As you can tell, its been a while since my last post. A lot has been going on over the last few months at Microsoft as we’ve transitioned into a new Fiscal year which I hope will be one of the most promising years in over a decade for the company and for you, our partners. Many wondered what was taking place as the company announced its first layoffs in its history, and can tell you I was wondering too. After attending one of best internal conferences I’ve been at in my 11+ years at Microsoft, I can clearly see the fruits of our labors are going to be bountiful over the next 12-36 months with a lot of phenomenal products coming out of the product groups as well as our R&D Labs.
Once Windows 7 makes it into the hands of the consumers on October 22nd, I’m certain the buzz will only continue to flourish as people see that we’ve really hit the mark with this release and it should pull us out from under the grey skies of Windows Vista. While I will argue with anyone that Vista was a good operating system and was vastly superior to Windows XP, the improvements in Win7 will show those that held out, it was worth the wait.
This fall and moving in the first half of 2010 will be an exciting year as we launch the next generation of SharePoint as well as seeing our Virtualization solutions continue to flourish as the market demands for “Green IT” continue to grow. Keep your eye out for news on the next generation of System Center Data Protection Manager, as it will become a solid player in the Virtualization market upon its release with its support for Hyper-V R2 and Baremetal restores.
Lastly, look for Office 2010 and Exchange 2010. For those of you who had customers that held out with Exchange 2003 and Office 2003, I believe this next wave of products will entice them to reach for their checkbooks again.
If you’d like to get a taste for what’s to come in the upcoming release of Office, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/ and access the Technical Preview.