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):

• run the following query in the Reporting database
• go to the farm central admin page

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

1. Register to Microsoft Project Conference 2012 next march in Phoenix Arizona.Yes you can’t miss it! We have great content and speakers, plus it’s a very unique opportunity to network with Microsoft, customers, partners and MVPs. More information on our site: http://msprojectconference.com Also check out the partner pre-event Jan announced you do not want to miss if you are a PPM partner: Celebrate Project 2010 Momentum at Project Conference 2012 during the Project Partner exclusive pre-day!
2. Update your farms/servers with the latest software updates (SP & CU), for 2010 we released Service Pack 1 (SP1) last June and this week the December 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) below. We have shipped a number of updates based on your feedback and ensuring your users/customers experience the latest and greatest from Microsoft is a great holiday gift ! As usual please read the best practices and guidance documented on TechNet on how to deploy software updates.
   1. Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement
   2. Announcing The Release Of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010
3. Read the latest product documentation and guidance – yes there is a lot of valuable content we have published throughout the year and continue to do so based on your feedback so please ensure you are on top to optimize your usage or our stack. A great tool to start catching up on documentation is the Enterprise Project Management Content Pivot Viewer. A sample of recent documents for instance are listed below (and yes there are a few more on TechNet and our main product site: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/articles-white-papers.aspx)
   1. Actual Work Best Practices Documentation Now Available
   2. Best practices for managing a large number of resources in Project Server 2010
   3. Testing Project Server 2010 deployments
   4. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Project Manager's Guide for Project Web App
4. Catch up on recent Project news announced on our main product blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project . I also recommend that you start following us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest and greatest. Key announcements recently are:
1. Microsoft is Rated in the Gartner Project and Portfolio Applications MarketScope
2. Announcing SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010
3. Microsoft Project for the masses
5. Deploy our latest Project 2010 Demo Pack V2 as announced by Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and yes it contains Project Server and scenarios and data to showcase our full PPM functionalities.
6. Read our recently published customer case studies: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/customer-success.aspx. For instance in the past few months we released these:
   1. Revlon - IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent
   2. Nagra - Digital Security Firm Makes More Efficient, Data-Driven Decisions About IT Projects
   3. Intel - Intel Will Save Annually While Making Project Management More Flexible
7. Purchase Project and or Project Server 2010 books – yes another testament that 2010 is an awesome release, is the quantity of books available today listed on your favorite online site. In addition check out our Training and Learning site.
8. Test out our Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Innovation Process Management (IPM) solutions. A lot more information can be found below:
   1. New Feature Pack from Visual Studio Improves Project Management and Software Development Team Collaboration
   2. Innovation Management and Ideation Solutions with SharePoint and Project Server
9. Ramp up on Windows 8, SQL Server 2012 and System Center 2012, key links below:
   1. Building Windows 8
   2. SQL Server 2012
   3. System Center 2012
10. Sign up for an Office 365 trial, yes its landmark release for our cloud offering and it keeps getting better on a regular basis: official Office 365 site.
11. Buy a Windows Phone and feel the love! Could not resist to add this 11th task… Seriously test out the Office 365 integration for instance or more fun application like the Skydrive app or the XBox Companion app to name two. It’s a great OS and it has improved by professional and personal productivity a lot. A lot more information here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone.

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:

• Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners!
• IMPORTANT: PPM Competency Transition Period
• PCU3ED, TPG and UMT –Three Project Conference 2012 Premier Sponsors

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:

• Project Server 2010 does not support multi-tenant environments (like SharePoint 2010 does)
• Requires SQL Server Analysis Services for reporting (OLAP cubes)
• Queue Services: introduced in Project Server 2007 to handle spikes in transactions like users submitting their timesheets on Friday for instance
• Resource Pool a key capability of PS which enables to model your capacity and demand and hence figure out shortages or surplus
• Authorization/Permission Model: while authentication is handled by SharePoint, authorization is specific to Project Server and has a lot more granularity that the out of the box SharePoint’s
• Cross-farm services not supported
• Must be installed on each application server and front-end Web in the farm
• On-Demand Hosting Services for Project Server 2010

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:

• Plan for performance and capacity (Project Server 2010)
• Model: Hosting architectures for SharePoint Server 2010
• White paper: SharePoint 2010 for hosters (SharePoint Server 2010)
• Rational Guide to Multi Tenancy with SharePoint 2010

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

• First and foremost, with the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack we have reduced the number of project planning and status meetings.
• The feature pack allows people to raise flags more quickly and in a more comfortable setting—which means we make fewer mistakes.
• With the feature pack, the team leads can take more responsibility for exactly what they are doing and be more accountable to the other members of their team.

Benefits

• Up to 30 percent less meeting time needed
• Productivity gains of 2–5 percent
• Improved risk management
• Improved time-recording procedures
• Increased responsibility

Other Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) case studies:

• TechResult
• Microsoft IT

Other case studies can be found here: Microsoft Project & Project Server customer successes.

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?