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.

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

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:

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 the history of Microsoft Online Services and how it came to be Office 365. We also look at why BPOS is right for you and your business. 1. The Road to Office 365: The Past , The Present , The Future Mary Jo Foley is the premiere writer about Microsoft News and information for ZDNet. She has close eye on the Microsoft Online Services front and has taken this week to write an in depth three part series entitled “The road to Office 365.” This series focuses on Office 365 and its past, present and future. In the first part of her series , Mary focuses on the history of Microsoft Online Services which goes back to the year 2003. The article features a comprehensive look at the history with Eron Kelly, Senior Director for Office 365. This is a very interesting read that lays the groundwork for her next article entitled “The Road to Office 365: The Present.” In her second piece , Mary Jo Foley takes a look at what is presently occurring with Office 365. This article examines how the engineering team is managing their workload with creating a new service offering, and also dives into the work the support team is doing to create a better experience for customers. In the final segment of her three part series, Mary Jo Foley peers into the future of Office 365 . This piece starts by discussing the possible release scenarios for Office 365. Mary provides insights on how she pictures customers moving to Office 365. The article then focuses on the community and communication effort that is going to be emphasized for Office 365. “It’s a whole different relationship with the customer now,” when it comes to services, Cole said. “The customer experience becomes the entire life cycle; it’s not just learn and try and buy. It’s a whole end-to-end solution.” We are excited to help bring Office 365 to customers in the near future. As part of the community team, I am thrilled to help make our customer experience better than ever. You can read more about Office 365 on the Office 365 blog . What are your thoughts about the road to Office 365? Would you like to learn anything else not covered in the three piece series? Leave a comment below. 2. Gobble Gobble….BPOS is no Turkey! For our second story we take a look at a Thanksgiving themed BPOS story. Although this article comes to us a week late, it still resonates today. Rich Blank, Management Consultant for Independent, answers a couple of questions that he himself has previously asked. “Is it [BPOS] any different than web hosting?” “Which version do you need?” “Why BPOS?” Rich dives into these questions will real life experience to support his answers. I highly recommend this article for anyone wondering if BPOS is right for them and their business. 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.

I’ve updated the earlier postings, but wanted to do a quick post to make sure this news gets out to my RSS subscribers.

Note:

*** Update *** 11/18/2010 – The issues have now been resolved and the links to the revised updates are now available.

I am sure you are all following my recent advice and actively following this TechNet RSS: Newly published content for Project Server 2010 https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186461 New and updated content typically appears Thursday night (Seattle time/PDT) and today take a note of the following important articles our technical writers have put together: Plan for Project Server 2010 Web Parts

Some folks have asked about the pwaribbon.xml file and modifying the ribbon in

I’ll get this information into a KB article too, and I’ll also try and keep this posting up to date as we release each cumulative update or service pack for Project Server 2010 and Project 2010.