Microsoft has officially launched Office 365, the cloud-based service that serves as the successor to BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). It’s designed to provide Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync (formerly Office Communications Server) to small and mid-sized businesses as hosted services. It also includes the Microsoft Office desktop applications (equivalent to Office Professional Plus edition). Office Web Apps, the online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, can also be used.

There are three different plans available:
•One for small businesses that don’t have an IT department
•One for mid-size organizations and enterprises that do have IT staff, and
•One that’s directly targeted at educational institutions

If the small-business version sounds a lot like the same market Microsoft targeted with Windows Small Business Server (SBS), that’s because it is. SBS 2011 is an “all-in-one” server product that integrates Windows Server with IIS Web Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Windows SharePoint Services (and, with the Premium add-on, SQL Server, Hyper-V, and Remote Desktop Services).

Microsoft released the latest version of SBS last December, but I’ve heard rumblings in the small business community about whether it might be the last one. Like the fears for the future of Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG), this is fueled by Microsoft’s big push toward cloud computing, and the cloud is something that many see as a particularly compelling option for small businesses — the very organizations that currently use SBS. Are those fears unfounded?

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Click here to review the winners.

To read the full article on InfoWorld, click here.

Their review results are as follows:
Features: 9
Administration: 9
Ease of Administration: 9
Setup: 9
Value: 10
Total: 9.1

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Although technology can be a game-changer, David S. Garland, a business owner who is author of “Smarter, Faster, Cheaper” (Wiley, 2010), cautions it can also become overwhelming. Tools, he said, should be “simple, functional and really help the business.” Here are some of the tools and strategies he, Mr. Hale and others use to emulate — and compete against — much bigger companies:

Batchbook, which is a customer relationship management software for small business,  MailChimp, a Web-based e-mail marketing platform that automatically generates and sends a follow-up e-mail to every lead, and Tungle.me, a free calendar-management tool that lets you create a calendar page that syncs with your calendar program and shows clients open times in your schedule without revealing information about other appointments, allow any small business to compete with larger companies and appear bigger than they are.

To read more of this article by Eilene Zimmerman click on the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/business/smallbusiness/03sbiz.html?_r=1

It’s not yet clear whether Google will be able to restore the deleted e-mails. Google reps stated “This is affecting less than .08% of our Gmail user base, and we’ve already fixed the problem for some users. Our engineers are working as quickly as possible and we hope to have everything back to normal as soon as possible. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.” For those not affected, the lost e-mails are a reminder of how Web storage isn’t completely immune to failure. If you rely on Gmail to safeguard e-mailed documents and important correspondences, consider backing up your account.

To read more from this article by Jared Newman just click on the link below:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/220886/gmail_bug_deletes_emails_for_150000_users.html

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is one of the features of SBS 2011 that really helps out admins of smaller networks. Through the SBS server console, admins can easily push-out updates to all of their connected PCs from a central location. Instead of each PC being responsible for its updates, they are downloaded once to the SBS server, then distributed to the PCs.

Windows 7 SP1 does not include new features, but instead is a collection of security patches and non-security fixes that have already been issued via Windows Update. The only additions to SP1 include an updated Remote Desktop client designed to work with RemoteFX, a new technology that debuted with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

To read more from Gregg Keizer’s article, please click the link below:

http://infoworld.com/d/windows/microsoft-starts-pushing-windows-7-sp1-all-347

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09digi.html

Keir Thomas from PCWorld discusses the new technology being introduced to Androids that will enable the user to switch securely between home and work identities with a touch of the screen.  The trick is achieved using virtualization software from VMWare, which runs as an application on top of the phone’s Google Android OS.   LG explains that users will simply tap a VMWare icon on the phone’s touchscreen and the phone will instantly switch identities–and phone numbers.   The user’s work identity will be one entirely managed by the corporate IT department, letting them ensure security and compliance regulations are adhered to, and the IT department will have the power to shut down the work account, should the employee lose the phone.

Virtualization on cell phones is expected to be a growth area in the coming years but hasn’t really been possible until now because of the performance limitations of mobile phone hardware. VMWare announced its Mobile Virtualization Platform over two years ago and demonstrated it in use early last year, but it’s taken until now for the first model to be commercially released.

To read more on Keir Thomas’s article on the new and improved virtualization of LG Android Phones, please click on the link below.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212764/virtualization_boosts_lg_android_phones.html