News From Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner
Conference 2010
This week Microsoft is having their annual World
Wide Partner Conference in Washington DC from July
11-15th. Thousands of Microsoft partners will be in
attendance to hear about Microsoft’s roadmap for the
upcoming year, network and build connections and
experience the latest product innovations.
Unfortunately, this year, PC Professional was not
able to attend, but it doesn’t mean that we are
still not hearing about what is going on. Here are
some of the announcements that have been made thus
far:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will be publicly
available as a beta release in September 2010,
beginning with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
Microsoft is coining their new and improved CRM,
“The Power of Productivity”, which will enable
independent software vendors, global system
integrators and value-added resellers, to quickly
create, package and distribute Microsoft Dynamics
CRM extensions and custom solutions. Also, Microsoft
Dynamics Marketplace will be integrated within
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, allowing customers to
search for applications directly from within their
CRM solution.
Here’s what Microsoft had to say about their new
product
“We are excited to get the new release of
Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new features will give
us even more power and flexibility to create and
easily customize CRM solutions to meet the unique
business needs of our customers and help them be
more productive,” said Jason Hunt, Avanade CRM and
xRM evangelist. “We are also looking forward to the
introduction of Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace, as
it opens up new opportunities that will enable us to
expand our reach and get our CRM solutions out to a
broader, global audience.”
New & Improved Features
- Improved Microsoft Outlook experience. The
best Microsoft Outlook client experience will
take advantage of Outlook’s full functionality
and include previews and conditional formatting.
- Data visualizations. Users can quickly
create and share inline charts with drill-down
intelligence to navigate data and uncover new
insights.
- Dashboards. Businesses can configure
dashboards to actively monitor business
performance.
- The Cloud. Developers can develop and deploy
custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
using powerful tools, such as Microsoft Visual
Studio. They can also incorporate Microsoft
Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation
and Language Integrated Query into their cloud
solutions.
- Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace. Customers
can quickly find, download custom solutions and
extensions embedded within Microsoft Dynamics
CRM.
Windows Phone 7 Beta Software Developer Kit
During a Microsoft WPC keynote on July 13th,
Microsoft announced the availability of the beta
version of the Software Developer Kit for Windows
Phone 7 OS. Andy Lees, senior vice president of
mobile communications business for Microsoft, made
the announcement during his keynote. Microsoft hopes
to create mobile solutions that offer integration
between Windows Phone 7 and SharePoint Server,
Exchange Server, Microsoft Office and Business
Productivity Online.
Also announced, Windows Phone OS will support
Windows Phone Live. Windows Phone Live is
Microsoft’s new web-based service that will offer
mobile device support for sync backup for contacts
and photos as well as for lost or stolen phones, a
remote wipe and locate features options. Once
launched, the service will also offer a SkyDrive
with 25GB of remote storage, Office and Zune support
for media sync. Microsoft is expected to have
launched devices running their latest operating
systems by the end of the year.
eBay and Microsoft Together in the Cloud
On the second day of Microsoft’s WPC 2010,
Microsoft announced that eBay will be one of the
first customers of Microsoft’s new Windows Azure
platform appliance for cloud computing. The Windows
Azure platform will have a limited production
release.
eBay’s goal is to incorporate the Windows Azure
platform appliance into two of its datacenters to
further optimize its platform and achieve greater
strategic agility and datacenter efficiency. The
appliance is optimized for scale out applications
and datacenter efficiency across hundreds to tens of
thousands of servers. Check out eBay’s iPad listing
page at:
http://ipad.ebay.com, which is hosted on the
Windows Azure platform.
“Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the
Windows Azure platform appliance shows it is
committed to world-class cloud computing solutions.
eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation
software-as-a-service-based applications with our
platform’s architecture, scale and reliability, ”
said James Barrese, eBay vice president of
technology. “Joint engineering on the Windows Azure
platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume
systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its
leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our
user experience through a flexible, scalable and
cost-effective solution.”
“eBay has one of the world’s largest ecommerce
platforms, and we believe the Windows Azure platform
appliance provides the scalability, automation,
datacenter efficiency and low cost of operations
that eBay requires to meet the needs of its
customers worldwide, ” said Bob Muglia, president of
Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.
eBay will deploy Microsoft’s Windows Azure
platform this year. |
