The Security of our Customers and Partners is important to Microsoft . The be able to efficiently operate your IT Infrastructure, Microsoft will issue an Out-of-Band Security Update today, 28 July, at about 19:00 Central European Time. Products covered are all currently supported versions of Internet Explorer and Visual Studio.

Pre-Alert Information: Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for July 2009 (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-jul-ans.mspx)

Technical WebCast, 28 July, 22:00 (CET): “TechNet Webcast: Information About Microsoft’s July 2009 Out-of-Band Security Bulletin Release (Level 200)”: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032422339&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

The receive pre-alerts for this, and other security alerts, you can subscribe to the “Microsoft Technical Security Notifications” http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/notify.mspx

If your are using Firefox, the Microsoft Search Team have developed an add-in to allow you to make your default search engine Bing.

You can download it from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10434

The add-on has already over 488’000 downloads!

You can assess your existing PC hardware compatibility with Windows 7 requirements and do this network-wide with the free Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 4.0 for Windows 7.

More information here and the same toolkit can do Server readiness for Windows Server 2008 R2 too.

As highlighted in the Windows 7 Blog, RTM is expected in the 2nd half of July 2009. Some important points:

• Volume License Customers will get Windows 7 on 1 September 2009
• MSDN and TechNet subscribers will get it a few weeks after RTM
• It will be in retail stores on 22 October 2009

Don’t trust any copies of Windows 7 that are floating around on the Internet.

I can’t wait to install you, but like you, I also need to wait until the Windows team says it is ready.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, we just announced the business model and pricing for the Microsoft Azure Platform.

Have a look here for the details. Azure is available in Switzerland, among other countries.