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This Week in BPOS News 12/17/2010

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 take a look at what opportunities SMBs are seeing in the cloud, and we learn about a new medical innovation that is utilizing cloud computing. 1. SMBs See Opportunity in the Cloud SMBs stand for Small and Midsize Businesses, and SMBs are seeing the benefits of cloud computing. A Microsoft-sponsored survey entitled, “Cloud Computing as an Engine of Growth” questioned SMBs about the cloud. The survey is highlighted in this InformationWeek post . The numbers from the survey reflect about one third of SMBs polled see the cloud as an opportunity for their IT department to be “more strategic” and SMBs view embracers of the cloud as “innovative.” About 12% of SMBs are “Born in the cloud” which means “the primary capability for their business is through cloud technology as the leading thing that enables them to do it.” There are many other interesting stats about SMBs and

Project Momentum 2010 EMEA Technical Track Recordings and Slides

Following this post from Arpan Shah Project Momentum 2010 EMEA about the recent event we held last month in Barcelona, I wanted to provide pointers to the technical content that was delivered. Recordings : Deploying Microsoft Project Server 2010 by Christophe Fiessinger (check out video at 2:45…) Project Server 2010 Upgrade and Migration by Raphael Ax, Jan Kalis, and Bishan Ruder Best Practices: Troubleshooting Project Server 2010 Deployments by Brian Smith Project 2010 Development for SharePoint Developers by Jan Kalis Light Up Your Project 2010 with SharePoint Server 2010 BI Capabilities by Jan Kalis Continuing Innovation in Project 2010 by Eric Zenz Hitchhiker’s Guide to Demand Management by Steven Haden Slides : Project Momentum 2010 (EMEA) Event Slide Presentations: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8bfe4f93-eb06-4104-bbc7-ee962d408e2b&displaylang=en As a reminder there are plenty more videos from that event, including customer case studies on our dedicated Project video channel: https://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/US/channels/microsoftproject/results?sf=ActiveStartDate

BPOS-S: How To Configure and View Shared Calendars

In our latest BPOS support video we learn how to configure and view shared calendar information. This is a very useful feature that allows co-workers to view your schedule and even manage other users’ calendars on their behalf. This video walks us through how to use your Exchange Online calendar from Outlook to allow for shared calendars. You will also learn how to set calendar sharing permissions, and use OWA to access an Exchange Online calendar share. Watch and learn more about Microsoft Online Services with our other support and how to blog posts . What other videos would you like to see? We want to hear from you in the comments section below or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

Project Momentum 2010 EMEA

Last month, the Project team hosted Project Momentum 2010 EMEA in Barcelona, Spain – a 2-day event focused on our Europe, Middle East and Africa customers and partners. It was a great opportunity for us to learn from the Project community as well as an opportunity for the community to share best practices with each other. Thank you to everyone who participated and made this event a tremendous success! With over 240+ partners and customers from 28+ different countries, we had a very diverse audience! While it’s just a small part of our worldwide 20 million user Project community, it provides a unique and intimate environment for learning. I personally had the opportunity to connect with many different people through sessions, networking events and side-meetings. Truth be told, it’s what I learn from our customers and partners that makes these events so special. It was especially nice hearing about how customers & partners are deploying Project 2010 in their organizations and gaining business value today and not waiting for SP1. It’s great to hear since the team put in a lot of effort to make sure Project 2010 is a high quality release. Some examples of customers who talked about their Project 2010 experiences at Momentum include Volvo ( session , written case study ), NATO ( session ) and Kudelski ( session ). For those of you who weren’t able to make it to the conference or for those of you looking to share content with your teams, I recommend taking a look at some of the conference content here . I recommend starting with the keynote below (from the 5:05 mark after the conference welcome) that I had the honor to kick-off followed by Ludovic Hauduc, General Manager of the Project engineering team, who did a great job providing his personal insight into the Project 2010 release. I especially recommend watching the keynote demos at around the 43:10 mark. Eric Zenz, a Senior Program Manager Lead on Ludo’s team, does three great live demos: Office 365 and Project Professional 2010 demo that highlights SharePoint Online tasks sync with Project Professional 2010

Technical Tuesday: Using MX Records to Enable Inbound Messaging

It’s Technical Tuesday and we are featuring a technical look at how to use MX records to enable inbound messaging. MX stands for Mail Exchange, and a single domain can have multiple MX records. MX records are entries in DNS that specify the mail server addresses that you want email messages sent to your domain to be delivered to. The video below explains more about MS records and how configuration works with your domain. MX records are important when in a coexistence like Microsoft Online Services.

This Week in BPOS News 12/10

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.