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• Redmond Channel Partner Update
  • Public Preview of Windows Small Business Server 7
  • Microsoft Extends HPC's Limits
  • Will HP Insider Become Next CEO?
• More News
  • Microsoft To Double BPOS Margins for Top U.S. Partners
  • Microsoft Realigning Its Windows Embedded Business
• YourSalesManagementGuru: On Schedule
• Redmond Radio: IT Security Spending; Microsoft BPOS Outages; IE9 Beta

Redmond Channel Partner Update

Public Preview of Windows Small Business Server 7
By Scott Bekker

It's an exciting time for the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community. The testing and rollout phase of a new version of Windows Small Business Server always promises new opportunities, but this year, Microsoft is experimenting with different formats for the product.

Microsoft released a public preview on Tuesday for the next version of SBS, code-named Windows Small Business Server "7." The product itself is the basic update that usually follows an upgrade of the underlying server. In this case the upgraded server is Windows Server 2008 R2.

Major features of SBS 7 include the first service pack for Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, improved security and management, better file and print handling and simplified procedures for providing Internet and e-mail access to end users.

But this test version of the successor to Small Business Server 2008 is the second small business server of the new generation to go to the community. A month ago, a preview version went out for "Aurora," a cloud computing-enabled version of SBS for companies with fewer than 25 users. Stay tuned for a technical review of Aurora in the October issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine... Read the rest.

Microsoft Extends HPC's Limits
By Jeffrey Schwartz

Microsoft is looking to up the ante with its Windows Server HPC platform. The company released its third iteration yesterday and signaled it would like to see broader use of its high performance computing platform.

"Think of this as one of the key shifts in our fleet for what we look at as this future of technical computing," said Bill Hilf, Microsoft's general manager for technical computing. Hilf made his remarks in his keynote address at the High Performance Computing Financial Markets conference in New York

"It's a pretty wide initiative where we want to take the technical computing technologies and really make those available and accessible to a broader number of IT end users and developers," explained Bill Hamilton, Microsoft's director.. Read the rest.

It's looking like Hewlett-Packard's board is leaning toward an insider to replace Mark Hurd as CEO.

Among the leading candidates are Todd Bradley and Ann Livermore, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bradley heads up HP's PC business and Livermore is responsible for the company's huge server and services business. Also a contender is Dave Donatelli, who heads HP's storage business, though he is seen as a dark horse. Donatelli, who came to HP from EMC, helped lead HP's bidding war for 3PAR.

The report said HP hasn't ruled out candidates from outside the company. Among those under consideration was Stephen Elop, who was president of Microsoft's business division, where he oversaw the company's Office product group, Dynamics and Office Communications Server... Read the rest.

• Microsoft To Double BPOS Margins for Top U.S. Partners
• Microsoft Realigning Its Windows Embedded Business

On Schedule
Whew, two weeks without writing my blog. What happened? I was on vacation.

I won't bore you with my highlights or pictures; however you do know the Sales Management Guru will turn his vacation experience into a sales leadership analogy.

My vacation started in Budapest and then moved on to (by boat) to Vienna, Melk, Passau and Nuremburg. We then traveled to Prague by bus. One of the interesting experiences was traveling through a series of 25 river locks that allowed the boat to move easily up and down the various levels of water on the Danube. I have used locks on the Mississippi river a number of times, and even in Tennessee we have river locks... So why was this so interesting?  The captain told us that they had to "book" lock times a year in advance!

What did that mean? It meant that we had to leave each city at predefined time, travel at a presumed speed and reach each lock at the pre-determined date/time. What does that have to do with running a high performance sales organization?

If you have heard me speak, you would know I normally build into the program  with these words: Discipline, control and accountability.  When we are consulting with organizations not performing up to expectations or working with sales teams struggling to succeed, we normally find sales management lacking in discipline. Examples are easy to find; sales meetings don't start on time, sales training meetings are skipped by salespeople because schedules were not published 90 days in advance or not properly planned, sales management is not meeting at set times with each salesperson for monthly, quarterly or semi-annual reviews or (worse) there is little or poor communications between the president of the organization and sales leadership because a formal monthly priority setting meeting ... Read the rest.

Read more blogs by Ken Thoreson here.

Redmond Radio, Week of September 20
Hosted by Michael Domingo
mdomingo@1105media.com

In this week's episode:

• Microsoft among top brands worlwide (study)
• IT security spending rises
• Microsoft reports major BPOS outages
• IE9 is released as a beta

Click here to download and listen!

Prefer to download automatically via iTunes? Go here, click on "Subscribe with iTunes" and when iTunes opens up, be sure to configure your subscription settings to download each show weekly! Also, win an MCPmag.com cap, only by listening to the Podbean version!

Send e-mail to Michael Domingo, Editor, at mdomingo@1105media.com if you experience problems listening to or need help with the podcast.