Christophe Fiessinger's Blog The latest news you need to know about Microsoft Project
Happy new year! Yes I’m sure you are all actively making travel arrangements to attend Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix next march, specially after this key announcement today: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Full Session List Announced! Since I know you love to plan and budget I have put together a list of upcoming events Microsoft PPM will participate in (sessions, demo booth, etc.) in the next few months (yes there are plenty of other regional events as well) but these are the ones the corporate marketing team will be involved in. If you have any interest to present and or help with these feel free to contact me via this blog. Stay tune for more information on each event in the future!
Right before the holidays and following these two recent announcements from Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and Brian Smith: Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement. I decided to upgrade my demo environment to showcase the latest and greatest of Microsoft “strong positive” PPM offering with SP1 and the December 2011 CU. After about one hour I had my demo VM up and running with the latest Service Pack 1 and December 2011 CU for Project and Project Server 2010 as shown below. The new Project Server 2010 version number for the December 2011 Cumulative update is now: 14.0.6114.5000. Happy demoing and selling!
Two ways to check the version number (please refer to TechNet for CU deployment guidance):
Don’t forget to attend Brian & Adrian’s webcast next Tuesday January 10th at 8am PST to get an overview of this latest update: TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update
SELECT * FROM VERSIONS ORDER BY TIMESTAMP DESC
See you in Phoenix for #PC12!
Dear readers I wish you all a restful and peaceful holiday break! Since it’s a quiet time of the year and a great opportunity to catch up on recent product updates and announcement I wanted to provide you a list of tasks to keep you busy if you have spare cycle in the coming two weeks
PS: please find above a poster we used internally recently thanks to a similar campaign done by the Microsoft Germany subsidiary
Yes you can thanks to Brian and Brian: Impress the family: Make Thanksgiving Day a success with Project 2010
On a separate note check out these recent announcements from Jan:
I wish all of that are based in the US a happy thanksgiving week-end!
Following a session I delivered at SharePoint Conference 2011 in October, as well as few emails received recently, and following the very strong momentum Microsoft Project Server 2010 has, a common topic “du jour” customers are asking: does Project Server 2010 supports multi-tenancy? Hence, the goal of this post is to answer this question.
What is multi-tenancy?
First before I go any further I think it’s important to define multi tenancy since people have different expectations to its meaning and implications. Wikipedia’s definition of Multitenancy is:
Multitenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants).
In this SharePoint 2010 document on TechNet: Model: Hosting architectures for SharePoint Server 2010 it says:
Multitenancy refers to the ability to partition data of otherwise shared services or software in order to accommodate multiple tenants. This is in contrast to setting up separate hardware or even running multiple instances of a service.
Spencer Harbar in this post Rational Guide to Multi Tenancy with SharePoint 2010 does a great job defining multi-tenancy in the SharePoint 2010 world, and in particular mentions: “Multi-Tenancy in SharePoint 2010 isn’t a “feature” that lights up. It’s a combination of many things which all together enable the scenario we are interested in.”
Project Server 2010 and multi-tenancy
Can you have multiple customers/business units/departments on the same SharePoint and Project Server farm and infrastructure? YES you can! But please remember these Project Server considerations for multi-tenancy:
With the above factors in mind, yes again you can have multiples customers and instances on the same infrastructure and farm, and just because we do not support multi-tenant like SharePoint does in 2010, it does not mean you need multiple farms to serve your customers. Clear examples of multi-tenancy today are on-demand hosting companies like Project Hosts and BeMo (more listed here) that offers shared online environment for their customers. We also have customers that have been providing Project Server to internal business unit since the 2007 version (internal multi-tenancy). Please note that I wrote this post last year on the topic of should you have a dedicated farm for Project Server or leverage a central SharePoint farm and infrastructure: Project Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010: one farm or multiple?
Please find below an example of multi-tenancy following feedback from the hosting companies mentioned above:
In summary yes you can have multiple tenant on the same Project Server 2010 farm and infrastructure but it cannot be achieved using the SharePoint 2010 multi-tenancy features. For any additional questions/feedback about this topic feel free to contact me via this blog.
Useful resources:
Following the recent release of the Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack (Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack has released!) I’m happy to announce this third case study showcasing the integration of TFS and Project Server 2010: IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent
Key quotes
Benefits
Other Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) case studies:
Other case studies can be found here: Microsoft Project & Project Server customer successes.
I’m very excited about this announcement this morning: Microsoft Officially Welcomes Skype. I have a fairly international family spread across multiple continents and every time I travel it’s exciting to see how broadly Skype is used and a recognized brand worldwide. This opens up lots of exciting opportunities in the future… About a month ago I wrote this post Celebrating 10 years at Microsoft and it’s amazing how many major announcements we have made since September, a non exhaustive list below:
More Microsoft Press Releases Archives here.
In the end I’m all fired up about the future and MSFT continuous innovation!
Following this recent announcement last month from the System Center Service Manager team: New SCSM–Microsoft Project Connector Released, I finally got a chance to test out this very nice solution built by Expit’s. In their own word:
Expit has developed a plugin/connector that enables the exchange of information between project planning software (Project server 2010) and System Center Service Manager. The connector allows project server users to convert project tasks into tickets in service manager directly from project server or project professional clients that are connected to project server. Additionally, the connector also updates project tasks to reflect ticket status in service manager and mark tasks as complete once tickets are closed.
Expit has also recorded the following video to demo the product: Expit SCSM Project Connector; and please find below screenshots from my own testing, again it’s a great validation of the Project 2010 momentum and its rich extensibility that helps you meet your project management needs in your favorite planning tool!
Following this post from my colleague Jan Kalis: Project 2010 at SharePoint Conference 2011, I’m really looking forward to see you starting this Sunday in California. I visited recently Australia and Korea and it’s amazing to see the Project Server 2010 momentum and obviously the SharePoint 2010 rapid adoption by our customers and hence partners. When I look at the number of attendees we have for the pre-event this Sunday for instance, it’s again a solid case for the interest in this “strong-positive” release (see Gartner’s latest report on our stack: Microsoft is Rated in the Gartner Project and Portfolio Applications MarketScope). I’ll be delivering the sessions below at SPC11 as well as one this Sunday on Project Server 2010 Architecture and Administration Overview.
What I really love about great events like this beside talking about my favorite products, is to meet people, get feedback and learn how they are using our software; or another way to say it is I see this as a great networking opportunity so again I’m looking forward to see as many of you. Beside delivering sessions I’ll also be hanging in and out of the Project booth on the expo hall. I’ll arrive Saturday night and will return to sunny Seattle Wednesday night and staying at the Marriott so if you want to meet don’t be shy and would love to hear your Project 2010 story (email me via this blog)!
PS: Talking about great event, and again for the same reason as above this is one event you do not want to miss: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Registration Open!
SPC273 – Monday at 2:00pm SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server Is SharePoint becoming an important part of your company’s overall IT offering? If so, it's likely that you have a need to better manage SharePoint business requests. Join industry expert Scott Jamison as he discusses the importance of SharePoint Lifecycle Management from an IT governance perspective. In this session we'll demonstrate how business users can make special project requests through a form in Project Web App, and how Project Managers can monitor and assign resources, evaluate priorities, and manage their overall project portfolio more efficiently. Christophe Fiessinger; Scott Jamison, SharePoint MVP
SPC275 – Tuesday at 3:15pm Solving Agile and PMO Problems by Integrating Project Server 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 Do your Project Managers and Developers need to play nicer together? In this session, we'll discuss how integrating Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 allows you to enable development and project management teams to collaborate and communicate more effectively by using tools that they are most familiar with. In addition, we will conduct demos and share real world stories and best practices from customers.
SPC313 –Wednesday at 3:15pm Best Practices for Deploying Project Server 2010 on SharePoint Farm Are you interested in deploying Project Server 2010 but don't know where to start? In this session we will provide you with an overview on how to deploy Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a SharePoint 2010 Farm. Specifically, we will discuss how to deploy Project Server in an existing or separate farm, asses the proper capacity planning, and how to tackle upgrading and migration.
I love the creativity from France (yes I’m objective) with this new contest targeted a students. You basically have 17 billion to build your own island with its hotels etc.… the goal is to have the best return on investment (ROI) all using Project & Project Server 2010, and you get to speak French. Winning team will get a trip to an exotic destination!
Student life is good, isn’t it?