This out to sell some SCOM: http://blog.coretech.dk/opsmgr07/opsmgr-2007-r2-scom-coretech-coffee-monitor-management-pack-0001/

We will keep you updated for Academic Edition testing opportunities as well.

Today, at PDC in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced the public beta release of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010, Office Web Apps for business customers, and Office Mobile 2010. 

Over the past year, these products have undergone worldwide validation and testing through the most comprehensive set of pre-release programs we have ever run.  Demand for July’s Technical Preview was incredible, with tons of customers and partners providing invaluable feedback.  As we gear-up to collect input from millions of additional users, I am confident that the final product set will be among Microsoft’s highest-quality releases.

Office 2010 provides the best productivity experience across the PC, phone, and browser.  It is full of new innovations that make using Office faster and easier than ever—including Office Backstage View, Ribbon UI across all applications, photo and video editing in PowerPoint, fast new data comparison tools in Excel, and improved mail/calendar management in Outlook.  With the new Click-to-Run technology, home users will also have a dramatically faster download experience. 

In addition, with this beta we are unveiling several exciting new features and products:

·         Office Web Apps for business customers, available through SharePoint Server, allows //my and //sharepoint sites to host browser-based Web Apps accessible from virtually anywhere. (Office Web Apps for consumers is still in Technical Preview.)

·         Outlook Social Connector, a new feature that brings communications history and social networking feeds into the Outlook experience.

·         Office Mobile 2010, which includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010 and is available on the Windows Mobile marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

I encourage you to experience the benefits of Office 2010 by downloading the beta from www.microsoft.com/2010.

Join Microsoft Corporation and  VIRTERA, as we lead an in-depth discussion & demonstration of Windows 7 Enterprise and the Microsoft Optimized Desktop. Understand Microsoft’s desktop virtualization strategy and its impact. Discover how best to steer your Windows 7 deployment. Learn how to leverage your existing investments.

During this briefing you can expect to learn the following:

·         Key Windows 7 investment areas that benefit higher ed (Federated Search, Direct Access, Branch Cache, Appblocker, Bitlocker, Smart Default Print Drivers and more)

·         Microsoft’s strategy and technologies for desktop virtualization, and corresponding best practices

·         How to streamline the migration to Windows 7 by reducing the implementation costs to compatibility concerns

·         How Windows 7 with MDOP combined with VDI infrastructure schools can provide students and faculty with a desktop environment to support remote learning, work from home or computer lab environment all while centrally managing the environment to control licensing and support costs.

November 19^th

9:00AM-2:00PM

Microsoft Farmington:

Pondview Corporate Center
74 Batterson Park Rd., #100
Farmington, CT 06032
Phone: (860) 678-3100

Click here to register

or call 877-MSEVENT and reference event number 1032431933   

Join Microsoft Corporation and  VIRTERA, as we lead an in-depth discussion & demonstration of Windows 7 Enterprise and the Microsoft Optimized Desktop. Understand Microsoft’s desktop virtualization strategy and its impact. Discover how best to steer your Windows 7 deployment. Learn how to leverage your existing investments.

During this briefing you can expect to learn the following:

·         Key Windows 7 investment areas that benefit higher ed (Federated Search, Direct Access, Branch Cache, Appblocker, Bitlocker, Smart Default Print Drivers and more)

·         Microsoft’s strategy and technologies for desktop virtualization, and corresponding best practices

·         How to streamline the migration to Windows 7 by reducing the implementation costs to compatibility concerns

·         How Windows 7 with MDOP combined with VDI infrastructure schools can provide students and faculty with a desktop environment to support remote learning, work from home or computer lab environment all while centrally managing the environment to control licensing and support costs.

This session will demonstrate FullArmor’s use of the latest Microsoft technologies to provide a public and private cloud based management of App-V deployments.  Utilizing Windows Azure for the public cloud storage and service and Server 2008 with SCCM integration for the private cloud service, FullArmor will demonstrate App-V based virtual application deployment, self service subscription, reporting, tracking, and configuration all managed and delivered through services in the cloud for scaled and cost effective deployment of virtual applications.

Friday, Nov 20, 2009 10:30 - 12:00 AM EST

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=RMZQH5&role=attend

The 5th Annual Windows in Higher Education Conference is set for April 12 – 14 2010.

More details are soon to follow including a request for session recommendations, peer sessions, conference web site, etc.

For those new to this list and Conference, you can get an idea of what to expect by reviewing previous conference details here:
(click on the ‘Conference’ links along the left side): http://windows-hied.org/

Expect the registration fee to stay the same - $150/attendee.

Enabling Technologies wrote a really cool app that lights up Office Communication Server Instant Messaging and Presence within Blackboard. 

See the attached datasheet.

For more information contact:
info@enablingtechcorp.com
www.enablingtechcorp.com 

On November 10th at 9 am (PST)/12 pm (EST) you are invited to join Microsoft U.S. Public Sector Vice President Curt Kolcun and top technology leaders at "The New Efficiency" virtual launch event for government, education, and health.

The new efficiency virtual launch experience is happening now. Learn how cost savings and productivity come together with a new wave of Microsoft® products. Be one of the first to evaluate exciting innovations in Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

■ Attend expert-led sessions for government, education, and health/human services/life sciences, and developers
■ Download evaluation products
■ Find out about special offers
■ View product demos and deep dive sessions

Join us and watch the U.S. Public Sector Virtual Launch experience live on November 10^th!   Mark your calendars.  Don't miss it - Register by clicking here!

http://www.uspsvle.com/

We are excited to announce changes to the Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (PIC) license that provides instant messaging and presence federation to the Windows Live, AOL and Yahoo! public IM networks. 

1. A PIC License will no longer be required for federation with American Online (AOL).  Customers qualify for federation with AOL if they have Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard CAL or active Software Assurance on their current LCS/OCS license. 
2. Customers who want Yahoo! federation will continue to purchase PIC licenses.  The price of PIC will be reduced by 50%, effective October 1, 2009, to reflect this change. 

We are also excited to announce the release of the OCS 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=141529). The Gateway provides Presence and two-party IM interoperability with the XMPP based systems of Jabber and Google Talk.

1. The Gateway interoperability has been tested against Jabber CXP Server version 5.4 and the current version of Google Talk.  The OCS 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway is supported by Microsoft Support
2. This Gateway is licensed as Additional Software to OCS 2007 R2, meaning that there is no additional license cost associated with deploying the Gateway for OCS 2007 R2 licenses.

As a follow-up to the “Students. Yes!” Live@Edu campaign, we’ve added a great new resource to build awareness among students of the many great benefits of Live@Edu.  Available today is a “microsite” html template kit with images and html files to easily deploy a customizable webpage to educate their students.  Check out what Barry University has done with their Live@Edu email landing page (http://www.barry.edu/mymail/).  The the full featured page is staged at http://www.mondorobot.com/liveatedustage/universitymicrosite (ID: LiveAtEduStage Password: St@ging).  

The html template files can be downloaded from a FTP site here: www.mondorobot.com/FTP/Microsoft/187_LiveateduWebsiteV2/University_Micro_Site.zip

Notes:

1.       We have included 2 email service icons in the “features” icons carousel. There is one for Hotmail and one for Outlook Live. The university can use the appropriate one for their situation. By default we’re showing the Outlook Live one because that should be more popular for most markets.

2.       The URLs for “learning more” are placeholder based on the Barry University links. A lot of these pointed to the school’s login for Windows Live services such as Spaces, Photo Gallery, etc. You will need to update these links with their own URLs. The same is true for the Email login and first time user Email help buttons in the page headers. Their links will need to be updated.

The Microsoft Education Team would like to make you aware of some great ways to reach your students outside of the classroom.  Microsoft launched a new web site (www.microsoft.com/education/H1N1) to provide support to teachers and schools who may be dealing with the challenges of the H1N1 virus in their classrooms.  This new web site, designed for teachers, furthers our commitment to the U.S. Department of Education and schools across the nation providing a free technology resource using Office Live Workspace that will help educators stay connected with their students and continue the learning process if they are forced to stay home from school or miss class.

Teachers are encouraged to create a free class workspace using Office Live Workspace enabling teachers to:

§  easily share assignments

§  distribute class handouts and presentations

§  manage collaborative group projects

§  track student participation and activity

Students can access the class workspace anytime and anywhere with just an Internet connection.  Office Live Workspace works with the Microsoft Office products you use today and your class workspace can be accessed by teachers or students from any web browser.

Go here to create your class workspace today.

If you would like to read what we announced here is the press release.

To stay in touch with new updates to this page, and other teacher resources we make available, try one (or all) of these below:

§  Follow us on Twitter @TeachTech

§  Join Teach Tec on Facebook

§  Or sign-up to receive our free, monthly e-newsletter, Microsoft Education Newsletter

Learn how Microsoft Live@edu can benefit your K-12 Education Institution

presented by Barbara Chung, Education Solutions Specialist

Monday, October 5- 10:00AM Pacific

Join us for this webcast to learn how Microsoft Live@edu can offer your K-12 institution the ultimate suite of collaboration applications for your students at no cost to your institution. Learn how you can offer a free          co-branded mailbox students can use as their primary account, as well as Office Live Workspace for online storage and collaboration over the internet.  You will learn how Microsoft Live@edu works with your existing infrastructure and allows you to outsource the time and cost of spam filtering , server uptime and ongoing maintenance, all in a safe and private manner to help keep your students safer online.  Following the overview you’ll have the opportunity to speak with our Microsoft Live@edu specialist to talk about next steps and how you can sign up or get a trial account.

click here to register

Live@EDU Platform Update for Higher Ed

presented by Roxie Mitchell, Senior Industry Solution Specialist

Tuesday, October 6- 9:30AM Pacific

We are continuously reviewing customer feedback to provide an enterprise class messaging platform that includes the collaboration tools that impact and empower your users. We now provide a total of 35GB of storage in our collaboration services, and provide rich administrative access and control. This webcast will highlight all of the recent exciting updates that have been made to the services under the Live@edu environment. This includes (but is not limited to): Multi-mailbox searching, support for ILM, mailbox plans, licensing model changes, cross browser / cross platform support, integration with 3rd party services through Exchange Web Services, and a storage increase in skydrive from 5GB to 25GB!

click here to register

Responding to a Pandemic: How Emergency Mass Notification Systems Can Help Contain a Potential Catastrophe 

presented by AtHoc Solutions

Tuesday, September 29- 9:30AM Pacific

AtHoc’s mass notification solution for university campuses, leverages your existing IP/IT networks to (a) communicate rapidly to all connected devices; (b) integrate and unify disparate existing mass notification channels; (c) provide two-way communication from all personnel; and (d) achieve enterprise-level scalability and processes. Its interoperability, scalability and security measures have led to its selection by highly demanding organizations, including University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force Air Education and Training Command (AETC), Navy Postgraduate School and others. AtHoc’s solution for higher education leverages our experience and best practices developed from its defense sector operation where AtHoc currently protecting over 1.5 million military personnel at over 175 installations.

Click here to register