I. VIDEOS
Phil Sorgen, President, Microsoft Canada at Canadian launch
“Today represents the biggest launch in the history of Microsoft. Today we will be unveiling Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System and Exchange Server 2007…Over the course of the development for these products we participated in more than 1 billion end user sessions, to design and ensure that we were putting the right capabilities into these products…We had over 5 million customers download the betas of these products…”
To watch video of Phil Sorgen’s presentation at launch event click here.
Jill Schoolenberg, GM, Windows, Microsoft Canada
“The day-to-day worker wants to be able to find and use information more quickly and confidently. One of the best [tools for this] is the new Search function in Vista. There’s a simple Search bar in our Start menu [that allows] you to search for anything that’s in the OS; you can search your Files, and everything on your desktop….”
To watch video of interview with Jill Schoolenberg click here.
User Case Study – Eric Lee, Director of IT, Prime Restaurants
“The most exciting part is that all three products [Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exhange Server 2007] to us is one single solution. We don’t look at them individually….70 per cent of our users are laptop users and we know that laptops have a way of walking away on their own. So the security features in Vista – Bit Locker and UAC – certainly give me peace of mind…”
To see video about Prime Restaurants’ deployment of Vista, Office 2007 & ES 2007 click here.
User Case Study – Brian Bourne, president, CMS Consulting
“We talked to [Niagara Health] about Exchange Server 2007, but it’s when we mentioned the Outlook Web Access feature that we really piqued their interest.” To see video of Niagara health rollout click here.
II. ARTICLES & FEATURES
Canadian businesses get a glimpse of Vista – “Microsoft has always tended to glorify the operating system, but for us (as technology users) more important are the applications that run on top of it,” said Mark Bonner, director of IT at Toronto-based law firm Goodman and Carr LLP.
What’s so wonderful about Vista – “Security – from a technology and infrastructure deployment standpoint – is definitely improved behind Windows Vista. But corporate compliance, data integrity, information…those are also key pillars,” says Jill Schoolenberg, GM Windows, Microsoft Canada.
Security – a key Vista value prop, says Canadian customer – 70 per cent of Prime Restaurants’ employees are laptop users, and as “laptops have a way of walking away”, Vista features such as BitLocker Drive Encryption and User Account Control (UAC) come in very handy.
Hackers spoof Vista activation feature – Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system get around the software’s anti-piracy mechanisms.
Early Office 2007 adopters pleased with user interface – Much has been said about the potential difficulties that Microsoft’s Office 2007 revamped user interface has in store for computer users. However, some organizations that have had time to tinker with the software that will supplant Office 2003, report positive user experience and improved productivity.
Microsoft Office Open XML format to become a standard – Microsoft Corp. has won approval for its Offfice Open XML document format from international standards body ECMA International. ECMA’s General Assembly voted by 20-1 in favor of the standard at a meeting in Zurich on Thursday afternoon, and will now submit the format to the International Organization for Standardization for its approval. The vote against came from a representative of IBM Corp.
High expectations, many queries greet Exchange Server – Microsoft’s launch of Exchange Server 2007 on Thursday was greeted with both high expectations and lots of questions. The server technology, released along with Windows Vista and Office 2007, is developed around three guiding principles. Built-in protection, ‘anywhere access’ and operational efficiency are essential aspects of Exchange Server’s applicability to a network enterprise, according to Bryan Rusche, product manager for Exchange Server at Microsoft Canada.
Exchange Server 2007 released – Security, the mobile workforce and regulatory and policy compliance are three areas where Microsoft has made enhancements in Exchange 2007. In the security realm, new built-in protection features include the ability for customers to purchase either on-premise antivirus software or a hosted version. As part of a new enterprise Client Access License (CAL) for the product, customers can purchase Microsoft’s Antigen for Exchange antivirus software or Exchange Hosted Filtering services bundled with the Exchange CAL.
III. PRODUCT REVIEWS
Windows Vista: The good, the bad and the ugly – It’s taken five years, enough lines of code to span the globe several times, countless thousands of hours of developer time, and so many builds, betas, and release candidates that you’d need a cluster-based supercomputer to keep track of them all — but Windows Vista is finally here. The question is, what does all that work mean to you and to businesses the world over? What are the benefits? What are the downsides? This comprehensive review responds to all these questions.