Archive

In June, our theme is Unified Communications with a focus on Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Communications Server.

What do you see when you look around you? Today’s reality is about pervasive collaboration and grassroots innovation with no boundaries enabled by ubiquitous communications. Underlying this reality is doing more with less, effective use of resources, reducing costs, aligning with business strategies and objectives, powering real-time organizational agility and yet sill improving productivity, efficiency, client and user experience, and personalization. All of this happening with the user at the center and the surrounding communications technology transparent, dynamic, and seamless. What you see is also connected to what businesses are asking. How do you grow needed business intelligence, digital collaboration, information integration; substantially reduce risks, improve economy, and drive measurable ROI?

In May, our theme is Windows Server with a focus on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Beta).

What do you see in your work, in the news, and into the future? At the forefront, the world and organizations are shaped by economy, energy consumption, and powerful enabling technologies encapsulated in dynamic automated infrastructure environments with small footprints and embracing Green IT. In addition, the workforce has expectations of personalization, a rich and streamlined user experience, seamless access to ideas and information, with the focus on ease, productivity, and efficiency. The infrastructure must be reliable and secure providing effective solutions and information anytime, anywhere. Users demand this! How do you deliver on these needs? As IT Professionals you desire flexible tools, simple installation, full-featured management and monitoring capabilities ensuring effectiveness, automation, and control. This consistent experience spans the desktop, mobile workers, small and medium sized organizations, the enterprise, and the cloud. Business agility, operational efficiency, cost savings, energy demands, Green IT and organizational success is keyed on a powerful IT infrastructure serving as a strategic asset upon which software can deliver valued services and user applications powerfully and with confidence. At the heart of these requirements and providing the most effective infrastructure server environment is Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and for the future Windows Server 2008 R2.

In April, we focus on Security. Microsoft’s Forefront line of business security products helps provide protection for client and server operating systems, application servers, and the network edge.
Providing IT infrastructure security is always one of the top priorities for IT Pros. You see security issues in the news worldwide: a new threat, internet-spawned vulnerabilities, viruses, worms, malware, malicious code, spyware, rootkits, Trojans, assets and confidential information compromised, privacy breached, intellectual property stolen, computers rendered unusable, spam overload, public relations trust and brand erosion, financially-based attacks, and inappropriate content. The growing threat landscape is intimidating, now involves organized crime, and impacts your organization. Business agility, operational efficiency, and success is keyed on a “secure” IT infrastructure serving as a strategic asset upon which software can deliver valued services and user applications with safety and confidence. Moreover, compliance and security governance are requirements in today’s modern economy. A layered multi-pronged approach provides “defense in depth” security against threats to your business.

In March, we focus on Systems Management. Microsoft’s Systems Management platform is the System Center product suite.
IT infrastructure is a strategic asset and the critical foundation upon which software can deliver services and user applications that a business needs in order to operate effectively and succeed. Increasingly, IT infrastructure is moving to dynamic environments driven by automation, virtualization, and data center consolidation centered on policy and business-rule based real-time dynamic IT allocation. System Center solutions help IT Pros manage the physical and virtual IT environments across data centers, client computers, and devices. Using these integrated and automated management solutions, IT organizations can better manage organizational IT infrastructure and be more productive service providers to their businesses.

This month, we focus on the Windows Client. Today’s workforce expects a rich, personalized user experience supported by a reliable and secure personal platform providing solutions and information anytime, anywhere. Users demand seamless access to ideas, communications, images, and documents with the focus on productivity, efficiency, and confidentiality. IT Professionals desire flexible tools, simple installation, full-featured management and monitoring capabilities ensuring effectiveness, automation, and control. This consistent Windows Client experience spans the desktop, mobile workers, small and medium sized organizations, the enterprise, and the cloud. At the heart of these requirements and providing the most effective client operating environment is Microsoft Windows Vista and for the future, Windows 7.

This month, we focus on collaboration. It’s all about connecting people, processes, and information, and the sharing of ideas, communications, and documents-- anytime, anywhere. This is the reality of today’s distributed workforce. The social media or Web 2.0 revolution, with upwards of 90% penetration in Gen-Y/Gen-I, is a key driver for rapid adoption where users expect a rich and personalized collaborative work environment both inside and outside their place of work. Driving this collaboration are SharePoint Products and Technologies including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS), Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, and related technologies.

This month, we focus on web infrastructure products. At the heart of Microsoft web infrastructure is the Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0, a part of Windows Server 2008.

This month, our focus is on all things virtualization. Virtualization is an approach to deploying computing resources that isolates different layers in computing stack - such as hardware, operating system, applications, and data - from each other.