Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : TechEd-EMEA

Microsoft Announces Exchange Server 2010 Availability and Wave of Innovations at Tech•Ed Europe 2009

grantkd — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:51:00 GMT

Today at the Microsoft Tech•Ed Europe 2009 conference in Germany, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop announced that Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is now available worldwide to help businesses reduce costs, protect communications and delight e-mail users. Along with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010 is part of a generation of solutions designed for increased business productivity and cost savings.

In today’s challenging economic environment, innovative use of new information technologies can result in improved operational efficiency and reduced costs. The combination of cost savings coupled with improved productivity and innovation is defined as “the New Efficiency.” Elop also announced the release of Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server, which helps Exchange Server customers further safeguard business information.

Additionally, Microsoft announced the final release of IIS Application Request Routing (ARR) 2.0 RTW.

Customers - such as hosting providers, Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, and IT Professionals are changing the way they do business as a result of ARR 2.0. ARR 2.0 delivers cost savings, elastic scalability, and flexible deployment options. With IIS 7.5 and ARR 2.0, customers can create a native Silverlight infrastructure and configure their CDN so that it provides superior live and on-demand media offerings for their users. Customers can implement new capabilities in their CDN and as a result, can replace Apache Squid on their edge servers and cut costs. By deploying this new solution based on ARR 2.0, customers can provide a better viewing experience for Web consumers, boost the scalability and level of control they have over their CDN, and enhance the reports they can provide their users. For more information or to download, please visit the IIS ARR 2.0 RTW page.

For more information check out the TechEd Global Press Room, Windows Server Division Weblog or the Forefront Team Blog.

TechEd Europe 2009 starts Monday, November 9th

mdingle — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:55:00 GMT

On Monday, Microsoft kicks-off TechEd EMEA 2009 in Berlin, Germany. To help you track news coming from across Microsoft please visit the TechEd Global Press Room.

The TechEd Europe 2009 keynote with Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, and Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of the Server and Tools, will discuss the state of IT and the new generation of business solutions that help customers reach their full business potential. It will be streamed live at 3:30 pm CET/6:30 a.m. PDT on November 9^th here.

Immediately following the keynote, there will be an Executive Q&A. The webcast will feature Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group, Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President of Server and Tools Marketing and Tami Reller, Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Windows & Windows Live.

Follow the news on Twitter @TechEd_Europe or #TEE09

Get Ready for TechEd Europe 2009

grantkd — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:13:00 GMT

TechEd Europe 2009 is just a few days away - one of the world’s leading IT Pro and Developer education and networking events. We hope to see you at TechEd Europe 2009, but if you are not able to make it to Berlin, we would like to invite you to watch Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, and Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Server and Tools Marketing Group, give the keynote address live online at 6:30 a.m. Pacific/9:30 a.m. Eastern/3:30 p.m. GMT.

Immediately following the keynote speech, join Microsoft executives in a post-keynote speech videoconference to discuss the latest news and technologies including Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

o There will be time to ask questions following a brief introduction.

o Submit questions during the teleconference or submit them at any time leading up to or during the teleconference by tweeting with the Twitter hashtag, #TEE09.

Please visit the Microsoft Tech•Ed Global Pressroom to access live streaming of the keynote speech and participate in the post-keynote speech Q&A with Microsoft executives.

TechEd EMEA- Interoperable “Geneva” Platform to Simplify Identity - on Premises and in the Cloud

grantkd — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft announced a big step forward in the world of digital identity, unveiling the first public beta of a software platform, code-named “Geneva”, which will help developers create applications across the ‘cloud’, between organizations and on-premises with a single, simplified and open identity model. “Geneva” implements the shared industry vision of an interoperable Identity Metasystem via support for industry standard protocols such as WS-* and SAML and other interoperability capabilities. Additionally, Microsoft announced a collaboration with Orange and eBay on a proof-of-concept customer experience for eBay Powersellers and Orange network users that would use Windows^® Cardspace “Geneva”, the next generation of Microsoft’s identity card selector for users.

“Working with user identities in applications is hard for developers today as they must choose among many different identity technologies and code custom user-access logic into every application, which takes time away from core development work,” said Kim Cameron, chief architect of identity and a Microsoft distinguished engineer. “Geneva” addresses these concerns, simplifying the identity model by externalizing authentication from applications with claims - a set of statements about a user that provide specific information such as title or purchasing authority. The claims-based identity model provides a rich description of users’ characteristics while minimizing disclosure of identity information, improving the ability of applications to make fine-grained access control decisions while enabling users to maintain control over how their identities are used. This model will work in the enterprise, federations, and the consumer Web for both on-premises and cloud applications.”

‘Geneva’ helps businesses and governments facilitate collaboration within the enterprise, across organizational boundaries, and on the Web while satisfying cost cutting and security requirements. ’Geneva’ will also help organizations react to changing needs more quickly and economically by allowing identities on existing systems to interoperate with new systems such as cloud services and service-oriented architecture (SOA). ‘Geneva’ is available for developers today and includes three platform components for enabling claims-based access: ‘Geneva’Framework for .NET developers, ‘Geneva’ Server for IT Pros, and Windows CardSpace ‘Geneva’ for users. These beta releases and additional information can be accessed on the Microsoft Connect site: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122266.

Microsoft’s single identity model adds Microsoft Services Connector and .NET Access Control Service in the cloud (supporting Azure, the recently announced cloud version of Windows) which are both built on “Geneva” technology and share the same claims architecture to enable a seamless experience that bridges on-premises and cloud environments. Together, these components form a flexible system for developers to harness, making any connected application easier to build, more secure, and less expensive for their customers to own.

Microsoft also announced other “Geneva wave” capabilities for Microsoft’s Live applications and Azure offerings. A new Microsoft Federation Gateway is fully compatible with Geneva and based on the same open standards and protocols, so it can federate with the Microsoft Services Connector, Geneva, or identity solutions from other vendors. Further, all Live IDs will now serve as OpenIDs, adding 400 million accounts to the network of OpenID identities.

Since there are many different and inconsistent user access technologies to choose from (for example Kerberos, X.509, LDAP, SAML), developers today must code their choice into each application with unique logic. This makes it expensive and complex to implement and manage applications with the goal of providing secure user access to heterogeneous systems as each application exists in its own user access technology ‘silo’. “Geneva” helps IT efficiently deploy and manage new applications by reducing custom implementation work, consolidating access management in the hands of IT, helping establish a consistent security model, and facilitating seamless collaboration between organizations with automated federation tools. To maximize administrative efficiency “Geneva” automates federation trust configuration and management using the new harmonized federation metadata format (based on SAML 2.0 metadata) that was recently adopted by the WSFED TC.

‘Geneva’ Server supersedes Active Directory Federation Services to offer customers the flexibility of browser based Web Single Sign-On and Federation using either the WS-Federation passive protocol or the Web SSO Profile of the SAML 2.0 protocol. ‘Geneva’ Server also provides Managed Information Card support for both Windows CardSpace v1 and Windows CardSpace ‘Geneva’.

TechEd EMEA- Latest Innovations from Microsoft Help Developers Build Better Applications, Faster

grantkd — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

During the keynote address at Microsoft TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers, Jason Zander, General Manager of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., highlighted how Microsoft is dramatically simplifying everyday development tasks through recently released technologies, such as Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, and the forthcoming Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 releases.

Designed to simplify and improve the day-to-day experiences for millions of developers, Visual Studio 2010 will deliver:

Windows 7 support
Office Business Applications support
A WPF-based editor
Further C++ investments

More information about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 is available at www.microsoft.com/vsfutures.

In addition to disclosing more information about Visual Studio 2010, Zander announced new programs and tools modeled after its internal Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) that enable software developers to create more secure and privacy-enhanced applications.

The SDL Optimization Model and the Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling Tool are available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa570309.aspx. More information on the SDL Pro Network is available at www.microsoft.com/sdl.

Microsoft also announced a big step forward in the world of digital identity, unveiling the first public beta of a software platform, code-named “Geneva”, which will help developers create applications across the ‘cloud’, between organizations and on-premises with a single, simplified and open identity model. “Geneva” implements the shared industry vision of an interoperable Identity Metasystem via support for industry standard protocols such as WS-* and SAML and other interoperability capabilities. Additionally, Microsoft announced a collaboration with Orange and eBay on a proof-of-concept customer experience for eBay Powersellers and Orange network users that would use Windows^® Cardspace “Geneva”, the next generation of Microsoft’s identity card selector for users.

For more on these announcements and to view the full press release, please visit the TechEd Global Pressroom.

Jason Zander gives an overview of the announcements in his keynote in this video:

TechEd EMEA- IT Adds Even More Business Value in Tough Economic Times

grantkd — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA Microsoft made several announcements to help customers evolve their IT infrastructure for the next generation of Dynamic IT environments:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta. Microsoft's new platform includes cross-platform monitoring for Windows, Unix and Linux servers and improved service level monitoring. For more information on this release please visit http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 5. The report uses data from hundreds of millions of computer worldwide to offer an in-depth, global view of security and privacy threats for the first half of 2008. The full report is available for download at www.microsoft.com/sir

TechNet Online Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking enables IT professionals to save their web favorites online, see what other technical professionals are bookmarking, subscribe to new "social feeds," and network with other members of the Microsoft technical community. More information can be found online at: http://www.technetbookmarks.com/.

"Dublin." The codename for the enhanced Windows Server application, which will offer greater scalability, easier management and close integration with Internet Information Services (IIS) to provide a standard host for applications that use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) or Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Microsoft Application Virtualization Support for x64: Today Microsoft announced that Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) will support 64-bit applications and platforms in H1 2010.64-bit support will be included for both App-V client and server infrastructure components and fully compatible with Microsoft's 64-bit operating systems.For more information, please visit http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

Windows Server 2008 R2. New features of Windows Server 2008 R2 include: Live Migration, Branch Cache, DirectAccess and Remote Desktop Services (RDS), the new name for Terminal Services, reflects an expanded role allowing both session and virtual machine-based centralized computing.

Today, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team announced the RTM release of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 that includes new features such as Microsoft Online Services Needs Assessment and Survey. MAP is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help customer “go green." For more information, please visit the MAP team blog.

Integrated Identity and Security Solutions. Enterprise customers continually say that they need integrated identity management, access and security solutions - not separate point products. In response, Microsoft is investing heavily in the development and delivery of these integrated solutions to help customers better protect their organizations, increase productivity and reduce costs. In June 2008 Microsoft combined the identity and security engineering and business teams to accelerate this strategy.

Microsoft's approach in this area is unique and based on a wide range of connected products and technologies: The secure Windows platform with built-in identity infrastructure and policy-based access, as well as security, identity and systems management solutions like Forefront, Identity Lifecycle Manager and System Center.

Today at TechEd IT Pro in Europe, Microsoft announced two product milestones in support of this strategy.

o The Release Candidate of Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" is available now at www.microsoft.com/ilm2. Due for release in the first half of 2009, ILM "2" provides self-service for employees, enhanced administration and automation for IT professionals, and extensibility for developers.

o Available soon, Intelligent Application Gateway Service Pack 2 takes advantage of virtualization technology to give mobile workers easy and secure access to applications from a broad range of devices and locations.

o Additional information about these products can be found on the Forefront Team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/forefront and a video about ILM "2,"on TechNet Edge can be found here: http://edge.technet.com/Media/ILM-v2-policies-demo-and-interview/

.For more on these announcements and to view the full press release, please visit the TechEd Global Pressroom.

In this video, Brad Anderson, General Manager, Microsoft Management and Services Division, gives an overview of the announcements made in his keynote today.