Microsoft announce Exchange Online and SharePoint Online

Today’s big news is Microsoft’s announcement that they are planning to provide online, hosted, subscription-based versions of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint to organisations of all sizes. This is a big big step toward expanding their software plus services strategy. The new services are scheduled to be generally available to businesses of all sizes in the second half of the year.

Today, the sold-out first day of the SharePoint 2007 conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced these new hosted subscription-based services, and also the release of the Silverlight BluePrint for SharePoint and the general release of Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express.

SharePoint is just getting bigger and bigger. 3/4 of Fortune-100 organisations have now adopted SharePoint. It is Microsoft biggest, fastest selling server product today! It is the new de facto standard for enterprise collaboration, enterprise portal, enterprise search, enterprise content management, and enterprise social networking – all out-of-the-box!

Based on the proven, business-class software available in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the new online services announced today enable businesses to access e-mail, calendaring, contacts, shared workspaces, and web-conferencing and video-conferencing over the Web. The new services are managed through a single Web-based interface, designed to meet the needs of IT professionals. Through this security-enhanced interface, IT professionals can monitor the performance of the services, add and configure users, submit and track support requests, and manage users and licenses.

Bill Gates said. “With Microsoft Online Services, businesses can deploy software as a subscription service, from servers they manage on-site, or a combination of the two, depending on their specific needs. In the future, customers and partners should expect to see this kind of choice and flexibility for all of Microsoft’s software and server products.”

The keynote of the conference can be seen here:

High quality (750 kbps)

Medium quality (300 kbps)

Basic quality (100 kbps)

Video is well worth a watch, especially the second half which shows where the product is going to next!

It looks like SharePoint is just getting bigger and bigger… Microsoft have doubled their technical and implementation consultancy support for SharePoint and they intend to double it again within the next 6 months to try to keep up with the increase in customer demand….

Microsoft DreamSpark – Free Development and Design Software for Students!

Today Microsoft announced DreamSpark – a new programme which allows students worldwide to download valuable professional developer and design software – COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE!!!

Outgoing Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates unveiled this ultimate software giveaway to millions of students which will enable them to learn industry standard development technologies and design technologies, increasing their potential to be prepared and to succeed in today’s IT industry.

“We want to do everything we can to equip a new generation of technology leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to harness the magic of software to improve lives, solve problems and catalyze economic growth,” Gates said. “Microsoft DreamSpark provides professional-level tools that we hope will inspire students to explore the power of software and encourage them to forge the next wave of software-driven breakthroughs.”

The DreamSpark student program can be accessed by signing up at the following web address: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

Software available through the student program will include:

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• 12-month free Academic membership in the XNA Creators Club
• Microsoft designer tools. This ultra-versatile suite of tools will enable students to vividly bring their creative visions to life in vibrant new Web site designs and more effective digital content, including animation, imagery and photography.
• Expression Studio, including
• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Media
• Microsoft platform resources. The foundation for development and design platforms, these products deliver a security-enhanced, reliable and manageable environment for students to more quickly turn ideas into reality.
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server, Standard Edition

This really is a huge software giveaway! More cynical members of the IT community are speculating that this giveaway is largely in response to the rapidly growing adoption of free and open source development and design software available on the internet such as Linux, PHP, MySQL, Eclipse and The Gimp, as well as in direct competition to well-ingrained de facto industry standard commercial design software tools from Adobe…

The cynical would suggest that Microsoft is banking on their giveaway to likely have a large impact on personal preferences of graduates joining commercially licensed software development and media design companies in the coming years…