of the Surveys application; the following chapters provide more information about how Tailspin designed and implemented the Surveys application for the cloud. Reading this chapter will help you understand Tailspin's business model, its strategy for adopting the cloud platform, and some of its concerns.

"Hosting a Multi-Tenant Application on Windows Azure" discusses some of the issues that surround architecting and building multi-tenant applications to run on Windows Azure. It describes the benefits of a multi-tenant architecture and the trade-offs that you must consider. This chapter provides a conceptual framework that helps the reader understand some of the topics discussed in more detail in the subsequent chapters.

"Accessing the Surveys Application" describes some of the challenges that the developers at Tailspin faced when they designed and implemented some of the customer-facing components of the application. Topics include the choice of URLs for accessing the surveys application, security, hosting the application in multiple geographic locations, and using the Content Delivery Network to cache content.

"Building a Scalable, Multi-Tenant Application for Windows Azure" examines how Tailspin ensured the scalability of the multi-tenant Surveys application. It describes how the application is partitioned, how the application uses worker roles, and how the application supports on-boarding, customization, and billing for customers.

"Working with Data in the Surveys Application" describes how the application uses data. It begins by describing how the Surveys application stores data in both Windows Azure tables and blobs, and how the developers at Tailspin designed their storage classes to be testable. The chapter also describes how Tailspin solved some specific problems related to data, including paging through data, and implementing session state. Finally, this chapter describes the role that SQL Azure™ technology platform plays in the Surveys application.

"Updating a Windows Azure Service" describes the options for updating a Windows Azure application and how you can update an application with no interruption in service.

"Debugging and Troubleshooting Windows Azure Applications" describes some of the techniques specific to Windows Azure applications that will help you to detect and resolve issues when building, deploying, and running Windows Azure applications. It includes descriptions of how to use Windows Azure Diagnostics and how to use Microsoft IntelliTrace™ with applications deployed to Windows Azure.

The companion samples

The sample illustrates all scenarios covered in the book. They provide a “single box” experience with minimal infrastructure requirements.

Click here to download this release.

“…this stuff is excellent – possibly the best I’ve seen, both code samples and docs…”

Brian Davis – CTO Longscale

Goals of This Release

Tailspin is a fictitious startup ISV company of approximately 20 employees that specializes in developing solutions using Microsoft® technologies. The developers at Tailspin are knowledgeable about various Microsoft products and technologies, including the .NET Framework, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server®, and Microsoft Visual Studio® development system. These developers are aware of Windows Azure but have not yet developed any complete applications for the platform.

The Surveys application is the first of several innovative online services that Tailspin wants to take to market. As a startup, Tailspin wants to develop and launch these services with a minimal investment in hardware and IT personnel. Tailspin hopes that some of these services will grow rapidly, and the company wants to have the ability to respond quickly to increasing demand. Similarly, it fully expects some of these services to fail, and it does not want to be left with redundant hardware on its hands.

The Surveys application enables Tailspin's customers to design a survey, publish the survey, and collect the results of the survey for analysis. A survey is a collection of questions, each of which can be one of several types such as multiple-choice, numeric range, or free text. Customers begin by creating a subscription with the Surveys service, which they use to manage their surveys and to apply branding by using styles and logo images. Customers can also select a geographic region for their account, so that they can host their surveys as close as possible to the survey audience.

The architecture of the Surveys Application is straightforward and one that many other Windows Azure applications use. The core of the application uses Windows Azure web roles, worker roles, and storage. It also highlights how the application uses SQL Azure™ technology platform to provide a mechanism for subscribers to dump their survey results into a relational database to analyze the results in detail.

This guide discusses the design and implementation in detail and describes the various web and worker roles that comprise the Surveys application.

Future plans

An extension to this scenario is being developed for mobile users using Windows Phone 7 devices. Early versions of this are available here: http://wp7guide.codeplex.com

A guide for SQL Azure specific considerations is being completed and a third part is planned to cover integration scenarios as well as new capabilities. Check the community site for updates.

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to this release, but we wanted to highlight the exceptional contributions of Ryan Dunn and Steve Marx to our project.

Also, we want to thank David Aiken, James Conard, Yousef Khalidi, Prashant Ketkar, Bharat Shyam and Amitabh Srivastava from the Windows Azure team at Microsoft for their support throughout.

Customer Connections

We are happy to engage in customer conversations as appropriate. Please contact Eugenio Pace or Ajoy Krishnamoorthy.

If you have a customer using this guide, please let us know at ourstory@microsoft.com.

About patterns & practices

The Microsoft patterns & practices (p&p) team is responsible for delivering applied engineering guidance that helps software architects, developers, and their teams take full advantage of Microsoft’s platform technologies in their custom application development efforts.

Our goal is to help software development teams be more successful with the Microsoft application platform. We do this by delivering guidance that:

· Helps to simplify the Microsoft application platform.

· Provides solution guidance to common problems.

· Helps development teams grow their skills and learn.

For more information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices or http://practices

“Developers adopting patterns and practices can expect an average productivity increase of 25 to 40 percent, depending on their skill level and the complexity of the application”

“I will turn to patterns and practices and say that, out of the box, I have 80 percent of what I need and this is a billion times better than starting from scratch”

Download Nucleus Research paper on p&p

SharePoint 2010 Integration with EMC documentum

2010-09-21T11:34:00Z

EMC Highlighted in August Directions on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Evaluation Guide

Check out the latest Research Report: SharePoint 2010 Evaluation Guide in Directions and see how EMC is mentioned. EMC content management products and SharePoint integration are explained in more detail on their web site:

· Captiva

· My Documentum

· SourceOne

Sharepoint 2010 Readiness Tool

2010-09-21T10:39:01Z

SharePoint 2010 Readiness Tool Encourage your partners to access the SharePoint Partner Readiness Tool, which includes the most up-to-date training for SharePoint 2010 in one convenient location. Content is organized by partner type, business role, competency or level, so partners can quickly find materials specific to their needs to build or deepen skills on SharePoint 2010.

link:http://www.sharepoint2010readiness.com/

SharePoint Server 2010 design samples: Corporate portal with classic or claims-based authentication

2010-08-27T15:25:47Z

SharePoint Server 2010 design samples: Corporate portal with classic or claims-based authentication

Design samples illustrating a typical corporate deployment of SharePoint Server 2010 and using two forms of authentication.

==============================================================

some other god tools and VPCs

Trial Evals, Beta/RC & Virtual Images

Microsoft Visio 2010

This download contains the Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 Evaluation release.

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 beta

Forefront Endpoint Protection simplifies and improves endpoint protection while greatly reducing infrastructure costs

SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP

Download SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP

SQL Server 2008 Express Edition Service Pack 2 – CTP

Download the CTP of SQL Server 2008 Express Edition SP2.

TFS and Project Server Integration CTP

This virtual machine provides a community technical preview (CTP) of the integration of Team Foundation Sever 2010 with Project Server 2010. Included with this download are four walkthroughs that demonstrate using enterprise project plans in Project Server associated with team projects in Team Foundation Server.

PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services – CTP1

The PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services provides an application generator that enables users to effortlessly build dynamic PivotViewer Collections on top of Business Intelligence data, inside SharePoint 2010

Microsoft Web Farm Framework Version 2 for IIS 7 -Beta (x86)

Microsoft Web Farm Framework Version 2 for IIS 7 -Beta (x64)

Microsoft Web Farm Framework for IIS7 enables administrators to provision, scale and manage their web infrastructure

Communicator 2010 Attendee (Beta Refresh)

Microsoft Communicator 2010 Attendee is a meeting application that facilitates joining Communications Server hosted meetings.

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 VHD

This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2.

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite Evaluation

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite provides enterprise-class tools, performance, & scalability for a highly productive HPC environment