June, 2010

WVC127PAL: Windows 7 Return on Investment for Small and Midsize Business Customers

Presented by: Ivan Meljac

Webcast Date: 6/24/2010

Webcast Start Time: 9:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  100

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training, Partner Developer, Partner IT Professional

Hear from IDC about the results of their research on the business value of Windows 7 Professional for small and midsize business customers. Since the launch of the Windows 7 operating system, IDC has spoken with hundreds of small and midsize businesses around the world to learn about their experience with deploying the new operating system and the business benefits Windows 7 has brought to their companies. Results show an average return on investment of 318% and an 8 month payback period, although results vary depending on company size, geography, and deployment method. 

MGT80PAL: Implementing SCE 2010

Presented by: Prajyot Saran

Webcast Date: 6/24/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

This session will provide the sales positioning of System Center Essentials 2010, as well as demonstrate setup of the SCE 2010 server and initial configuration of the software updates, agent monitoring, and reporting functionality. This is a recommended pre-requisite for selling SCE 2010.

Topics Include:

-Installation

-Configuration

-Administration

-Reporting

-Notification

MGT81PAL: How to Manage Servers in Midsized Businesses

Presented by: Birojit Nath; Vikas Madan

Webcast Date: 6/29/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

Whether those servers are physical or virtual, midsized businesses need similar capabilities as enterprise management but in an easy-to-use, unified toolset. System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 brings together monitoring, deployment and virtual management technologies from the System Center enterprise products into a single console that is designed for midsized businesses with 50-500 PCs and up to 50 servers. In this session, we will look at monitoring those physical and virtual servers for health, deploying new servers and even migrating older physical servers to virtual for easier management.

Managing Datacenter (MOSS /Exchange)

-Importing Management Packs

-Overrides

-Managing Virtual Machines Using SCE 2010

-Distributed Applications

-Synthetic Transactions.

MGT88PAL: Understanding How Citrix Extends the Microsoft System Center Desktop Management Solution

Presented by: Sean Donahue

Webcast Date: 6/29/2010

Webcast Start Time: 12:00 PM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

This session will guide the attendees through the new integration features that are being developed by Citrix on top of multiple System Center products including the XenApp Connector for Configuration Manager that allows the System Center Admin to deliver and manage applications to the XenApp farm. Barry will also demonstrate the integration work of XenApp delivering App-V packages through Receiver and Self Service provisioning with Dazzle.

WNS169PAL: Past, Present, and Future of Windows-Based NAS: A Growing Market for Highly Available Solutions

Presented by: Joel Garcia; Scott M. Johnson

Webcast Date: 6/30/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training, Partner Developer, Partner IT Professional

In this session we outline the current and future Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions. We will demonstrate the flexibility of the iSCSI Software Target and the new 2-cluster setup OOBE.  Review the new Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 editions, from the new ‘Essentials’ SKU to the highly-available Enterprise SKU. 

APU07PAL: How to Speed Up Your Sale With a SQL Server Consolidation QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 6/30/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

Over the last several years, organizations have begun using increasing numbers of applications to manage business processes, provide new services, and gain insights into business performance. Consequently, the number of application servers and data storage servers that are required to support those applications has grown significantly increasing the cost of deployment and Maintenance. QuickStarts are packaged 2-day technical engagements based on best practices derived from the Microsoft field. They aim to provide customers with an immersion experience into the technology while keeping the engagement short and precise. Attend this session to learn more about how to deliver a 2-day SQL Server Consolidation QuickStart to your customers and speed up your sale. It is designed to provide the customers with a solid understanding of the technical value of SQL Server 2008 in a consolidation scenario. The engagement covers Consolidation best practices and tools.  It also helps customers understand the state of their existing SQL Server deployment better.

APU08PAL: How to Speed Up Your Sale With a SQL Server Migration QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 7/6/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

Over the last several years, organizations have begun using increasing numbers of applications to manage business processes, provide new services, and gain insights into business performance. Consequently, the number of application servers and data storage servers that are required to support those applications has grown significantly increasing the cost of deployment and Maintenance. QuickStarts are packaged 2-day technical engagements based on best practices derived from the Microsoft field. They aim to provide customers with an immersion experience into the technology while keeping the engagement short and precise. Attend this session to learn more about how to deliver a 2-day SQL Server Consolidation QuickStart to your customers and speed up your sale. It is designed to provide the customers with a solid understanding of the technical value of SQL Server 2008 in a consolidation scenario. The engagement covers Consolidation best practices and tools.  It also helps customers understand the state of their existing SQL Server deployment better.

APU09PAL: SQL Server for Mission Critical MOSS Implementation QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 7/8/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

It is widely known that SharePoint adoption grows exponentially across an organization – quickly gaining momentum and taking root as a critical part of an organization’s ecosystem. Help Customers choose the right Edition of SQL Server 2008 To help protect data, ensure availability, and keep costs down through the QuickStart. QuickStarts are packaged 2-day technical engagements based on best practices derived from the Microsoft field. They aim to provide customers with an immersion experience into the technology while keeping the engagement short and precise. Attend this session to learn how to position the right edition of SQL server for Mission Critical MOSS Implementations.

APU10PAL: SQL Server High Availability QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 7/13/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

Today we live in a 24x7 economy. Customers are worldwide and business never stops. To support this many systems need to be continuously available. Any downtime has a direct result on revenue and, perhaps more importantly, reputation. High availability is required because systems fail and need maintenance. Hardware, software, and infrastructure failures are inevitable and companies need a strategy to mitigate the effects of these failures. The SQL Server High Availability QuickStart is targeted at customers who have many applications running on SQL Server and want to improve the availability of their environment while reducing the total cost of ownership. It is a structured two day engagement that is based on the best practices from Microsoft Field.

We’re pleased to announce that there is now an updated version of the Live@edu Implementation Guide! Ben and James have made improvements to the guide to reflect the current version of the product and associated management agent. Please download a copy to  share with colleagues, customers, and partners.

It is available on SkyDrive – so go to http://cid-f8bffb959c87fc8a.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Live@edu%20Documentation and download a copy.

For reference also check out the Live@edu web site and blog at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukliveatedu

http://microsoft.com/liveatedu

Microsoft Office Competition, UK Final

Last Friday, in a record breaking and nerve-tingling Microsoft Office Competition Grand Final, two student’s stars shone the brightest.

For the first time, the newly crowned UK Champions both achieved 100% in each of their exams. With Nathaniel Fox getting top marks in the Microsoft Office Specialist Excel exam and Sam Wills repeating the achievement in the Word exam. Remarkably, both students came from the same school – Hayle Community School – a fantastic showing from the School and Microsoft IT Academy from Cornwall.

Up next for the UK champions is the EMEA Final in Madrid on June 28^th. Where they face stiff competition from entrants from Russia, Greece and Italy to name buy a few of the competing nations. If successful in Madrid the World Final in Salt Lake City, UTAH beckons this August.

Over 100,000 students compete each year from over 70 different countries so getting to UTAH is a massive challenge for our Champs.

Link to photos - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Microsoft-IT-Academy-UK/220931430134

“The Microsoft competition was a great experience and achievement as the school won four out of six prizes’ said Sam, while Nathaniel added “‘We couldn’t believe that we’d won and are now UK Champions. I can’t wait for the final in Madrid, what an experience that will be!’

Headteacher Chris Jackman is also delighted by the achievements of her students.  ‘The school is very proud of our young people’s achievements at the competition and to be UK Champions is wonderful” she said.  “We wish Nathaniel and Megan lots of luck as they represent the UK at the European final in Madrid later this month’.

Kevin Ryan, Marketing Manager with Prodigy Learning, who manage the competition in the UK, said “The scores were astonishing and the bar has certainly been raised for future competitors”. Vitally both Sam and Nathaniel kept their nerves in check and delivered on the day. This calmness under pressure should stand them in good stead for Madrid.  I wish them both the best of luck and we might just see our first European Champion and who knows from there!”

Brand New Feature Package on Cloud Security
TechNet is kicking off the new "TechNet On" feature series with an in-depth look at securing and deploying applications in the cloud. You'll find new articles and videos in three tracks, including a background track on the Windows Azure platform, a security track with best practices on enterprise-class security for the cloud, and a strategy track for understanding your options and getting started. Read TechNet program manager Mitch Ratcliffe's blog for more on the new TechNet On approach to content.

TechNet Simulcast: Forefront Virtual Event
June 23 - 24, 2010
Register for the two-day Forefront virtual event to hear from and ask questions directly of the product team as we teach you about the product and deliver technical demonstrations on all Forefront products (FEP, FIM, TMG, UAG, FPSP, FPE, FOPE) and on Active Directory Rights Management Services + Exchange.

TechNet Radio: Growing Opportunities for Data in the Cloud
In this episode, Kevin Kline, Technical Strategy Manager for SQL Server at Quest Software, identifies numerous areas for entrepreneurs to take advantage of government and other data in the cloud to create new product offerings based on Microsoft Windows Azure. Kline also discusses integration of on-premise data with data in the cloud and raises important and surprising points about legal and compliance issues with data.

Reminder: End of Support for Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Professional on July 13, 2010
Support (including new security updates) ends July 13, 2010 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows 2000 Server and Professional. Migration to the latest OS or installation of the current service pack is recommended.

Webcast: Collaboration Using Office, SharePoint Server 2010, and AD FS 2.0 (Level 200)
June 18, 2010, 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time
In this webcast, we help you understand how to collaborate across boundaries using Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0.

Video: What's Next for Managing Datacenters and the Cloud
In this 18-minute video on TechNet Edge, Senior Product Manager with System Center Anant Sundaram explains some of our thinking around improving data center management and managing cloud environments.

Video: What's New with Configuration Manager R3 and vNext
Jeff Wettlaufer was busy getting ready for keynote demos at MMS, but he took time to talk with TechNet Edge's Adam Bomb about some of the Configuration Manager announcements at MMS, as well as talk a little about the event.

Windows 7 End User Adoption Resources Webcast
July 7, 2010, 9:30 A.M. Pacific Time
Join us on July 7 in this informational webcast to learn how you can take advantage of the wide array of resources to help support your organization's deployment and adoption of Windows 7.

Microsoft SDL Threat Modelling Tool Boosts Security
Now you can easily identify and analyze security threats to your software even when you are still in the design phase. The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Threat Modelling Tool finds potential issues early - when they are easier and less costly to resolve.

Last Friday, we had a fantastic day at the office, when we hosted the “Fun, Free Friday for Schools”. Just over 100 schools attended, and we had an absolutely packed agenda, as we demonstrated lots of the free Microsoft software available for schools to use.

All of the links to the various downloads we mentioned during the day are below. During the day we asked people to share ideas of how they would use the software to enhance their curriculum teaching, but we didn’t get the chance to write them all down – so if you attended the day, we’d appreciate it enormously if you’d add a comment to the blog to say how you hope to use one or more of the resources you saw on the day.

Bing Maps

Bing Maps is so much more than just maps and directions. Bing Maps delivers a truly immersive experience that connects people to the world and a growing number of useful and valuable applications. Whether you want to find and view photosynths, see Twitter feeds, explore environmental projects or just explore the world; Bing Maps is a great resource for educators and students to enrich their learning experience.

Photosynth

Photosynth is a tool that takes your photos, mashes them together and recreates a 3-D scene out of them that anyone can view and move around.

Community Clips

Community Clips is a free download from Office Labs that allows you record activity from your computer screen, narrate that activity and save it as a video file. This makes it ideal for recording simple instructional videos and to record student computer activity for assessment purposes.

You can download the Community Clips screen recorder at - http://www.officelabs.com/projects/communityclips/Pages/Default.aspx

Worldwide Telescope

Worldwide Telescope is a free download that enables you to access a huge collection of stunning images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope and many other space and earth observatories . These can be used to engage students, and to support teaching and learning in Maths and Science. It is a great tool to encourage students in research and project based learning around the planets, the solar system and the stars and to give them an appreciation of the scale, complexity and beauty of the universe.

Worldwide Telescope can be downloaded from http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx

Pivot

Pivot is a visual way of presenting and analysing data, from Microsoft Live Labs. It’s very difficult to describe in words, so perhaps the best way to see what it can do is to watch this video from the TED Conference 2010

You can download Pivot from the GetPivot website, and use it straight away with the Pivot Collection – or if you’re technical, you can create your own Pivot collection, either in Excel or from a data source. (I used the Pivot Collection Tool for Excel for the SIMS example)

DeepZoom

DeepZoom allows students to create image compositions that can be viewed at different resolutions. Photos can be embedded within one another making it an ideal resource to develop thinking skills and digital storytelling.

A great example of the use of  DeepZoom technology can be found at the Hard Rock Café - http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/. (You will need the Silverlight plug in to view this)

To make your own Deep Zoom compositions, download a free copy of DeepZoom Composer

You can find a series of tutorials about how to use DeepZoom Composer on the UK Teachers Blog

Live@edu

Outsource your email and collaboration solution using this free offering – give all of your staff and students a 10GB Exchange mailbox, 25GB storage and collaboration space, access to the office web app – oh – and it works on almost any platform and in almost any browser, too.

http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu

SkyDrive and Live Sync

SkyDrive is 25GB of online storage that you can access from any PC to store your files and either keep them private, share them with friends or make them public.  It’s at http://skydrive.live.com

Windows Live Sync is about to get an update to keep your PCs and web storage in sync.  Giving you 2GB of web storage space and the ability to sync content between multiple PCs, Live Sync is a great way to tool to keep you files and photos up to date. Unfortunately it is still in beta but will be part of the updated Windows Live Essentials – keep an eye out at http://get.live.com

Office Web Apps

The Office Web Apps have just launched this week. They’re at http://office.live.com and they provide free, lightweight editing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents through the browser.

Windows Live Messenger

More than just instant chat! Live messenger can be a great way of engaging your students in a more exciting and innovative way of learning. It’ll help save money with free simple video conferencing, and to take the pressure away from email - file sharing becomes instant. You can download it as part of Windows Live Essentials

Bing Translator

Ever been stuck with a bit of text or a website that’s in a language you don’t speak? Needed to get something across to a teacher across the seas? Or wanted to have an IM conversation that wasn’t limited by language barriers? Bing Translator bridges the gap between languages, so whether you’re chatting to someone or reading an article, you’re covered.

http://www.bing.com/translate

Windows Live Writer

Live Writer is a programme that allows you to write blog posts offline, and then upload them onto your blog (and it works with all kinds of different blog platforms, like WordPress, Blogger, Community Server, SharePoint, Live Spaces, and lots of others). You can find out a little more about it in my “I love Live Writer” blog post, and download it free with Windows Live Essentials.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Organise and find your photos really fast by date, descriptive tags or people tags.  Richard demonstrated how you can make your photos look better by tweaking exposure, colour or detail.  And then it allows you to share your photos easily by publishing to various online services such as SkyDrive or flickr.
You can download the current version as part of Windows Live Essentials

Windows Live Movie Maker

Import your existing photos and digital videos and create great looking movies which can be burned to dvd or published to online services such as SkyDrive or YouTube.
Add impact to your movies with stunning visual effects and soundtracks. Create an animated movie by displaying lots of still images at speeds of up to 33 frames per second.
You can download the current version as part of Windows Live Essentials

Songsmith

Singing in the shower is so last year – get your students creative juices flowing across the entire curriculum using Songsmith - a quick & easy way of creating songs, raps, rhymes and tunes out of whatever comes into your head. Although normally you’d pay for SongSmith, it’s free to education in the UK via the Partners in Learning Network

Maths Worksheet Generator

If you spend a lot of time searching for worksheets with practice problems to give your students, then you'll like Maths Worksheet Generator. You can easily create your own in just a few seconds with the Math Worksheet Generator. This is a tool that generates multiple maths problems based on a sample problem you provide, and then creates a worksheet that you can distribute. By analysing the initial problem you provide, or one of the built-in samples, the generator determines the structure of the expression and provides similar problems. And it tacks on an answer sheet too.
You can download it from EducationLabs.

Photostory 3

Photostory 3 allows your pupils and students to create videos from still images. They can add narration, music and special effects. It is ideal resource to use in all areas of the curriculum.

Photostory can be downloaded for free at - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx . You will also find this resource on Digital Storytelling in the classroom useful.  - http://www.microsoft.com/education/teachers/guides/digital_storytelling.aspx

Microsoft and Moodle

If you’re using Moodle, you don’t have to miss out on some great free tools – using our Office for Moodle plugin you can open from and save directly to a Moodle site, and with the Moodle Plugin for Live@edu, you can get your recent mail and calendar items right within your Moodle learning environment.

http://www.educationlabs.com

Autocollage

Autocollage allows you to take a group of photos and turn them into exciting collages with the click of a button, which can then be printed or emailed.
Autocollage also interacts with Windows Live Photo Gallery for a seamless connection to your extisting photo libraries. It's a great time saver, for example when you've got photos from a school trip, or you need to get students to create a mood board. There's a video demo on the Microsoft Research site. Although AutoCollage is normally sold as a product, if you're in UK Education (teachers or students) you can download it free from the Partners in Learning website.

Kodu

Kodu is a visual programming language for creating games designed to be accessible for children and an ideal way to ignite an interest in computer science whilst teaching other skills such as cooperation, logic and creativity.

www.fuse.microsoft.com/kodu

DreamSpark

DreamSpark is a programme designed to give all students access to Microsoft tools and training materials at no cost.

www.dreamspark.com

Digital Literacy Curriculum

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/schools/curriculum-resources/digital-literacy-curriculum.aspx

This is the home page for the English version of the Digital Literacy Curriculum – which is available in 34 languages – including Welsh!   It’s a lovely set of curriculum resources with an interactive interface which allows people to study at their own pace and in ways that suit their own learning style!   It’s available online and it’s also FREE !!   The goal of the Digital Literacy Curriculum is to teach basic computer concepts and skills so that people can use computers in everyday life.  Modules cover Computer Basics; Desktop Applications; the Web; Safety and Security; and Digital Lifestyles.  Once you have completed all five modules, you are ready to take an Entry Level 3 qualification with OCR or City and Guilds and you have the foundations for a journey to higher level skills which could provide a real boost to your employability.

Office Ribbon Hero

The new prototype Office Ribbon Hero is designed to test the effectiveness, feasibility and appeal of delivering Office training in a game-like setting.  The heart of Ribbon Hero is a set of challenges that users play right in the Office applications. These challenges expose users to features that they might not be aware of and which can help users get their work done faster.

In addition, Ribbon Hero awards points for using both basic features, such as, Bold and Italic, and for using the features introduced in the challenges.  Ribbon Hero does some analysis of the person’s usage patterns to prioritise the order in which it presents challenges. And then to add the competitive element, Ribbon Hero integrates with Facebook so you can share your success (or in my case, failures) with your friends.

You can read a little more, and download Office Ribbon Hero, from my earlier blog post.

Mouse Mischief

Want to keep your students' attention? Try a little Mischief. Mouse Mischief is a tool that Microsoft makes available free of charge, and that allows teachers to work with Microsoft Office PowerPoint to make interactive presentations. Mouse Mischief integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, enabling teachers to insert questions, polls and drawing activity slides into their lessons. Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out or draw answers on the screen.

You can download Mouse Mischief, and see a demo video, on the UK website

Flashcards

Create online personlised revision materials for your students and pupils. These flashcards can contain images and audio, making them an ideal resource for language and special educational needs teaching. The Flashcards give feedback on how well students and pupils are doing, allowing them to identify the areas they need to improve. Go to EducationLabs to find out more and to create your own Flashcards.

Internet Explorer Accelerators

With Internet Explorer 8, Accelerators reduce the time it takes to do simple tasks, such as find an address, translate a word, or perform other routine tasks online? Until now it was likely a series of cutting and pasting information from one webpage to another. Now there's a better way. The new Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 help you quickly perform your everyday browsing tasks without navigating to other websites to get things done. You can find out about, and download Accelerators here

pptPlex

pptPlex is a free add-in for PowerPoint that makes it simple to present non-linear content and interact with your slides more dynamically – it’s a very different way to present.

XNA

XNA is a games development platform for Windows OS, Phone and Xbox 360. It is an ideal way to engage your most enthusiastic students and teach them some core programming skills applicable to all Microsoft platforms.

http://creators.xna.com

Innovids

Innovids are a series of instructional videos created by teachers for teachers as part of the UK Partners in Learning Network programme. Using community clips and Moviemaker, teachers have recorded how they use a range of Microsoft applications in the classroom. These include Office 2007, as well as applications such as AutoCollage and Bing. Each video shows not only how to use the software , but a context in which to use it effectively to support learning across the curriculum.

You can access and download these Innovids from the UK Partners in Learning Network -  http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com or the UK Partners in Learning YouTube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/innovativeteach

Partners in Learning Network

This a global community of teacher who value innovative uses of ICT that improve and support learning. By joining the UK Partners In Learning Network, you can:

• Create or join communities & discussions
• Find lesson plans and activities, as well as share your own resources
• Download free software such AutoCollage and Songsmith
• Collaborate with like-minded colleagues, to develop best practice  in your own classroom and community

Our UK Teachers Blog supports this  Network, with all the latest developments, ideas and news that we think can help and support teachers.

UK Teachers Blog -

UK Partners in Learning Network - http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com

Alex Pearce and Richard Willis are running a Learning Gateway Conference on July 14. Here’s what you need to know …..

Learning Gateway Conference 2010

If you are in education and using SharePoint then the <http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/> Learning Gateway Conference is the must attend event of the year. Run by Alex Pearce (MVP) and myself it follows on from the highly successful first Learning Gateway Conference last year. This year will be even bigger and better! We have added a whole new track which is dedicated to leading SharePoint schools telling us their stories of how they have implemented their Learning Gateways, what has worked for them and what pitfalls to avoid.

With the recent release of SharePoint 2010, it is an exciting time in the SharePoint world and the educational pricing makes it a great product for use in schools, colleges and local authorities. However, in addition to covering some of the fantastic new features in SharePoint 2010, we will still have lots of content for SharePoint 2007. So whether you have already moved to SharePoint 2010, are planning to upgrade over the summer or don’t currently have any plans to change, there will be lots of great information you can take away and use in your Gateway.

With both technical and user oriented sessions there is something for everybody – network managers, technicians, users, Learning Gateway managers or members of senior leadership teams. In addition the conference will be relevant and useful whether you are an experienced SharePoint user, just starting out or just considering SharePoint. With 3 concurrent tracks running throughout the day it would be worth considering having more than one attendee!

In addition to the content it will of course be a great networking event with the opportunity to meet others in the same situation as you and discuss what you are doing. At only £150 for the day it’s an unrivalled professional development opportunity providing information you will be able to put in practice straight away.

The venue is Church House, Westminster in Central London so is easy to get to from almost anywhere.

For more information visit the <http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/>

conference web site and <http://learninggatewayconference.salamandersoft.co.uk/register.html>

register today. To whet your appetite here is a list of the sessions:

• Building the Gateway
• User Adoption
• School Stories
• Understanding SharePoint 2010
• 2010 Social Networking Features
• Parental Engagement
• Branding
• Encouraging user adoption & quick wins
• How we drove usage
• Patching SharePoint and Preparing your SharePoint 2007 for 2010 SharePoint 2010 for Education Hosted SharePoint
• A look at live@edu
• Integrating InfoPath Forms
• How we use our in-school SharePoint
• Virtualisation
• SharePoint Learning Kit
• Replacement of the File Server

We hope to see you there on the 14th!

WNS213PAL: Virtual Server Performance Degradation: “What the Frag is Going Wrong!?”

Presented by: Stephen Deming; Michael Materie

Webcast Date: 6/10/2010

Webcast Start Time: 9:30 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  100

Partner Audience: Partner IT Professional

In the world of server virtualization, there are many factors for partners to consider when tuning for optimal performance; have you ever considered data fragmentation? When examining modern virtualization deployments, we see the trend of increasing virtual machine image density on the storage volumes. Whether it’s server consolidation, dynamic allocation, or Live Migration; fragmentation is occurring. And what about inside those virtual machine images? Is the guest OS still managing fragmentation? Join Diskeeper Corporation, Microsoft, and industry experts for a thorough discussion of fragmentation in your virtual server farm, architecture & configuration considerations, and tools to help address the challenges.

BRD43PAL: Microsoft Customer Opportunity Insights Tool - Helping you get more from your customer base

Presented by: Stephen Deming

Webcast Date: 6/15/2010

Webcast Start Time: 9:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  100

Partner Audience: Partners

Want help uncovering new sales opportunities in your customer base?  The Microsoft Customer Opportunity Insights Tool is a simple-to-use Access database that identifies product upgrade and cross-sell opportunities in your accounts.  The Insights Tool is designed to give you the information you need to help your customers uncover new ways to optimize their IT investments, reduce costs, and enhance productivity.  At the same time, it highlights ways for you to extract revenue opportunities and improve sales.  Since launching in March of 2009, the tool has helped U.S. VARs generate millions in incremental revenue.

This training session will teach you how to generate incremental revenue utilizing the Insights Tool.  It will demonstrate how to uncover opportunities in the tool and act upon them using targeted Microsoft Ready-to-Go Marketing campaigns as well as sales incentives.  The training will be taught in-context, with Windows Server 2008 R2 upgrade and Business Productivity Online Suite cross-sell examples.

Please join us to learn how to better-monetize your customer base!

MGT77PAL: Technical Introduction to System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

Presented by: Rahul Jacob

Webcast Date: 6/15/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, now is in Beta, and will be released in April, 2010. DPM 2010 provides new backup and recovery capabilities at a low cost. Because of the significant new capabilities in DPM, it is highly important that the field, partners and customers are aware of the various solutions and opportunities we have with DPM 2010. This session will help you get started with easy setup and configuration.

MOS24PAL: Let Microsoft Online Services Make You a Star!

Presented by: Lauren Delgado

Webcast Date: 6/16/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  100

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker

Join us for our monthly webcast where we provide an overview of Microsoft Online Services and discuss partner program opportunities. Microsoft Online Services are enterprise-class software delivered as subscription services, hosted by Microsoft and offered by partners like you to generate predictable, recurring revenue. Help customers increase their efficiency with the messaging and collaboration solutions in the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Sell Microsoft Online Services to earn advisor fees, expand your base, and serve new segments. Join each month for important updates and a chance to win an X-Box 360 Pro Console System and Rock Band 2 Kit. Questions? Contact usmosg@microsoft.com.

APU05PAL: Application Platform University: How to Speed up your Sale with a Reporting and Analysis QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 6/17/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

While the market for Reporting & Analysis consolidates, customers are spoilt for choice and are increasingly asking for more hands-on engagements to get a feel for the reporting tools. QuickStarts are packaged 2-day technical engagements based on best practices derived from the Microsoft field. They aim to provide customers with an immersion experience into the technology while keeping the engagement short and precise. Attend this session to learn more about how to deliver a 2-day Reporting & Analysis QuickStart and speed up your sale. This session will cover best practices, and step-by-step guidance for delivering a high impact Reporting & Analytics immersion experience to customers.

WVC125PAL: Windows 7 Best Practices from Microsoft IT

Presented by: Jeremy Chapman; Robert Van Winkle; Allison Meinhardt

Webcast Date: 6/17/2010

Webcast Start Time: 9:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional. Partner Training, Partner Developer

Have your customers been asking you “How did Microsoft deploy Windows 7”? Help them overcome their deployment blockers by learning from Microsoft IT’s inside story. This webcast will review the approach of first focusing on user scenarios and how that drove the focus on user satisfaction and significant reductions in deployment costs.  Included in this session are lessons learned from Vista, Bitlocker deployment, line of business application compatibility and how your customer can leverage some of these best practices and remove the cost barrier to deploying Windows 7.

MGT78PAL: Application Workloads and DPM - Better together

Presented by: Rahul Jacob

Webcast Date: 6/17/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is designed for IT generalists and uses wizards and workflows to help ensure that you can protect your Exchange, SQL and SharePoint data without any advanced degree of storage and backup knowledge. This session will help small and medium business IT administrators plan backups, recoveries and plan for further Disaster Recoveries. The solutions will enable you to take advantage of Exchange 2010 and DPM 2010.

VEN48PAL: AdminStudio & AOK: End-to-End Application Readiness for the Fastest Way to Move Applications to Windows 7 and App-V

Presented by: Sean Donahue; Chris Meier

Webcast Date: 6/21/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

Chris Maher of Flexera Software will discuss how you can automate and standardize key phases of a migration project to ensure a fast and successful application deployment.  Maher will overview the Flexera Software Application Readiness solution an end-to-end process for Windows 7 and App-V™ application migration projects, demo AdminStudio and AOK, and discuss how a continuous application readiness process creates a repeatable and reliable standard for the next migration project. Highlights of the overview include how to:

· Drive down the cost and complexity of preparing for a Windows 7 deployment

· Speed conversion of MSI packages to App-V and other virtualized formats

· Shift from reactive to proactive application management

· Better understand your application estate

· Make sure your applications are ready to move when you are

· Reduce manual migration to save time and resources

APU06PAL: Application Platform University: How to Speed up your Sale with a Data Warehousing QuickStart

Presented by: Diwakar Rajagopal

Webcast Date: 6/22/2010

Webcast Start Time: 8:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner IT Professional

Due to the complexity of Data Warehousing projects, customers are increasingly asking for assessment-focused onsite engagements to chalk out a Data Warehousing roadmap. QuickStarts are packaged 2-day technical engagements based on best practices derived from the Microsoft field. They aim to provide customers with an immersion experience into the technology while keeping the engagement short and precise. Attend this session to learn more about how to deliver a 2-day Data Warehousing QuickStart and speed up your sale. This session will cover best practices, and step-by-step guidance for conducting a through Data Warehousing assessment and delivering a solid roadmap to customers.

MGT79PAL: Technical Introduction to System Center Essentials 2010

Presented by: Ashok Kumar G

Webcast Date: 6/22/2010

Webcast Start Time: 10:00 AM (Pacific)

PLC Registration Link for Partners

Level:  200

Partner Audience: Partner Business Decision Maker, Partner Marketing, Partner Sales, Partner Training

SCE 2010 RC is now available, so it is important that the Microsoft field and our partners who focus on midsized businesses with between 50-500 PCs learn about the value of this new offering for physical and virtualization management.  This session will help you get started with easy setup and configuration. Come see it first, and get ready when your customers ask you about it. Topics include: