Microsoft News & Articles

With SharePoint 2010 quickly approaching, it is probably safe to say that interest in this Microsoft product-zilla is not likely to go away.

Companies like Colligo (news, site) take full advantage of market conditions and keep churning out products that (hopefully) make SharePoint experiences more enjoyable and productive. Please meet Colligo 4.0.

When the beta for Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) first came out, it lacked the ability to create ASP.NET MVC applications. This was because Visual Studio was in lock down before MVC 1.0 was released.

There was a workaround, but it didn't give you the ability to create MVC apps, just look at them. But you likely wanted to do a heck of a lot more than just look at your code in Visual Studio 2010.

Now, says Phil Haack, you can.

PSIGEN Software, a fourteen year old company built on the premise “perfect, simple imaging” has a pretty strong grip on the Document Management and Enterprise Content Management world.

Mostly known for their capture solutions for SharePoint, the company recently announced a new tool they hope will win over even more hearts from the Microsoft fan base. SharePoint Lookup Provider (SLP) provides integration with the SharePoint Database, which reportedly allows for a jazzed up automation process when scanning and capturing documents destined for document Libraries.

Two weeks ago, everybody was talking about it. It manhandled the blogosphere, was a trending topic on Twitter, and whispers of it could still be heard coming from the mouths of various Gilbane SF attendees last week.

And, OK, we admit it; Google Wave romanced us a little, too. But now that the smoke has cleared and Wave has had ample time to settle into the ‘net, the inevitable troop of naysayers has surfaced. Let’s check out what they have to say:

Microsoft made its first ever keynote at the JavaOne Conference last week reports eWeek, touting their desire for increased interoperability between .NET and Java.

In an interview with eWEEK, Steven Martin, senior director of development platform products at Microsoft said interoperability is important to him, "[Seventy-three] percent of professional developers rely on .NET or a combination of .NET and Java.  In that sense, both Java and .NET have won in the enterprise and it is incumbent on both Microsoft and Sun to ensure that interoperability for the platforms is real, available and as easy to implement as possible."

We've seen and heard many times that many organizations, particularly the larger ones, don't have a single technology stack in-house and there's often a mix of .NET and Java solutions to support. Microsoft knows that and have for the last five years been working closely with Sun on interoperability projects like Web Single Sign On, the Interop Vendor Alliance and virtualization.

Although they have been involved in the JavaOne conferences for a few years, this is the first time they have keynoted. It would have been interesting to see how the Java audience responded to their keynote.

The keynote, conducted by Martin and Dan'l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development, discussed what is happening today in regards to interoperability between .NET and Java and where it is headed in the future.

Interested in hearing exactly what they said? Watch the keynote.

Search Engine Optimization is a key element of any website design these days. Now you can hire an agency to help you improve your website's SEO or, you can do it yourself with a new toolkit for IIS: The IIS SEO Toolkit.

ASP.Net AJAX is Microsoft's free framework for developing rich internet applications (RIA) that work across all browsers. It includes four components: Server-Side ASP.NET AJAX, Client-Side ASP.NET AJAX, the AJAX Control Toolkit and the jQuery library.

The AJAX Control Toolkit that has just been updated with some new functionality. Let's have a look.

Bada boom, bada bing!

That’s how quickly things seem to happen in the webverse anyway, the search engine avenue being no exception. Accordingly, recently there have been rumors backed by heavy advertising dollars that Microsoft (news, site) plans to release a search engine called "Bing."

As is inevitable whenever big names put out new solutions, "Bing" is already being compared to offerings from other big names. In fact, much like the ongoing Mac vs. PC battle, we’re seeing Microsoft's new offering propositioned as competition for the biggest name.

A new set of business management applications that can be hosted on-site, from a data center, or as a SaaS has just gone on general availability (GA) from Virgina-based Acumatica.

Describing the new package as an economic alternative to traditional ERP and CRM systems, the company says it can be used enterprise-wide once a server license has been acquired.

And to ensure as deep a market penetration as possible, the GA launch is supported by a number of resellers, who are already bringing it to market.

Equilibrium (news, site) is a company pushing for a slice of the rich media ecosystem developing around SharePoint. They are just one of many companies finding both innovative and obvious ways to leverage SharePoint as a platform. Let's have a gander at their approach.

Softlayer (news, site), a Texas-based provider of on-demand virtual data center services, has been approved as a partner in the Microsoft Hosting BizSpark Program.

Hosting Partners are partners who can provide hosting services for SaaS solutions developed by BizSpark Startups. Startups that intend to deploy a product on the Internet within 12 months of enrollment are encouraged to engage a Hosting Partner to assist them in hosting their application on the internet.

Hosting Partners obtain Microsoft server products to provide hosting services to startups directly from Microsoft under their Service Provider License Agreement with Microsoft.

Working out of facilities in Dallas, Seattle and Washington DC, Softlayer was created in 2005 and integrates all aspects of IT development to create automated solutions for clients that gives them security, scalability and easy manageable IT infrastructures.

Chief Strategy Officer for Softlayer said participation in the programme would enhance their ability to offer clients dynamic platforms at critical stages in their business development.

Is Microsoft loosing its Groove? No, but they are changing the name of it. Microsoft Groove 2007 - the collaboration and document sharing software for small teams working online and offline -- is getting a new name. The new name? Why it will become Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010.

Is it a sign of the times? People want an easy way to install applications on their PCs. Microsoft's Web Platform Installer (news, site) is certainly looking like just the ticket.

Released to the public in January of this year, Microsoft has announced that the Web Platform Installer has reached 1.5 million product downloads. This includes free, core products to run websites on the desktop like ISS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition and SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. In addition you can download ASP.NET and PHP.

The Windows Application Gallery alone has had 100,000 application downloads. This is where you can pick web content management systems like Umbraco, Drupal and Silverstripe, along with some blogging apps like Subtext.

The Web Platform Installer is Microsoft's vision of a place where the development community can get access to the best open source .NET and PHP-based solutions.

“In 2008, we placed a large bet on the fact that the Microsoft Web Platform and interoperability with Open Source community applications, together, would be something that would benefit both open communities and developers for building Web applications," said Lauren Cooney, group product manager, Web Platform & Standards at Microsoft. And they have been extremely happy with the results. 

Just think of how many downloads they would have if Windows SharePoint Services was among the list of applications.

Pretend for a minute that you’re not already up to your ears in social networks and take a look at a new offering from Microsoft (news, site). Aptly named Vine, the social tool is designed to connect strings of people for the specific purpose of passing along news.

But this ain’t no140 character good time. Fashioned as a sort of life-support system, Vine’s shtick is to connect users with the people and places they care about the most, when it matters the most: in times of crisis.

Another company with another SaaS product. This time it's Bellevue–based DataSphere, who is now offering their Web Suite on an "infinitely scalable" multi-tenant platform.

What should be of particular interest to companies finding it difficult to attract traffic to their website is that this solution contains elements that will land users right into their company’s lap – and website.