MSDN TV guidance on how to take advantage of service orientation concepts using currently-available technologies. Build Services Today - Richard Turner outlines the benefits of building systems out of distributed services rather than distributed components...

Just announced - enhanced integration between Microsoft Office and SAP - code named "Mendocino" http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-26SAPMSBusinessEfficiencyPR.asp

"Metro" is the codename for a set of conventions for the use of XML and other widely available technologies to describe the content and appearance of paginated documents. By proposing these specifciations, Microsoft hopes to enable document-level interoperability...

Very interesting - BizTalk architecture is extremely flexible and performance tuning can be quite complex due to the myriad of different configurations possible. This paper exposes some of the key performance variables to consider in planning a deployment...

Check out Bill's keynote highlighting the advances in 64-bit computing, mobility, and a preview of Longhorn. See demos of a digital movie production platform, a comparison of a SQL DTS run of 5 million records on 32-bit vs. 64-bit, new devices that converge...

We just pushed live a major refresh of microsoft.com/interop - lots of new content, better organization, and, as requested by many bloggers, links to interop content posted by other major platform players. Check it out! http://www.microsoft.com...

New article by Rocky Lhotka on SOA governance - contracts vs. covenants and how to address the issues of service versioning in a loosely-coupled world. http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=SOAVersioningCovenant

If you haven't seen it, Steve Ballmer is on stage with a rack of Sun servers, some running Windows, some Solaris. Demo is using WS-Management to use MOM on Windows to manage/failvoer both Sun/Windows and Sun/Solaris configurations. Pretty cool stuff highlighting...

Check out a cool new kit available for free at http://www.microsoft.com/connectedsystems . It features whitepapers, case studies, and architectural information on Connected Systems and SOA. In addition, it contains a walk-through of Microsoft's implementation...

There is a wealth of new training available in both physical lab and e-learning formats. Given that this training is in high demand, here are some links to the new offerings. New BizTalk e-Learning offerings from MS-Learning: 2434 : Introduction...

I've gotten a couple of questions lately on WSRP support and Sharepoint - here's some guidance I've gleaned from some experts in Redmond: Microsoft does not yet officially offer WSRP support, however the SharePoint team has developed two unofficial...

Interesting article on use web services to extend the functionality on InfoPath forms to non-InfoPath clients.... "This proof-of-concept article demonstrates how some functionality of a Microsoft Office InfoPath solution, based on a Web service, can...

Introductory guidance on how to write managed .NET code against unmanaged Office libraries - "interop" within the Microsoft product set, but interesting nonetheless. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dno2k3ta/html...

Friday, April 15, 2005 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) Presenter: Shankar Pal, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032271488&Culture=en-US

Featured on MSDN home page: BizTalk Server 2004 Technical Guide for High Availability Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BTS_2004WP/html/922d9b1a-c6f2-4d42-9f7a-2876eac7f50d.asp

Great event focusing on migration options from an IBM mainframe to a Windows/Intel datacenter. No marketing fluff, just presentations by actual customers who have done this and the partners who support them. Event information: http://www.realtime-productions...