It's a daunting task. As Microsoft has broadened its business and our portfolio of products has proliferated, keeping up with launches, updates, service packs, and everything else has become more complex.  Trust me, even from the inside, it can be a struggle, so I sympathize with our partners and also marvel sometimes at their ability to keep things straight.

That being said, I do want to point you to two resources we offer on the partner portal that can help you navigate the myriad messages, resources, and nuggets of information that will help you make the most of every launch.

Launch Central (https://partner.microsoft.com/us/launch or https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40033583). We created this US-specific page for the launch of Vista/Office/Exchange a couple of years ago, and partners told us it was a really helpful tool for getting a quick view of what was going on. Launch Central acts as a "mini-portal" and we encourage product marketers to contribute and refine launch-related content and calls to action that drive how partners learn about, market, and sell solutions recently launched or soon to be launched.

Launch Resources (https://partner.microsoft.com/US/productssolutions/launchresources).  This is a slightly different pivot of launch-related resources, focusing more on the products themselves by offering information about trials, betas, toolkits, and other goodies that help you get your hands on the products and understand what's on the horizon.

Why two different pages?  Well, I think these pages provide two distinct views of our launch efforts--Launch Central for the selling/marketing view and Launch Resources for the product-specific view.  A lot of times at Microsoft, we take the "kitchen-sink" approach because we feel like we have so many great things to tell and offer to our partners.  Two pages seems like a small price to pay to offer a little bit more clarity.  If you have a different opinion, or thoughts about how we can improve these pages and their respective content, I would love to hear them...