Dear Blog Long Time no See :-)
Back from a great vacation and all recharged here an update from snow less, rainless, sunny Redmond, WA.
The "Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 3.0" is out the door, and for the very first time in history (yeah I know sounds like a cliché) MPS now is supported on Windows Server 2003. So you, the customer, can do away with your (hopefully) last Windows 2000 Server in the Environment. The "Solution for Windows Based Hosting 3.0" will be updated shortly to reflect this change too.
The good news about the update to MPS 2.0 is that all namespaces and providers are supposed to work as before and no change is needed. Just make sure you read the Release Notes and the Updating from a previous version Documentation so you don't mess up your MPS Databases including the Plans database. Also you need two Hot fixes to make everything work as outlined in the documentation.
The new version has also an enhanced version of the Deployment Tool which allows installation of all MPS related components from a central location, so no need to run the tool from multiple servers any more.
In terms of control panel we are working with several vendors and they all are very enthusiastic about building a version of their control panel on top of our solution architecture utilizing our plumbing including MPS and focus more on the UI, CRM and other aspects to better compliment our solution. Make sure to check out http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/hosting for news once there is an official announcement.
On a different note, thanks to all the replies and messages I received so far, keep that input coming. If you want to see a new feature or want to send feedback on MPS, feel free to post it here or send it to wbhcst@microsoft.com.
Look out for more exciting news soon ...
Mike
