Microsoft Rolls Up Cloud Services Into Office 365, Takes Aim At Google Apps

Today at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft’s Office division is unveiling a new product: a suite of the company’s productivity services called Office 365.

Before now, Microsoft’s business-facing cloud services have been broken up in a few places: SharePoint, Lync Online, Exchange, and Office web apps. Office 365 looks to unify these. Microsoft SVP Chris Capossela says “This is everything we know about productivity brought to the cloud”.

The messaging here seems to indicate that Microsoft is more directly targeting Google Apps, the suite of online products that have been increasingly encroaching on Microsoft’s enterprise market. In what may have been a jab at Google, Capossela says “We can differentiate from our competition, particularly those coming from the consumer space, by making sure our servers are far more reliable”. I’m sure Google would object to this, as it often beats its chest about the security of Google Apps.

Microsoft is going to target small businesses in a way it hasn’t previously: for a business with under 25 employees, Microsoft will charge $6 per user per month; for larger companies, plans start at $2 per user per month for email alone — prices scale up to $27 per user a month, which includes telephony features (voicemail in your inbox) and video/voice conferencing. There’s also a single sign-on to access all of these services. Before now, Microsoft sold its Business Productivity Online Suite for $120/user/year; In contrast, Google Apps runs $50 per user per year, so Microsoft’s new price points are more competitive.

Microsoft says that before now it could only traget around 15% of an enterprise’s budget, because it was only selling software. Now it’s also helping run their infrastructure, which expands the potential market.

Office 365 is going to launch to the public in a worldwide release next year. For now, Microsoft is kicking off Office 365 with a limited beta rollout.

You’ll be able to learn more at Office 365.com, which Microsoft isn’t throwing live for another three hours for reasons that I’m sure make sense to them.

Microsoft announces ten Windows Phone 7 handsets for 30 countries: October 21 in Europe and Asia, 8 November in US (Update: Video!)

By Thomas Ricker  posted Oct 11th 2010 9:34AM

It may have "Windows" in the branding, but Windows Phone 7 is not the desktop PC experience shoehorned into a cellphone. Microsoft tried that with Windows Mobile... and we all know how that turned out. Today, eight months after the Windows Phone 7 OS unveiling in Barcelona, we're finally seeing the official launch of the retail hardware: nine new WP7 handsets available October 21 in select European and Asian markets and early November in the US. The phones will find their way to over 60 cellphone operators in more than 30 countries this year. Microsoft tapped Dell, HTC, LG, and Samsung to deliver the Snapdragon-based handsets with a carrier list that includes AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Vodafone, TELUS, América Móvil, Deutsche Telekom AG, Movistar, O2, Orange, SFR, SingTel, and Telstra. And that's just for the first wave -- Microsoft has even more handsets coming in 2011 including the first for Sprint and Verizon in the US. Here's the lineup of 480 x 800 pixel (WVGA) phones announced today:

• HTC 7 Surround -- The 3.8-inch T8788 with slideout speaker for AT&T and Telus
• HTC HD7 -- Schubert comes of age as a 4.3-inch HD2 cousin for T-Mobile and beyond
• HTC 7 Trophy -- the 3.8-inch Spark headed to international carriers
• HTC 7 Mozart -- another heavily leaked int'l player with 3.7-inch display
• Dell Venue Pro -- 4.1-inch portrait QWERTY slider for T-Mobile we broke as Lightning
• Samsung Focus -- AT&T's 4-inch Super AMOLED slate we broke as Cetus
• Samsung Omnia 7 -- the i8700 is a 4-inch Super AMOLED jobbie for Europe
• LG Optimus 7/7Q -- the E900 is the official 3.8-inch global workhorse
• LG Quantum -- AT&T's 3.5-inch landscape slider first seen as the C900

• HTC 7 Pro -- a 3.6-inch QWERTY slider for Sprint (2011)

"Glance and Go," is the slogan Microsoft is using to differentiate itself from an already crowded smartphone market. Something we've already seen alluded to in that leaked AT&T ad. As Ballmer notes, "Microsoft and its partners are delivering a different kind of mobile phone and experience - one that makes everyday tasks faster by getting more done in fewer steps and providing timely information in a 'glance and go' format." He's referring to WP7's customizable Live Tiles, of course. Xbox Live integration is another biggie with EA Games just announcing its first Xbox Live-enabled wares coming to Windows Phone 7 in the fall including "Need for Speed Undercover," "Tetris," "Monopoly," and "The Sims 3." The other big differentiators are the slick Metro UI, integrated support for Zune media and Zune Pass subscriptions, Bing search and maps, Windows Live including the free Find My Phone service, and Microsoft Office Mobile.

Now quit stalling and jump past the break for the full list of handsets per carrier and country.

North America

AT&T
• HTC Surround, United States
• Samsung Focus, United States
• LG Quantum, United States

T-Mobile USA
• HTC HD7, United States
• Dell Venue Pro, United States

TELUS
• HTC 7 Surround, Canada
• LG Optimus 7, Canada
América Móvil
• LG Optimus 7, Mexico

Europe

O2
• HTC HD7, United Kingdom, Germany

Orange
• HTC 7 Mozart, including France, United Kingdom
• Samsung Omnia 7, including France, United Kingdom

SFR
• HTC 7 Trophy, France
• Samsung Omnia 7, France

Movistar
• LG Optimus 7, Spain
• HTC HD7, Spain
• Samsung Omnia 7, Spain

Deutsche Telekom AG
• HTC 7 Mozart, Germany
• Samsung Omnia 7, Germany

Vodafone
• HTC 7 Trophy, including Germany, Spain, United Kingdom
• LG Optimus 7, including Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom

Asia Pacific

SingTel
• HTC HD 7, Singapore
• LG Optimus 7, Singapore

Telstra
• HTC 7 Mozart, Australia
• LG Optimus 7Q, Australia

Vodafone
• HTC 7 Trophy, Australia

Its not news that i am a big fan of virtualization technologies with special emphasis on server solutions.
I have run Vmware ESX and Citrix virtualization solutions in the past in my test lab on relatively cheap old hardware and everything ran without any hassles. You can read on of my last post on how i got ESX to run off an old used and very cheap d530 desktop.
With the release of Windows Server 2008 which comes bundled with Hyper-V, Microsoft's enterprise ready virtualization solution a new challenge faced me, how to get Hyper-V running in my test lab.
For this machine i needed a relatively powerful server grade machine and didn't want to shell out money for any HP or Dell servers, i had to make do with what i had.
The most powerful computer i currently own ironically isn't a Windows based machine but an Apple, an 8-Core 2.8GHZ, MacPro desktop with 22GB ram, and 4TB SATA HDD.
The installation ran smoothly via bootcamp and performance was simple awesome.
I initially had some issues with booting up the Hyper-V but soon figured it had to do with Apple computers not have roms but EFI instead, very easy work around for that, boot into the mac first , then from within the mac set the startup drive to the Hyper-V drive and everything works perfectly.
So for those of you out there, looking at virtualization Hyper-V and looking for decent performance, you can't go wrong. The answer is that Hyper-V will run on the MacPro, no issues.

PS: I also heard a friend was able to do same off his 15" macbook pro laptop. If this 2 machines work, i really don't see why you can't get an imac to run as well

Hope this helps someone out there.