This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we welcome 120,000 users to the cloud and find out how Office Web Apps is expanding. USDA Moves 120,000 Users to Microsoft’s Cloud The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is moving 120,000 users to Microsoft’s cloud in one of the largest deployments ever. The Microsoft News Center focuses on the USDA’s migration in this week’s featured story . The USDA plans on moving users within the next month. There are some great quotes from Chris Smith, CIO for the USDA and pictured top right, that pinpoint the business and costs advantages for moving to Microsoft’s cloud. “This is really about increasing collaboration and communications across the breadth of 120,000 users in 5,000 offices across the country and 100 countries around the globe to better deliver on the USDA’s mission,” he said. “For us a move to the cloud was a question of performance, service, and cost, and this solution will help us streamline our efforts and use taxpayer dollars efficiently.” The USDA will use the breadth of Microsoft online cloud tools that include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting, to increase collaboration between its many employees. The article also touches on how the USDA will use a security optimized version of the cloud that meets the needs and compliance regulations for U.S. Federal Government agencies. Curt Kolcun, VP of U.S. public sector at Microsoft and pictured below right, is excited about the USDA joining Microsoft in the cloud and believes more government institutions will follow. “Nearly every federal agency trusts their productivity needs to Microsoft Office, Exchange, and SharePoint today,” he said. “From a momentum perspective, I think this announcement is going to be a phenomenal catalyst to drive more interest from the federal CIO community to think about moving their full messaging suite applications to the cloud with Microsoft.” Read the complete story about the USDA’s deployment to Microsoft’s cloud here . What are your thoughts? How does this change the landscape of the cloud? Leave your comments below. Office Web Apps Released in 15 More Countries Office Web Apps is the online suite of Microsoft Office tools that allow you to share and collaborate online in the cloud. With the recent cloud announcement of Office 365, Office Web Apps has also announced that it is now available in the following 15 additional countries : China Japan Italy New Zealand Finland Hong Kong Denmark Netherlands Norway Portugal Turkey South Korea Spain Sweden Taiwan That brings the total number of countries that have access to Web Apps to 26. Office Web Apps is free and more than 20 million people use it. Have you tried Office Web Apps? What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below. What are your thoughts about the stories we shared with you this week? Did you see a story you want to share with us? Let us know what other topics you’d like to see. You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

In Windows Server 2008 R2, you no longer use the Add/Remove Windows Components option to add features. Here’s a look at the new way to add features in Windows Server 2008 R2 . Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

In Windows Server 2008 R2, you no longer use the Add/Remove Windows Components option to add features. Here’s a look at the new way to add features in Windows Server 2008 R2 . Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

We have published preliminary version of the Scrum Solution Starter for Project 2010 on MSDN Code gallery https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum please participate actively in the Discussion to notify us about any issue you may encounter or post any feedback! This solution starter focuses on the Project 2010 desktop client, and on the individual Scrum team experience. Scrum is an iterative, incremental methodology for project management often seen in agile software development. Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach. There are 3 main items in Scrum: Product backlog: A product backlog is dynamic—Items may be deleted or added at any time during the project. It is prioritized—Items with the highest priority are completed first. It is progressively refined—Lower priority items are intentionally course-grained. Sprint backlog: A sprint backlog is a negotiated set of items from the product backlog that a team commits to complete during the time box of a sprint. Items in the sprint backlog are broken into detailed tasks for the team members to complete. The team works collaboratively to complete the items in the sprint backlog, meeting each day (during a daily scrum) to share struggles and progress and update the sprint backlog and burn down chart accordingly. Burn down: The sprint burn down chart is a publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the sprint backlog. Updated every day, it gives a simple view of the sprint progress. It also provides quick visualizations for reference Supported Scenarios: A Scrum Master wants to use Project for the basics of running a sprint, including: Collecting and tracking status Managing the product backlog Managing the sprint backlog (and initial iteration planning) Viewing a burn down chart Easily exporting Scrum data to email/other apps Enjoy!

The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) group has released a beta version of the Feature Pack for integration of TFS 2010 with Project Server. The beta version is a “go live” release. If the user agrees to the pre-release license agreement, the Feature Pack can be installed and will be supported in a production environment. However, it is not the final release, and is still subject to change, so you should first test it in a non-production environment. Note

See Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta

A new feature in SharePoint 2010, Resource Throttling can help keep your servers running smoothly, even during peak hours. Learn how to configure Resource Throttling . Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

Written by: Raj Badarinath Raj Badarinath is the VP Marketing at WinWire Technologies Inc., Gold Certified Managed Partner specializing in collaboration and analytics focused around Microsoft SharePoint technologies with a global delivery model. WinWire was founded in 2007 by ex-Microsoft professionals and has approximately 150 employees who are spread across our corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, CA and two development centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. When we founded WinWire Technologies more than three years ago, keeping operating costs as low as possible was essential to our success. Our communications infrastructure included a diverse range of consumer and business technologies including Google Gmail, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Project Server 2010 internally manage cache synchronization by tracking revisions to major entities such as projects and maintaining records for deletions of those entities. Although the Draft, Published, and Archive databases in Project Server are not documented, and direct access to those databases is not supported, a basic understanding of cache synchronization in Project Server can be useful in determining issues of performance optimization. (This article was written by Patrick Conlan, Microsoft Corporation.) Warning:

Because Project Server 2010