Developer Advisory Services for ISVs

SharePoint 2010: Top New Features for ISV

Cliff Green - MSFT — Sat, 15 May 2010 19:57:16 GMT

With the release of SharePoint 2010 came a truck load of new features. It can be a lot to digest. In this post I am going to highlight the top features that I see for ISVs. A lot of ISVs look to SharePoint to help with visualization of information from their data store or providing integration with their product through the SharePoint platform. Integration is made easier with four improvements to the platform; Business Connectivity Services, Search Connector, Client object model and the Service Application Framework. These are in no particular order.

Business Connectivity Services

Business Connectivity Services, aka BCS, is the evolution of the BDC. It now allows for read/write scenarios to your data store versus the read-only approach in the previous release. BCS also allows you to create a list that uses your BCS definition to surface data within SharePoint as if it were a native SharePoint list. To the end-user this is a seamless transition. Previously this was done using web parts, but now the underlying data looks to the user as if it were list in SharePoint. The user interacts with the data in the same way they would with data stored natively in SharePoint.

Another benefit here is that you can define a BCS definition based on a .NET assembly. If your data store isn’t a supported store out of the box you can expose the data using a web service or a POCO (plain old CLR object). find out more about the BCS here.

Lastly, BDC used to be an enterprise only feature, which meant your customers had to have enterprise licenses to leverage any work you may have done in this space. With SharePoint 2010 the BCS is now offered with SharePoint Foundation.

Search Connector Framework

The search connector allows you to take advantage of the BCS features to expose your data to search. Previously this required a protocol handler. This was typically unmanaged code that was difficult to write. This was a barrier to entry for a lot of businesses. Now that you can leverage .NET to expose your data to SharePoint search the barrier to entry has been lowered significantly.

Read more about the Search Connector Framework here.

Client Object Model

With SharePoint 2007 you either wrote code on the server using the object model (web parts, asp.net pages, etc.) or used the SharePoint web services to interact with the farm. With 2010 the product group has provided a client object model exposing common tasks that can be used from .NET clients, web pages via ECMAScript and Silverlight. This opens the possibilities for integration as well as relieving the burden of working with the web services. While they exposed quote a bit of functionality, there seemed to always be a one off scenario that wasn’t covered, requiring you to write your own. More information related to using the client object can be found here.

Service Applications

Finally, there is the introduction of Service Applications. “The Service Application Framework provides a platform that allows developers to build scalable middle-tier applications that are hosted in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. These services can provide data or processing resources to other SharePoint features. The Service Application Framework enables services to be shared between computers on a server farm; it also helps load balance and manage services in SharePoint.”

A lot of companies wanted to integrate with the SSP in the previous release, but there was no means to do so. With the service application framework you become part of the SharePoint infrastructure, including the ability to participate in backup scenarios with the farm. Read more about the capabilities using this link. The architecture of the Service Application Framework is described in this post.

Those capabilities that are exposed in your product today via services can easily be made available to the SharePoint platform using this framework. If you are not using services today, perhaps this framework will generate ideas on how you can expose functionality or data in your product to SharePoint.

Cliff Green
Senior Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS
Enterprise Services, ISV Practice

MSPA Newsletter, May 2009

Lori Turner — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:26:00 GMT

In the May 2009 issue of the MSPA Newsletter, read about:

Deliver Solutions Faster with Windows HPC Server 2008. SIMULIA delivers simulation solutions faster with Windows HPC Server 2008, and sees the advanced programming tool set as a critical asset.
The “Velocity” Project. “Velocity” is the code-name for a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications.
Tune Your Web Applications for Performance. Let us show you some Internet Explorer tips and tricks – we can show you how to troubleshoot and optimize the client-side performance of your web applications.
SQL 2008 Opportunities abound! We have workshops, training and consulting engagements that cover the gamut of SQL 2008 features and technologies:

SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Development and Deployment. An engagement designed to take participants from level 0 to 300 using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services, with emphasis on design, implementation and deployment of OLAP cubes and analytical solutions.
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. An engagement designed to take participants from level 0 to 300 using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, with emphasis on design, implementation and deployment of reporting solutions.
SQL Server 2008 for Administrators. Learn tools and techniques to install, configure, secure and maintain Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and benefit from an introduction to new features.
SQL Server 2005/2008: Failover Clustering. This workshop provides database administrators the knowledge and skill on how to install, configure, secure, maintain and troubleshoot Microsoft SQL Server Failover Clustering. The workshop covers SQL Server 2005 and 2008 and points out the differences between them. It also includes various hands-on labs designed to provide the students with the practical experience and confidence required to manage SQL Server Failover Clusters in a daily work environment.
SQL Server 2005/2008: Performance Tuning and Optimization. Accelerate time to resolution with proactive planning to keep your IT systems up and running. This workshop provides information on SQL Server general architecture, index and page structures, locking and concurrency, tools and monitoring of SQL Server performance using SQL Management Studio, dynamic management views, query optimization, and insight into SQL OS, memory architecture and programming efficiency. Students take an in-depth look at analyzing performance counters, Profiler events features, blocking, and key dynamic management views for performance tuning.

Can I Redistribute that File? An FAQ for many ISVs. Read the newsletter to learn more…
Upcoming Tech Talks and Local Events. Read about upcoming tech talks especially for our MSPA customers and find open enrollment workshops in your area.

MSPA Newsletter May 2009.pdf

MSPA Newsletter, March 2009

Lori Turner — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:25:00 GMT

In the March 2009 issue of the MSPA Newsletter, read about:

Move to the Front of the Line. The Frontline program is a wonderful and unique opportunity to work face-to-face with Microsoft product groups. Read more about one such experience an MSPA customer had with the Frontline program to understand how this program might benefit you.
Windows 7 Ecosystem Readiness Program. It’s time to get ready for Windows 7! This readiness program gives you access to builds, toolkits, support and lab testing at Microsoft.
Enhance Your Debugging Skills. All software vendors must have debugging skills in their development and support arsenal… debugging is a survival skill that is absolutely necessary. We have a new offering for a debugging workshop that we have developed specifically with software vendors in mind. Review the agenda for this workshop and see if it is the right fit for your organization.
Use Services to Secure Your Solutions and Servers. Security has to be front and center. We offer a number of services for various environments and states of the software development lifecycle: Application Threat Modeling, Application Security Code Reviews, and Security Health Checks.
The Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling Tool. The SDL Threat Modeling Tool version 3.1 is now available for download.
Learn at Your Own Pace (for FREE). Microsoft Press books and Microsoft E-Learning are great tools for learning at your pace… and especially so when they’re FREE. Don’t miss this opportunity to take advantage of FREE offers for learning about LINQ, Silverlight, and ASP.NET 3.5 to develop rich user experiences with Visual Studio 2008.
Leverage Your MSPA to Help Your Customers. Learn how to leverage your MSPA contract to help your customers in those difficult and sometimes critical situations and improve your product satisfaction with your customers.
Upcoming Tech Talks and Local Events. Read about upcoming tech talks especially for our MSPA customers and open enrollment workshops throughout the US.

MSPA Newsletter March 2009.pdf

Two exciting SharePoint tools released

Cliff Green - MSFT — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:21:49 GMT

ISVs should be excited with the release of two tools to the SharePoint community. SPDisposeCheck provides a static source code analysis tool to check for leaks that may be caused by not disposing of SPSite and SPWeb objects properly. While most people that have worked with SharePoint know of these perils, this tool can provide a second set of eyes on your code. For those new to the product, SPDisposeCheck will allow you to uncover those instances where improperly disposed objects would result in leaked memory. Instances where this occurs isn’t always obvious, so the tool can help reduce leaks that make it to production.

Another exciting tool is the SPDiag tool. This tool greatly simplifies gathering data required for troubleshooting issues in a SharePoint environment. When working on issues or performance problems getting a good snapshot if the farm environment can help uncover the root cause of the issues quickly and get customers back to work. Those ISVs with SharePoint customer bases may enhance the support experience by leveraging this tool.

Cliff Green
Sr. Application Development Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS
Enterprise Services, ISV Practice

Recent SharePoint ISV News

Cliff Green - MSFT — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:15:47 GMT

There are a couple of items that have recently been released that are important to the SharePoint ISV community and to those that may become part of that community. An article referencing the 10 Best Intranets of 2009 show the growing trend around SharePoint adoption. Of the 10 best, five of those are SharePoint based sites. A quote from the article,

“Most impressively, fully half of the winning intranets used SharePoint, especially the recent MOSS platform (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007). As the following chart shows, SharePoint use has grown dramatically in recent years. This is particularly impressive given that, from 2003–2006, the winning intranets didn't use earlier versions of SharePoint at all.”

We hope that tend continues and that it will continue to provide opportunities for the ISV community to increase revenue.

Another announcement is the latest CTP release of the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services. This 1.3 version release will address several areas. A full list can be found at the SharePoint Team Blog. Some of the things that are particularly exciting include x64 support, command line build enabling continuous integration and build servers as well as a new project item template for SharePoint RootFile deployment. Final release is slated for Spring of 2009.

Cliff Green
Sr. Application Development Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS

MSPA Newsletter, January 2009 Issue

Lori Turner — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:27:00 GMT

In the January 2009 issue of the MSPA Newsletter, read about:

Performance Challenges for a Social Networking Application. A partner who is developing a social networking application on MOSS 2007 to serve hundreds of thousands of customers around the globe came to us for guidance and assistance to improve their application performance. Learn about the challenges the customer faced and how the ISV team engaged to improve application performance.
PDC Highlights. The PDC has passed, but you still have access to much of the content presented at PDC online and in person too! You have an opportunity to see live the “best of the PDC” at scheduled events at certain locations throughout the US – read more for details on registration information, dates and locations.
Learn More – Briefings and Workshops. We offer briefings and workshop deliveries on the latest technologies and products to our MSPA customers. In this month’s newsletter, we highlight a few of these services that you can take advantage of today: Developing Claims-Based Identity Systems, ASP.NET 3.5, Silverlight 2.0 and Developing Workflow Solutions for SharePoint. Additionally, we are currently developing a readiness program for our ISV customer around Azure… this opportunity will enable you to learn Azure, adopt it early and lead the industry!
Realize Savings with Microsoft Products and Solutions. We can all agree that the economy is at the forefront of many of our minds today; clearly, realizing savings is a leading factor in most business decisions. Microsoft products and solutions can be a key driver in helping your organization realize savings -- learn how.
Windows 7. The beta is here! Read about how to get the bits now and learn about the new features you can expect with our next release of Windows.
Virtualization. Virtualization is a key technology in today’s world; as you deploy solutions that use virtualization, you should understand how your solution falls within Microsoft’s support policy for virtualization.
Internet Explorer 8. If you are a vendor for a web application, you probably already know that IE (Internet Explorer) 8 is coming down the pipeline – once it releases, it will be distributed to end-users via Automatic Updates and the Windows Update and Microsoft Update sites. Learn about the IE 8 Blocker Toolkit in the event you and/or your customers need to manage IE 8 deployments.
Upcoming Events. Read about upcoming tech talks especially for our MSPA customers and open enrollment workshops throughout the US.

MSPA Newsletter January 2009.pdf

SharePoint Announces SPDisposeCheck

Cliff Green - MSFT — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:12:42 GMT

For those developers in the ISV community out there working with SharePoint the SharePoint team has recently made a significant announcement. A static source code analysis tool, SPDisposeCheck, will be made available to the public in order to help check for memory leaks caused by not disposing of objects properly in SharePoint. While the tool will not be made available until later in the year, "planned for release during the coming North American Winter", it will serve as a good starting point to uncover issues and potentially help build better quality code.

The tool leverages guidance from Mike Ammerlaan, Scott Harris and Roger Lamb which can be found in this whitepaper and this blog. To read more click here.

Cliff Green
Sr. Application Development Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS
ISV Practice

US Proactive Services

Lori Turner — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:29:00 GMT

The table below contains a description of the services available to our MSPA customers. To request assistance or additional information on any of theses services, contact your technical account manager.

Proactive Service	Technology	Service Type	Description
.NET Application Compatibility Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	The .NET Application Compatibility briefing is designed to assist in the planning, testing or preparation of making applications compatible with multiple versions of .NET Framework. It is delivered by a team of consultants that have extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. This guidance can be delivered on site or in a Live Meeting session.
.Net Framework using C# Workshop	Development	Workshops	An introduction to programming with .NET Framework 3.5 using the C# language. The workshop focuses on the functionality and operation of the framework, which is common to all .NET languages. However, all examples and exercises use the C# programming language. The workshop starts with an introduction to the structure and internal operation of the .NET Framework classes and the Common Language Runtime. It then covers most of the features needed to write server side applications (excluding ASP.NET) or UI / WinForms applications using Visual Studio .NET 2008 and C#. The workshop makes extensive use of demo code and hands on exercises.
64-bit Developer Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	The 64-bit Developer briefing is designed to provide developers with essentials knowledge required for development on 64-bit Windows platforms. It provides a quick overview of the differences between Windows 64-bit and 32-bit memory architectures, covers techniques for porting 32-bit applications and for running 32-bit applications on 64-bit platforms. It is delivered by a team of consultants that have extensive knowledge in 64-bit software development. This offering can be delivered on site or in a Live Meeting session.
ACE Application Host Evaluation	Security	Consulting and Support	Routine evaluations and response to identified vulnerabilities are important elements of risk management. This includes: identifying, acknowledging, and responding as appropriate to changes in risk factors, and ensuring that security policies and procedures are appropriate and operating as intended. Microsoft's Application Host Evaluation offering can be utilized as a routine evaluation to help identify security gaps. The intent of offering is to provide a detailed security, compliance and configuration assessment of your Windows operating systems and host environment using Microsoft's SPIDER Technical Compliance Management software.
ACE Application Security Code Review	Security	Consulting and Support	This service provides expert level manual code reviews complemented with proprietary scanning tools to identify common coding vulnerabilities hidden within application implementations. The service also provides proven guidance to help mitigate any identified vulnerabilities within the application implementation.
ACE Application Security Training Workshop	Security	Workshops	Application Security Development Training will provide customer's development team with the focused information that it requires in order to understand, appreciate, and appropriately address the most common security problems in a typical IT enterprise application. In turn, customer's development team will produce code that is more secure and reliable.
ACE Application Threat Modeling	Security	Consulting and Support	A key component of SDL-IT, the Microsoft Application Threat Modeling process and associated Threat Analysis & Modeling tool was developed to help non-security subject-matter experts design application with security in mind. Using this tool, application development teams can create a threat model that helps detect security flaws and evaluate application threats and vulnerabilities in the context of defined business objectives. Microsoft ACE Services provides a range of services related to threat modeling including Training Session, Consulting and Process Integration.
ACE Application Threat Modeling Workshop	Security	Workshops	A key component of SDL-IT, the Microsoft Application Threat Modeling process and associated Threat Analysis & Modeling tool was developed to help non-security subject-matter experts design application with security in mind. Using this tool, application development teams can create a threat model that helps detect security flaws and evaluate application threats and vulnerabilities in the context of defined business objectives. Microsoft ACE Services provides a range of services related to threat modeling including Training Session, Consulting and Process Integration.
ACE Performance Analysis Optimization	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	This service will enable customers to evaluate and identify potential and existing performance issues. This helps determine when and how to fix or prevent such issues, in order to reduce the number of servers needed to run a business and, ultimately, to improve the end-user experience.
ACE SDL-IT	Security	Consulting and Support	Based on the experience of developing and evolving SDL-IT, a application risk management process within Microsoft IT, SDL-IT process engineering provides customers with an easy way to integrate controls to help ensure the security posture of their enterprise application portfolio. This service will enable customers to develop more secure applications by integrating and sustaining an overall security process into their own software development lifecycles.
Active Directory Design and Migration Review	Platforms	Consulting and Support	The AD Design and Migration Review provides customers Microsoft best practices, recommendations and validations in terms of their existing or planned Active Directory design or migration. Recommendations and areas of potential risk or concern are outlined in a formal report as part of the engagement.
Active Directory Guidance	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Informal guidance is available to help your team answer specific questions related to the implementation of Active Directory in your environment. This service is applicable in all phases of a product lifecycle and can be delivered in a variety of ways from onsite briefings, question and answer sessions via phone/email or onsite meetings. Microsoft best practices and knowledge transfer regarding Active Directory are provided where applicable dependent on the scope of the engagement.
Advisor Platform	Development	Consulting and Support	The Microsoft Advisor Platform is an integrated suite of tools developed for financial professionals who build advice-based client relationships. The solutions in this service area span simple planning concepts to in-depth financial plans covering many types of assets and liabilities, and cover a full spectrum of wealth management scenarios including retirement planning, intergeneration wealth transfers, mid-career asset conservation and analytics as well as financial instruments which provide risk mitigation (options, insurance, and hedges).
ALM - ALM Assessment	Development	Consulting and Support	The Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Assessment provides customers with deep insight into the maturity of their software development capabilities. The program is delivered as a five-day consultant-led engagement and requires a commitment from the customer to making representatives of their development organization available to the consultant team.
ALM - Building MS Legacy Platforms with TFS	Development	Consulting and Support	Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Build provides the functionality of a public build lab that is fully integrated with source control, reporting, and work item tracking. By default it only builds Visual Studio 2005 projects. This service offers aid to customers who wish to migrate their existing source code from a VSS repository to TFS and enable building of those legacy project types (Visual Basic 6.0, Visual Studio 2002/2003) within TFS Build, enabling all the benefits of Team Build for older projects.
ALM - Continuous Integration with VSTS	Development	Consulting and Support	Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Build provides the functionality of a public build lab that is fully integrated with source control, reporting, and work item tracking. This service offers aid to customers who wish to set up and validate their TFS Build to enable continuous integration builds to be started based on various customer criteria..
ALM - Development with VSTS Workshop	Development	Workshops	Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Development Workshop is designed to assist customers to become familiar with the development features and capabilities of the VSTS Development Edition, in order to improve the overall Code Quality. Like most workshops, this is generally delivered formally in a class room type of setting with interactive and instructor led sessions. These training workshops also contain demos, hands on exercises and lab work.
ALM - Managing Software Development with VSTS	Development	Consulting and Support	VSTS was built having in mind teams that focus on iterative and incremental software development. This 2-day guidance exercise will help project managers in further their understanding on how to apply project management techniques to agile projects using VSTS.
ALM - MSF Project Management Workshop	Development	Workshops	Consistently delivering high quality technology solutions on time and on budget is challenging. The Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) offers guidance for working with people and processes based on the proven practices of Microsoft to help teams and organizations become more successful in delivering business driven technology solutions. The Microsoft Visual Studio Team System offers two integrated process templates: MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Process Improvement. By building on MSF and the Visual Studio Team System process templates, Microsoft Services application lifecycle management workshops are designed to increase your knowledge and productivity. We use our experience, tools, and processes to provide you with knowledge on relevant topics and proven best practices that can help you excel at managing complexity.
ALM - NANT Migration to TFS Build	Development	Consulting and Support	Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Build provides the functionality of a public build lab that is fully integrated with source control, reporting, and work item tracking. This service offers aid to customers who wish to migrate their build process from NANT to TFS Build.
ALM - Release Management with VSTS	Development	Consulting and Support	Release Management is an integral part of shipping products – but an often over-looked area that invariably contributes to shipping delays, product recalls/re-releases, lack of well-enforced release criteria – be it feature completion, security compliance, development practices, bug bars, build and testing practices, and version control management. The 2 day engagement will focus on how to effectively use Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Team Foundation Server (TFS) in areas such as: • Governance• Strategies• Best practices• Source Control Management to establish and ensure the success of a release management discipline for the customer’s application lifecycle management.
ALM - Reporting with VSTS Workshop	Development	Workshops	Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Reporting Workshop is designed to assist customers to become familiar with the features and capabilities of the Reporting system in Team Foundation Server. Like most workshops, this is generally delivered formally in a class room type of setting with interactive and instructor led sessions. These training workshops also contain demos, hands on exercises and lab work.
ALM - Testing with VSTS Workshop	Development	Workshops	Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Test Workshop is designed to assist customers to become familiar with the test features and capabilities of the VSTS Tester Edition. In VSTS Team Edition, Testing has been made a first class citizen in the development environment and lots of capabilities provided for integrating tests directly with the code being tested. Like most workshops, this is generally delivered formally in a class room type of setting with interactive and instructor led sessions. These training workshops also contain demos, hands on practice exercises and lab work
ALM - TFS Lab Pilot	Development	Consulting and Support	Team Foundation Server is an integral component of the Application Lifecycle Management Framework from Microsoft Services. The Team Foundation Server Lab Pilot helps reduce your implementation risks by providing an evaluation and training environment you can use to assess capabilities and identify the best way to address the development challenges your organization may face. Your staff can begin to develop and receive training on product and process competencies before full implementation. This pilot can help dramatically increase solution adoption speed and prepare your team for production implementation. With Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Services can help you manage application development by employing the following capabilities: . Version control - Tracks and provides control over changes to your source files. . Work item tracking - Captures contextual information about your projects such as requirements, bugs, issues, and tasks. . Build management - Enables teams t
ALM - Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) guidance is designed to assist in the planning or preparation of VSTS deployment. Depending on customer needs, this guidance can cover any of several VSTS or Team Foundation Services (TFS) features. Like most guidance services, this guidance in generally delivered informally through a series of discussions with subject-matter experts from Microsoft who can give you feedback on your VSTS issues or questions. These informal discussions can take the form e-mail or phone conversations, informal white-boarding sessions, or briefings via Live Meeting or in person.
ALM - VSS to TFS Migration	Development	Consulting and Support	The completely new Version Control feature that is part of Team Foundation Server (TFS) offers innovative functionality such as shelving, atomic check-ins, XML Web Service-based communication, and deep integration with all of the other aspects of Team Foundation Server. All of this functionality is backed by the robustness and reliability of SQL Server 2005. This service offers aid to customers who wish to migrate their existing source code from a VSS repository to TFS.
ALM - VSTS In-Depth Overview	Development	Consulting and Support	Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS) is a productive, integrated, and extensible suite of lifecycle tools that expands the Visual Studio product line to enable greater communication and collaboration among software development teams. With Visual Studio 2005 Team System, organizations can ensure greater predictability and quality early and often throughout the development process.
Application Design Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	This type of guidance provides the customer resources to review the high level aspects of their software or application design. Coordinating how a customer's networking, database, and web components work together is often part of the discussion. This guidance is delivered informally through a series of whiteboard discussions with subject-matter experts who provide feedback on architectural questions.
Application Design Review	Development	Consulting and Support	The goal of this review is to identify potential Microsoft support issues with an customer's application’s architectural design. The review will provide a comprehensive look at a customer’s existing application architecture and provide feedback on what areas should be addressed to help ensure optimal performance, maintenance and support according to Microsoft best practices.
Application Development with Windows x64 Edition Workshop	Development	Workshops	Provides participants detailed information and lab exercises to demonstrate the development tools, techniques, and best practices for developing new 64-bit applications and migrating existing 32-bit applications.
Application Performance Testing	Development	Labs	Activities to evaluate an application’s performance, identify bottlenecks, and determine recommendations for improvement. Customers can also use Lab facilities to evaluate scalability limits based on their objectives and to create prototypes or workarounds to help validate alternate technology implementations.
Architecture and Planning Advisor	Technology Agnostic	Consulting and Support	For CIOs who aim to realize the full value of their investment in Microsoft technology, this Offering delivers strategic advice and programmatic advocacy across the breadth of Microsoft. Your Advisor brings years of experience, an extensive and proven toolkit and a set of methods based on best practices from hundreds of successful engagements worldwide, to help equip you and your team to mitigate risk and solve business challenges.
Architecture Transformation (Project Based)	Technology Agnostic	Consulting and Support	To ensure IT initiatives positively impact your bottom line, you need a clear view of how your business capabilities contribute to your strategic objectives. Microsoft Services Architecture Transformation supplies your organization with critical insight, allowing you to prioritize projects and make strategic decisions that deliver business value.
ASP.NET 2.0 Workshop	Development	Workshops	Provides participants detailed information and lab exercises to demonstrate the new features in Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0. The workshop topics cover all of the new features and improvements in ASP.NET 2.0.
Assessment and Roadmap for Services Oriented Architecture	Development	Consulting and Support	The Microsoft® Services Assessment & Roadmap for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides the enterprise a decisive, vendor-agnostic perspective regarding their existing and future SOA capabilities. It delivers a tailored SOA Roadmap with prioritized recommendations, supported by comprehensive enterprise SOA assessment findings documentation, the SOA Maturity Model Workshop, and a Services Inventory with dependencies and adoption levels.
BizTalk Server 2006 Architecture and Administration Workshop	Development	Workshops	This 3 day workshop for architects and administrators will include an overview of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 along with presentations and hands-on labs covering how to design, build, and operate a robust, scaleable and secure BizTalk Server 2006 environment. No prior Microsoft BizTalk Server experience is required but would be helpful as this will be a fast paced course. BizTalk Server 2006 launched in February 2006 as a follow up to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004; Microsoft’s newest business process and integration server product. This release of BizTalk combines improved runtime performance with a Visual Studio .NET integrated design time experience. BizTalk now provides a complete web services model for building standards-based integration solutions for any system or service. In addition the new adapter framework and integration model works completely within the common services of BizTalk like orchestration, design time and runtime management, activity monitoring and data transfe
Biztalk Server 2006 Development Workshop	Development	Workshops	This 4 day developer-focused workshop will include an overview of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 along with many presentations, demonstrations and hands-on labs covering how to develop, build, deploy and debug the many features of a BizTalk Server 2006 solution. No prior Microsoft BizTalk Server experience is required.
Business Expertise for Microsoft Dynamics	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Coordinated with the other Premier Support services, the Business Expertise for Microsoft Dynamics services focus on understanding the customer organization’s unique business application needs and ensuring those needs are represented in your overall solution. In addition, we will work closely with the Microsoft Dynamics Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and partners to help ensure the Premier solution and the partner solution work in harmony.
C# 3.0 and Introduction to LINQ Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	This briefing provides down-to-earth coverage of the new features in C# 3.0 and their use in Language Integrated Query (LINQ).
Code Review	Development	Consulting and Support	This service will analyze a customer’s application source code to determine any areas that may potentially cause a support issue in the future and make appropriate recommendations based on Microsoft best practices . An additional goal of this engagement is to help uncover any performance hindering code, leaks, crash situations, deadlocks, heap corruption or other issues that might cause support issues post-release. Code reviews delivered are from a supportability standpoint; security may only be touched upon as an overview in this review.
Configuration Management Optimization	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	Configuration Management Optimization addresses software update, patch management, and many other software management issues through deployment and optimization of System Center Configuration Manager 2007.
Core Services Proactive Monitoring Management (PMM)	Management	Consulting and Support	PMM combines the implementation of incident and problem management processes with technical tools and reports to tune Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 for your environment. In conjunction with your monitoring and technology teams, Microsoft helps you create Incident Matrices, Major Problem Reviews, and a sustained engineering team. As the operational process implementation progresses, technical resources implement tools that allow you to see the most problematic alerts. In addition, we help you create a scorecard which defines your alert to ticket ratio, alerts per server per day, and number of critical, error, and service unavailable alerts created by MOM.
Core Services Service Level Management (SLM)	Platforms	Consulting and Support	This engagement focuses on establishing a services-based approach to managing the IT ecosystem. It includes installation of a Scorecard Solution for measuring key metrics needed to manage a service, creation of a services map to illustrate the true complexity and dependencies for an end-to-end service, definition of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), definition of Operating Level Agreements (OLAs), and implementation of service review meetings to drive a culture of iterative improvement.
Crisis Management for Enterprise Environments Workshop	IT Operations	Workshops	Emphasizes the need for proactive planning and troubleshooting and provides participants with the skills required to help execute the organization’s recovery processes. This workshop contains some high level technical information, but focuses on planning, managing, recovering and avoiding system crisis.
Custom Lab Activities	Technology Agnostic	Labs	Lab facilities are also available for custom activities to meet customers’ most specific needs. Your Premier TAM/ADC or MCS consultant assists you in defining the scope of, and determining availability for, a custom Lab exercise. We plan, coordinate and treat these activities like the custom reviews with which most Premier and MCS customers are already familiar. Additionally, you can rely on Microsoft Studios to prepare a professional-quality video of your lab visit for use as marketing collateral.
Customer Care Framework 2008 Jumpstart	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Consulting Services utilizes deep expertise and the CCF 2008 Jumpstart service to successfully design, aggregate, and implement customer care software solutions. Microsoft consultants help organizations aggregate information from disparate line of business applications into a unified desktop, automate customer care applications to drive efficient workflows, and increase agent productivity to improve customer satisfaction and retention. In addition, consultants can further accelerate the customer's project efforts by using reference design specifications, deployment plans, and project templates to drive business transformation within customer care center operations quickly and with reduced costs.
Data Access Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Application guidance enables you to create optimal solutions by making the right design decisions upfront. Guidance services should be initiated in the envision or early planning stages of the product development lifecycle before the functional or product specifications are completed. This helps customers understand and plan for how Microsoft technologies should best be utilized in the solution. Data Access Guidance is focused on the design of ADO, ADO.NET, SQL Server, or MSDE components.
Deploying and Managing Microsoft Office 2007	Platforms	Workshops	The Deploying and Managing Microsoft Office 2007 4-day workshop will provide participants with the best practices necessary to design, deploy, customize and manage an Office 2007 installation through instructor-led training and hands-on labs. This workshop focuses on initial design and planning, Windows Installer fundamentals, using Office tools to customize and maintain Office 2007, upgrading to Office 2007 (including conversion and migration considerations), various types of deployment methods, multi-language deployments, patch management and installation troubleshooting.
Deployment	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Services Desktop Optimization using Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System (DOVO) is built upon proven tools and guidance designed to help you fully capture the benefits of desktop optimization through the effective use of Microsoft Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. Microsoft Services delivers best practices for desktop optimization based on extensive experience and expertise gained in complex client environments. Through coordination and collaboration with Microsoft product groups and its own IT organization, as well as early adopters, Microsoft Services is able to bring deep knowledge and understanding of products, roadmaps, architectures and methodologies to help you maximize your investment in Microsoft technologies.
Deployment for Media Room	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Provides delivery methodology for Microsoft Mediaroom operating system and application deployments.
Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) for Messaging	Messaging	Consulting and Support	DCM helps IT groups apply Microsoft IT and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, processes, tools and templates to establish baseline settings for servers and applications, standardize these settings among multiple servers and automate ongoing configuration management exception reporting. The offering also includes the installation of the Desired Configuration Monitoring tool to dynamically report on complexity in the environment so remediation can be planned and to automatically audit changes and deviations from baselines. This helps reduce configuration complexities and provides a proactive approach to releasing updates and new products, and managing change.
Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) for SharePoint	Platforms	Consulting and Support	DCM helps IT groups apply Microsoft IT and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, processes, tools and templates to establish baseline settings for servers and applications, standardize these settings among multiple servers and automate ongoing configuration management exception reporting. The offering also includes the installation of the Desired Configuration Monitoring tool to dynamically report on complexity in the environment so remediation can be planned and to automatically audit changes and deviations from baselines. This helps reduce configuration complexities and provides a proactive approach to releasing updates and new products, and managing change.
Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) for SQL Server 2000/2005	Database	Consulting and Support	DCM helps IT groups apply Microsoft IT and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, processes, tools and templates to establish baseline settings for servers and applications, standardize these settings among multiple servers and automate ongoing configuration management exception reporting. The offering also includes the installation of the Desired Configuration Monitoring tool to dynamically report on complexity in the environment so remediation can be planned and to automatically audit changes and deviations from baselines. This helps reduce configuration complexities and provides a proactive approach to releasing updates and new products, and managing change.
Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) for Windows Core Services	Platforms	Consulting and Support	DCM helps IT groups apply Microsoft IT and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, processes, tools and templates to establish baseline settings for servers and applications, standardize these settings among multiple servers and automate ongoing configuration management exception reporting. The offering also includes the installation of the Desired Configuration Monitoring tool to dynamically report on complexity in the environment so remediation can be planned and to automatically audit changes and deviations from baselines. This helps reduce configuration complexities and provides a proactive approach to releasing updates and new products, and managing change.
Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) for Windows Server 2003 Baseline Security	Security	Consulting and Support	DCM helps IT groups apply Microsoft IT and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, processes, tools and templates to establish baseline settings for servers and applications, standardize these settings among multiple servers and automate ongoing configuration management exception reporting. The offering also includes the installation of the Desired Configuration Monitoring tool to dynamically report on complexity in the environment so remediation can be planned and to automatically audit changes and deviations from baselines. This helps reduce configuration complexities and provides a proactive approach to releasing updates and new products, and managing change.
Desktop Optimization	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Services Desktop Optimization using Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System (DOVO) is built upon proven tools and guidance designed to help you fully capture the benefits of desktop optimization through the effective use of Microsoft Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. Microsoft Services delivers best practices for desktop optimization based on extensive experience and expertise gained in complex client environments. Through coordination and collaboration with Microsoft product groups and its own IT organization, as well as early adopters, Microsoft Services is able to bring deep knowledge and understanding of products, roadmaps, architectures and methodologies to help you maximize your investment in Microsoft technologies.
Developing Workflow Solutions with Windows Workflow Foundation Workshop	Development	Workshops	This is a 4 day technical training event for developers and architects, focusing on the Windows Workflow Foundation component of the .Net 3.5 Framework. Windows Workflow Foundation is an extensible programming model and runtime components for building solutions on the Windows platform. The .Net 3.5 Framework is the specification for the managed/.NET APIs for new Windows platforms, such as Windows Vista. .Net 3.5 Framework is comprised of a superset of the .NET Framework 2.0 APIs, including Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.
Distributed Computing Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Informal design guidance can be provided with focus on the distributed computing aspects of a customer's application or solution. This engagement is focused on the design of .NET Remoting, COM+, DCOM, Web Services, RPC, or Winsock components.
Enterprise Portal and Collaboration Decision Accelerator	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Microsoft® Enterprise Portal and Collaboration solutions help transform the way people and organizations work together through familiar and pervasive workspaces, portals, and emerging social computing capabilities. By empowering people with a familiar set of tools, built on an enterprise-ready, scalable, and easily managed integrated infrastructure, portal and collaboration solutions from Microsoft Services can extend the value of current IT investments in the enterprise while enabling business process innovation.
Enterprise Portal and Collaboration Technology Planning	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Portal and collaboration solutions from Microsoft can help speed market responsiveness and foster innovation by Empowering teams through collaborative workspaces, connecting organizations through portals, enabling communities with social computing tools, reducing cost and complexity by using an integrated infrastructure, existing investments, and an extensible architectural platform.
Enterprise Search Decision Accelerator	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 is the Microsoft enterprise search solution to help you increase productivity and reduce information overload. This provides your employees, partners, and customers with the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats.
Envisioning for Messaging and Collaboration Infrastructure (formerly Migration Analysis for Lotus Notes)	Messaging	Consulting and Support	Initiates assessment activities for transitioning to Microsoft messaging and collaboration platform solutions.
Exchange Customer IT Fellowship Workshop	Messaging	Workshops	This Redmond based fellowship offers our Exchange customers the same world-class training and instructors that Microsoft’s internal Exchange teams receive. Customers can take full advantage of this unique opportunity to tap the deep expertise of the teams that plan, deploy, and support Exchange at Microsoft. This program is tailored to provide in-depth experiences through hands-on work, labs, presentations, and direct feedback and involvement with the Microsoft IT organization and the Product Group that develops Exchange.
Exchange Guidance	Messaging	Consulting and Support	Informal guidance is available to help your team answer specific questions related to the implementation of Exchange Server in your environment. This service is applicable in all phases of a product lifecycle and can be delivered in a variety of ways from onsite briefings, question and answer sessions via phone/email or onsite meetings. Microsoft best practices and knowledge transfer regarding Exchange are provided where applicable dependent on the scope of the engagement.
Exchange Proactive Monitoring Management (PMM)	Messaging	Consulting and Support	PMM combines the implementation of incident and problem management processes with technical tools and reports to tune Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 for your environment. In conjunction with your monitoring and technology teams, Microsoft helps you create Incident Matrices, Major Problem Reviews, and a sustained engineering team. As the operational process implementation progresses, technical resources implement tools that allow you to see the most problematic alerts. In addition, we help you create a scorecard which defines your alert to ticket ratio, alerts per server per day, and number of critical, error, and service unavailable alerts created by MOM.
Exchange Server 2007 Migration Workshop	Messaging	Workshops	The goal of this workshop is to learn all the steps that need to be considered when an Exchange 200x environment is about to be migrated to Exchange 2007. Also the most important steps will be done in 5 hands-on labs so that in the end of the last lab, all Exchange 200x servers will have been decommissioned and the environment will be pure Exchange 2007.
Exchange Server Design and Migration Review	Messaging	Consulting and Support	This review offers Microsoft best practices and technical guidance for migrations to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2000 or 2003. The focus of this engagement is typically on a migration from an existing messaging system to Exchange 2000 or 2003 and has a goal of providing customers with information to help avoid known issues and to help ensure their migration design is thorough and complete according to Microsoft best practices. Recommendations are outlined in a formal report upon engagement closure.
Exchange Server Disaster Recovery Review	Messaging	Consulting and Support	The goal of this service is to assist the customer in achieving an improved restoration of Exchange Server 2003 or 2007 related services through systematic planning and preparation for disaster recovery. The customer will receive a report detailing Microsoft best practices and recommendations applicable to the customer’s environment for effective Exchange Disaster Recovery.
Exchange Server Performance and Tuning Review	Messaging	Consulting and Support	The goal of this service is to provide a thorough review of the overall performance of an existing architecture and implementation of Exchange Server. A formal report identifying key areas of potential risk and Microsoft best practices to help mitigate those risks are provided upon engagement closure. This review is primarily focused on customers who currently have Exchange Server 2003 or 2007 fully deployed or deployed in a testing environment, however it may also assist customers who are looking for further assistance and Microsoft best practices to baseline Exchange Server performance before deploying in production.
Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM)	Security	Consulting and Support	Uses Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003 and best practices to simplify digital identity management and maintain data integrity.
IIS Health Check	Development	Consulting and Support	This Health Check provides insight into the health of your IIS environment. This multi-day engagement uses a variety of tools to collect data and statistics of the most important and critical aspects of your IIS environment. The goal of this Health Check is to proactively diagnose and analyze the data collected, make recommendations based on Microsoft best practices and help avoid any problems from surfacing in the future.
Infrastructure Monitoring for BizTalk Server	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Provides the methods and guidelines to introduce operational best practices for tracking, disaster recovery, failover, and clustering of the BizTalk environment.
Interactive Media Manager	Platforms	Consulting and Support	This initial release of Microsoft Services Interactive Media Manager provides the foundational sales and delivery readiness methodology to support the first 10-20 IMM engagements. IMM provides a set of Web parts, workflow templates, a metadata model, and Web services for building collaborative media production solutions as an extension to Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. IMM makes it easier to extend Office SharePoint Server 2007 into scenarios where digital media, rather than documents, are the primary targets of workflow and collaboration. It also provides the building blocks for an end-to-end collaborative media production workflow by using Microsoft and partner technologies. This Offering content is an early release that has not been used extensively in the field; as such it should be considered a starting point and not a definitive methodology.
Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation Workshop	Development	Workshops	This is a 4 day technical training event for developers and architects, focusing on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) component of .Net Framework 3.5. Windows Communication Foundation is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Web services architecture. Advanced Web services support in Windows Communication Foundation provides secure, reliable, and transacted messaging along with interoperability. Messaging is not restricted to HTTP transport, but uses TCP, Net Named Pipes, MSMQ, Peer Channel, or custom transports like UDP.
ISA Health Check	Security	Consulting and Support	The ISA Server Health Check (ISAHC) is an opportunity to review and determine any risks of computer threats associated with the configuration of ISA servers in the enterprise. The engagement leverages a variety of tools to collect data and statistics that is used to identify performance enhancements, security risks, and client configuration concerns. The tools used are passive and only collect information about your ISA configuration; they do not make any changes to the configuration of ISA.
IT Exchange 2007 Deployment and Operations	IT Operations	Workshops	This workshop provides a unique opportunity to connect with Microsoft Information Technology group and gain insight on how Microsoft IT achieves 99.9% messaging availability on the Exchange platform. The "How Microsoft Does IT" workshop gives IT professionals an insider view into Microsoft's process of developing, deploying, and managing enterprise solutions internally.
Lending Platform	Development	Consulting and Support	The Microsoft Services Lending Platform provides the tools necessary to build a complete lending system for both consumer and commercial customers, from loan origination, through underwriting, generating legal documents, and progressing through closing and boarding a loan.
Manage Windows and MORE with Powershell Workshop	Management	Workshops	PowerShell is a powerful new command-line shell and task-based scripting language. At the end of this class you will know how to use PowerShell to collect detailed information about diverse systems and applications as well as to perform automated administrative tasks. This is a 2 day workshop.
Messaging High Availability Review	Messaging	Consulting and Support	The purpose of the Microsoft Messaging High Availability Review is to help the customer optimize their Exchange Server 2003 cluster design to meet current and future business continuity requirements. This engagement will validate current designs as well as provide recommendations to improve and optimize availability. In addition, capacity management will be an additional part of this review. Analysis of the Exchange and Windows cluster configuration will be done to identify areas of risk or concern in relation to meeting high availability requirements.
Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) Review	Platforms	Consulting and Support	This review covers the following: HCL compliancy, operating system configuration (all nodes), Cluster general configuration, Cluster resource configuration and Cluster network configuration. An executive summary of analysis and recommendations is provided.
Microsoft Cluster Server Risk Assessment Program (CSRAP)	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Cluster Server Risk Assessment Program (CSRAP) proactively performs an in-depth analysis of your server cluster configuration and operational procedures. CSRAP identifies potentially disruptive risks to service that can be mitigated through recommended best practices, and ensures our customer’s environment complies with the best possible configuration. A CSRAP engagement is delivered on site by a Microsoft engineer who is accredited to deliver the service; it offers robust tools, detailed collateral, and Microsoft operational Best Practice guidance with an emphasis on knowledge transfer to augment the customer’s operational maturity. CSRAP can automatically run against a large-scale environment to collect and analyze volumes of customer data. The program also auto-generates a key findings report for the customer that highlights critical risks to service availability and provides detailed risk remediation guidance.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 (MOSS) Upgrade Workshop	Platforms	Workshops	The SharePoint Services (SPS) 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS) 2007 Workshop contains approximately 16 hours (2 days) of instruction. The material covers upgrade from SPS 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0 to MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0.
Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS) 2007	IT Operations	Workshops	Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS) 2007 Workshop contains approximately 32 hours (4 days) of instruction. The material covers search service, crawl, index, best bets, property mappings, query, user search experiences, and alerts.
Microsoft Project Server 2007 Enterprise Project Management (EPM)	Platforms	Workshops	The Microsoft Project Server 2007 Enterprise Project Management (EPM) workshop provides attendees with the key skills required to use and manage Project Server 2007. The workshop is a 3 day hands-on workshop intended for IT Professionals as well as Project Managers. Some of the key features associated with this workshop include: - Leveraging the appropriate Enterprise tools in Project Server to provide relevant business intelligence and analysis to Executives, Stakeholders and associated Project members. - Gain a practical understanding of managing the Enterprise Global as an integral part of the EPM solution. - Standardization of Task, Resource and Project information across the Enterprise for easier management of Projects and Resources. - Understand the workflow associated with a successful implementation of the Timesheets and Task Update cycle
Microsoft Project Server 2007 Installation and Migration	Management	Workshops	The Microsoft Project Server 2007 Enterprise Project Management Installation and Migration workshop is a 2 day hands-on workshop intended for IT Professionals as well as Project Managers. The workshop details Installation and Migration best practices. This workshop, provided by experienced instructors, will help equip attendees with practical knowledge of common pitfalls during the deployment and migration process. Some of the key features associated with this workshop include: - Learn key concepts and best practices on Migrating, Deploying and Scaling a Project Server 2007 implementation. - Gain hands on experience in the installation and configuration of Project Server 2007. - Gain a clear understanding of the migration process and the required preparation steps before performing a migration.
Microsoft Security Baseline Evaluation (MSBE)	Security	Consulting and Support	This Microsoft developed evaluation provides executives, IT Management, and IT staff with the opportunity to understand their security profile by: evaluating a customer's IT environment in the areas of technology, governance, and process, rating your security procedures against relevant industries and recommending areas for change to help build a more secure environment, both now and for the future. MSBE examines documented policies and procedures, observes ad hoc practices, and performs measurements for technology, governance and process.
Microsoft Security Risk Assessment (MSRA)	Security	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Risk Security Assessment Program provides a formal methodology for reviewing a critical segment of a customer’s IT environment. It is an in-depth analysis of the Infrastructure, Operations, People, and Applications resulting in a clear remediation roadmap to mitigate core vulnerabilities.
Microsoft Services Baseline Security Compliance (MBSC)	Security	Consulting and Support	Helps assess and improve organization’s baseline security compliance program.
Microsoft Services Risk Assessment Program for Active Directory (ADRAP)	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Used to evaluate and remediate customers’ production Active Directory implementations to ensure productive use. Includes a review, hands-on knowledge transfer and a report that details health along with findings and recommendations.
Microsoft Services Risk Assessment Program for Exchange (EXRAP)	Messaging	Consulting and Support	Used to evaluate customers’ production Exchange environments to ensure productive use. Includes an operational interview, hands-on knowledge transfer, reports that detail health along with findings and recommendations, and a remediation plan.
Migration/Deployment Plan Validation Lab	Technology Agnostic	Labs	Having an untested plan can be worse than not having a plan at all. An untested plan may give a false sense of security. Customers may use the lab facilities to perform a walk through of their plan to identify potential problem areas before deploying on production systems. Wide Area Network (WAN) simulators can be used to validate complex replication/network configuration scenarios and determine performance characteristics in a controlled environment.
MIIS Health Check	Development	Consulting and Support	The MIIS Health Check reviews existing deployments to ensure that best practice guidelines are being leveraged to provide a flexible, secure, and dependable solution to identity management. The evaluation consists of reviewing the current MIIS configuration as well as business processes around managing MIIS custom components.
Mission Critical Program	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	The Microsoft® Services Mission Critical Program helps to ensure that your Microsoft software-based mission-critical applications are architected, implemented, and operated to increase quality and maintainability for the life of the solution. This offering is designed to deliver the confidence that your data center-class systems achieve target levels of availability and performance, based on Microsoft and industry best practices. The Mission Critical Program is our commitment and contribution to your success for mission-critical IT systems.
MOF and General IT Ops and Process Guidance	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	General IT operations and process guidance is suited for customers who believe they may need assistance with process improvement but are not sure where to begin. This may also be appropriate for customers who are working on internal process improvement projects and would like to discuss Microsoft operations best practices with an Operations subject matter expert.
MOF Essentials Workshop	IT Operations	Workshops	The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Essentials 2-day Workshop introduces MOF and its three major components: Process Model, Team Model, and Risk Management Discipline. The workshop also provides an overview of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and explains its foundational relationship to MOF. The workshop includes the McKinley simulation where students run a fictional airport applying the key concepts in the lecture to improve critical IT systems availability.
MOF Operations Assessment	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	The MOF Operations Assessment evaluates the current state of IT management processes in the customer’s environment. Microsoft Professionals compare the customer's scoped operational processes (e.g., change management, incident management, etc.) with best practice guidance provided by the ITIL based Microsoft Operations Framework. A report and presentation are provided which outline the customer's current state of processes, a gap analysis based on an ISO15504 scale, and actionable recommendations to improve the organization's operational maturity.
MOF Service Improvement Project	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	A Service Improvement Project (SIP) engagement may be appropriate for customers who have gone through an MOF Operations Assessment (OA) or a MOF Service Management Assessment (SMA) to identify opportunities for process improvement. The SIP addresses the specific processes targeted for improvement in an OA or SMA. This formal project follows an approach based on the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and typically includes process design, development, testing, and implementation.
MOF Service Management Assessment (SMA)	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	The Service Management Assessment (SMA) is designed for customers that want a structured approach to service management improvement projects, which address the people, process, and technology issues found within the IT environment. Using the ITIL and MOF methodologies, a team of Microsoft Professionals will develop a limited number of Problem/Opportunity Statements (P/O) which refine and focus the engagement vision. The P/O statements can then be implemented as phases in the Service Improvement Project (SIP) and to build a roadmap for continuous service improvement. The SMA is different from the MOF Operations Assessment in that it does not measure process maturity based on ISO 15504 and does not strictly focus on MOF/ITIL processes.
MOM Health Check	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	The Microsoft Operations Manager Health Check (MOMHC) is an insight into the health of your MOM 2005 environment. This multi-day engagement uses a variety of tools to collect data and statistics of the most important and critical aspects of your MOM 2005 environment. The goal of this health check is to proactively diagnose and analyze the data collected, make recommendations based on best practices and potentially avoid any problems from surfacing in the future.
MSCS Guidance	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Informal guidance is available to help your team answer specific questions related to the implementation of MSCS in your environment. This service is applicable in all phases of a product lifecycle and can be delivered in a variety of ways from onsite briefings, question and answer sessions via phone/email or onsite meetings. Microsoft best practices and knowledge transfer regarding MSCS are provided where applicable dependent on the scope of the engagement.
MSMQ Health Check	Development	Consulting and Support	The MSMQ Health Check inspects and analyzes the configuration of your organization’s MSMQ enterprise. It includes a review of the following areas: MSMQ clients/servers, domain controllers, enterprise-wide configuration settings, clustering, queue configuration, and MSMQ related code.
Network 3.1 Tools, Protocol & Analysis Techniques Workshop	IT Operations	Workshops	The Microsoft Network Monitor 3.1 Tools, Protocol Analysis and Techniques online Workshop is designed for the IT organization that wants to understand, optimize, and put better processes and tools in place to maximize network reliability and performance. The information provided in this workshop is a combination of: tools training, protocol analysis and best practices that have been compiled from both the Microsoft Windows Product Group and Microsoft Services Premier Support.
Operations Strategic Review (OSR) for Service Management	Technology Agnostic	Consulting and Support	The OSR develops a high-level two-year roadmap for operations improvement which is validated with the customer IT team and aligned with business vision, strategy and project plans. The OSR combines the best practices of the Infrastructure Optimization Model (IOM), the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to help define actions to address immediate and long term needs. This roadmap is developed by uncovering significant weak points and identifying corresponding solutions that deliver specific levels of IT service to your business.
Optimization Service for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Desired Configuration Monitoring	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Services Optimization Service for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 with Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) is designed to help a business focus on optimizing and controlling SharePoint Server configurations and offers the same best practices, processes, tools, and expertise that Microsoft uses to achieve high levels of availability in our own enterprise.
Performance Tuning for BizTalk Server	Platforms	Consulting and Support	Provides the tools, methods and practices to enhance the application’s performance and stability.
Platform Rationalization (Project Based)	Technology Agnostic	Consulting and Support	Platform Rationalization can help your organization extract more value from IT budgets and improve the efficiency of the IT environment by offering a proven approach to rationalizing applications and infrastructures.
Proactive Monitoring with Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager (PMOM)	Management	Consulting and Support	PMM combines the implementation of incident and problem management processes with technical tools and reports to tune Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) for a customer’s environment. PMOM does the same for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).
Problem Isolation Lab	Technology Agnostic	Labs	Complex problems that occur infrequently or under stressful conditions can be among your greatest challenges. The Labs' problem isolation service helps you to identify and devise successful solutions. The lab facilities work in conjunction with other resources from Product Support Services to assist you in resolving these difficult issues.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Design and Implementation	Security	Consulting and Support	The PKI Design and Implementation offering assists with creating a PKI design that will support the current certificate needs for Encrypting File System (EFS), as well as have the flexibility for future growth. Senior Security Professionals work to identify the requirements for certificate-based applications and create a design which will meet those requirements. After the conceptual design is approved, Microsoft assists in developing and implementing a Proof of Concept and Pilot implementation.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Workshop	Security	Workshops	The PKI 3-day Workshop combines an overview and shares real world experience in PKI Infrastructure and Certificate Authority and Enrollment. Students will learn about and discuss secure PKI operations and infrastructure, PKI management, managing certificate authorities, configuring key archival, PKI uses and best practices.
Rapid Security Configuration Assessment (RSCA)	Security	Consulting and Support	RSCA is designed to provide a detailed, accurate assessment of the security status of Windows based operating systems. The RSCA service utilizes Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) to collect detailed configuration information from selected servers and workstations. The operations consulting team analyzes and compares an organization’s key security, operating system and applications settings against Microsoft recommended best practices, IT standards and government mandates through a number of pre-built ECM compliance templates. The RSCA engagement provides executives and IT professionals with insight regarding the state of security and compliance within the enterprise and provides a detailed roadmap for securing and hardening these systems.
Remote Testing Lab	Technology Agnostic	Labs	This offering allows customers to complete testing without the requirement of physically traveling to any of the facilities, and without the requirement to install expensive temporary hi-speed WAN links. Testing includes various scenarios: pre-engagement readiness (assistance with load generation scripts), partial remote (combination of customers in the labs and remote locations), allowing the customer the option to send only the essential resources to the lab, and full remote (ghost labs).
Risk Assessment Program for SQL (SQLRAP)	Database	Consulting and Support	Used to evaluate customers’ production SQL Server implementations to ensure productive use. Includes a review, a hands-on knowledge transfer and a report that details health along with findings and recommendations.
Script Development Lab	Development	Labs	These services are available to assist customers with the design, development, and parameterization of test scripts to be used with performance testing tools such as Segue SilkPerformer and Microsoft Application Center Test. This service can be delivered at the customer site, remotely, or as part of a Performance and Scalability Test in the Microsoft Services Labs.
Security Health Check	Security	Consulting and Support	Security Health Check (SECHC) is a proactive security engagement created by the Microsoft Services group to help Microsoft customers identify security gaps in their Microsoft platform environment. This goal is accomplished by evaluating customer’s environment against a continuously updated checklist for hosts configurations, security processes and network environment. All recommendations are based on Microsoft official security guidance.
Server and Domain Isolation for Security (SDI)	Security	Consulting and Support	Enables a scalable and manageable solution that provides the security of isolation without the cost or inflexibility of physical boundaries.
Server Consolidation using Virtualization	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	Server Consolidation using Virtualization utilizes both System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 and includes discovery and assessment of current server workloads, architecture and planning, and physical-to-virtual migration.
Service Level Management (SLM) for Messaging	Messaging	Consulting and Support	This engagement focuses on establishing a services-based approach to managing the IT ecosystem. It includes installation of a Scorecard Solution for measuring key metrics needed to manage a service, creation of a services map to illustrate the true complexity and dependencies for an end-to-end service, definition of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), definition of Operating Level Agreements (OLAs), and implementation of service review meetings to drive a culture of iterative improvement.
Service Level Management (SLM) for MOM and Operations Manager 2007	IT Operations	Consulting and Support	Service Level Management (SLM) for MOM and Operations Manager 2007 is designed to help IT groups evaluate the availability of their enterprise-wide IT infrastructure services, and manage by a set of agreed upon metrics to keep their Microsoft server infrastructures running at peak efficiency and availability for all users.
Service Level Management (SLM) for SQL	Database	Consulting and Support	This engagement focuses on establishing a services-based approach to managing the IT ecosystem. It includes installation of a Scorecard Solution for measuring key metrics needed to manage a service, creation of a services map to illustrate the true complexity and dependencies for an end-to-end service, definition of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), definition of Operating Level Agreements (OLAs), and implementation of service review meetings to drive a culture of iterative improvement.
Service Management Optimization	Management	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Services Service Management Optimization (SMO) is a fixed-scope consulting engagement for large organizations. It provides a management solution for proactive monitoring and capacity management of systems, applications, and services that can help you to meet and exceed service-level goals, improve IT productivity, and implement best practices.
Sharepoint Health Check	Platforms	Consulting and Support	The Sharepoint Server Health Check reviews a number of aspects of the customer's Sharepoint implementation, including configuration options, hotfix/service pack installation, and Sharepoint-related code, to ensure that the customer's system is in line with Microsoft-recommended best practices. The review can consist of a Windows Sharepoint Services only implementation, Sharepoint Portal Server implementation, or both. The Health Check does not cover previous version of Sharepoint (Sharepoint Portal Server 2001 or Sharepoint Team Services).
Smart Client Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Smart Client Guidance is designed to assist in the planning or preparation of migrations from web or Windows-based applications to Smart Client architecture. The guidance provided will focus on one or more of the following Smart Client capabilities: local resources (leveraging the desktop and local software resources – i.e. Microsoft Office), connectivity, off-line capability, intelligent deployment/updates, and/or device flexibility.
SMS 2003 Concepts and Administration Workshop	Management	Workshops	Provides attendees with the skills necessary to properly administer and troubleshoot SMS installation and maintenance problems. Upon successful completion of this workshop, participants will understand the SMS 2003 concepts and administer SMS 2003 in their current environment.
SMS Guidance	Management	Consulting and Support	Informal guidance is available to help your team answer specific questions related to the implementation of Systems Management Server in your environment. This service is applicable in all phases of a product lifecycle and can be delivered in a variety of ways from onsite briefings, question and answer sessions via phone/email or onsite meetings. Microsoft best practices and knowledge transfer regarding SMS are provided where applicable dependent on the scope of the engagement.
SMS Health Check	Management	Consulting and Support	This engagement is designed to analyze an organization’s SMS environment. This multi-day engagement uses a variety of tools to collect data and statistics of the most important aspects of the SMS environment including: SMS Infrastructure, SMS Site Configurations, disaster recovery and the overall health of an organization's SMS site servers and clients.
SMS Patch Management Lab Guidance	Management	Labs	This engagement helps assist customers with the process of installing SMS 2003 into a non-production environment as part of a proof of concept. By leveraging a customer or Microsoft Services lab environment, subject matter experts are available to model SMS 2003 to help meet their individual needs and business requirements.
Software Update Management (SUM)	Management	Consulting and Support	Microsoft Professionals compare the customer's software update management (patch management) process with best practice guidance provided by the ITIL based Microsoft Operations Framework and Microsoft Solutions for Management. In partnership with the customer, a Microsoft Subject Matter Expert works to create processes that are consistent with the referenced guidance. A report and presentation are provided which outline the customer's current state, a gap analysis with actionable recommendations to improve the organization's software update management processes, and an executive overview. While the greatest benefit will be to those customers currently utilizing Microsoft deployment technologies, this service is also applicable to customers using other deployment methods.
Software Update Using SMS 2003 (SUSMS)	Management	Consulting and Support	Implements a consistent and healthy System Management Server (SMS) 2003 environment using proven guidance from Microsoft Services to produce an implementation plan, architecture recommendations, and delivery tools.
Solution Support Services	Technology Agnostic	Consulting and Support	Solution Support Services is a suite of high-value services tailored to support solutions built on Microsoft® technology and custom code for Premier customers. Solution Support includes proactive and reactive services spanning across your solution lifecycle (from the planning and design phases, through the deployment stages, to production support and maintenance).
Solutions for Connected Government	Development	Consulting and Support	Provides the architecture, tools, and best practices to build and deploy cost efficient, secure, and connected systems for a government to enable quality e-Government services.
Solutions for Connected Health	Development	Consulting and Support	Provides the architecture, tools, and best practices to build and deploy cost efficient, secure, and connected e-Health systems.
SQL Guidance	Database	Consulting and Support	Informal guidance is available to help your team answer specific questions related to the implementation of SQL Server in your environment. This service is applicable in all phases of a product lifecycle and can be delivered in a variety of ways from onsite briefings, question and answer sessions via phone/email or onsite meetings. Microsoft best practices and knowledge transfer regarding SQL Server are provided where applicable dependent on the scope of the engagement.
SQL Server 2005 for Administrators Workshop	Database	Workshops	This training provides database administrators and other new comers to SQL 2005 the knowledge and skill on how to install, configure, secure, and maintain Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases and servers. Along with updates and changes from the last version of the SQL Server and new technologies added to the Application. This training will also provide in-depth understanding of the most commonly encountered issues by Microsoft Support on various topics that are being discussed along with their current status, solutions or workarounds.
SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services	Database	Workshops	SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is a comprehensive reporting platform that can be used to author, manage and deliver paper-oriented and interactive web-based reports. This intense 4 day workshop id designed to take participants from level 0 to 300 using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services to design, implement and deploy reporting solutions. The workshop is comprised of instructor led presentations and hands-on lab sessions with a greater focus on labs. The lecture-to-lab ratio is approximately 30%:70%. Each core topic encompasses instructor-led presentations and multiple interwoven lab exercises that will re-enforce the concepts covered and help develop skills required for the real world.
SQL Server Design and Migration Review	Database	Consulting and Support	This review offers the customer Microsoft best practices and technical guidance for designing a SQL Server system and covers various SQL Server design topics such as schemas, modeling, indexes and table design that are outlined and delivered to the customer in a formal report. SQL Server design reviews typically focus on a pre-production application and system.
SQL Server Disaster Recovery Review	Database	Consulting and Support	The purpose of this review is to help customers to develop a solutions and processes to recover a SQL Server system based on Microsoft best practices. This service provides a comprehensive review of all aspects of a critical SQL Server from various technologies to systematic planning and preparation as they relate to disaster recovery. Recommendations are outlined in a formal report upon engagement closure.
SQL Server Ops Analysis and Improvement (OAI) for Availability	Database	Consulting and Support	This two to six week engagement begins with a review of the customer's current business goals pertaining to SQL Server followed by an assessment of current pain points to determine the focus areas for improvement. A SQL Server Microsoft Professional then collaborates with the customer's team to help identify opportunity for improvement in terms of their processes, procedures, operational practices, people and tools as they relate to SQL Server availability. The goal of this service is to provide recommendations and activities for process-based improvement in your environment through a series of in depth interviews and analysis of existing operational data and documentation.
SQL Server Performance and Scalability Review	Database	Consulting and Support	The goal of this review is to help a customer ensure that their SQL Server environment is performing optimally. This includes a customized analysis of system bottlenecks, database design, and identifies potential SQL Server performance issues. Guidance on key settings including memory and database configuration to help prevent performance and scalability problems is also provided. All recommendations are outlined in a formal report upon engagement closure.
Supportability Review for Microsoft Dynamics	Platforms	Consulting and Support	The Supportability Review for Microsoft Dynamics is designed to understand the customer’s business, systems, processes, and future implementation plans. We will conduct a review of key setup configurations in the Dynamics product, review the help desk model for end user support and make recommendations that would improve end user experience. We will also review customer pain points with the Dynamics application and provide recommendations on how to proceed.
Sure Step Implementation for Microsoft Dynamics AX	Platforms	Consulting and Support	This offering provides an end-to-end implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX using Microsoft Services for overall program management for implementing and integrating large complex, multi-site, or global implementations that are primed by Microsoft Services.
Sure Step Implementation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM	Platforms	Consulting and Support	This offering provides an end-to-end implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM using Microsoft Services for overall program management for implementing and integrating large complex, multi-site, or global implementations that are primed by Microsoft Services.
System Center Operations Manager 2007 Workshop	Management	Workshops	The System Center Operations Manager 2007 workshop is designed to prepare a customer to design, deploy and operate Operations Manager 2007 efficiently within their environment. This workshop incorporates best practices learned from numerous System Center Operations Manager 2007 implementations and imparts knowledge about lessons learned from those engagements.
Systems Management Server (SMS) Design and Migration Review	Management	Consulting and Support	Using a customer's environment, this review provides customers Microsoft best practice recommendations for SMS hierarchy design, operations and management. Knowledge is transferred throughout the engagement and proactive recommendations on how to address known issues are provided to help guide the customer's project team to a Microsoft supported design.
Test Consulting/Performance Analysis Lab	Technology Agnostic	Labs	These services are available to assist customers with the process and methodology of executing performance tests using tools such as Segue SilkPerformer and Microsoft Application Center Test. This may include assistance with utilization of the tools for performance testing, assistance with collection of data during test execution and analysis and interpretation of collected data. Some of the data collection tools used include Performance Monitor, SQL Profiler, Network Monitor as well as those facilities provided by the load testing tools. This service can be delivered at the customer site, at a third-party testing facility or in the Microsoft Services Labs.
Troubleshooting and Supporting Microsoft Office 2007	Management	Workshops	The Troubleshooting and Supporting Microsoft Office 2007 in the Enterprise 4-day workshop is focused on introducing the new features of Microsoft Office 2007 as well as offering troubleshooting techniques that Microsoft Support Engineers use on a daily basis when working with Office. This workshop focuses on Microsoft® Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, and Microsoft Office OneNote 2007. The workshop covers New Features in Office 2007, File Format changes, Security features, Customizing Office 2007, Migrating between Office versions, and core Troubleshooting techniques. This workshop is intended for Help Desk Professionals responsible for assisting end-users in supporting and troubleshooting the 2007 Office release.
Virtual Server Health Check	Platforms	Consulting and Support	The Virtualization Health Check (VHC) is an insight into your virtualization infrastructure planning as well as the configuration of your Virtual Server environment. This single or multiday engagement leverages an experienced Premier Field Engineer (PFE) and variety of tools to collect data and statistics crucial to your Virtualization initiative.
Vista Application Compatibility Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	The Windows Vista Application Compatibility briefing is designed to assist in the planning or preparation of making applications compatible with Windows Vista. It is delivered by a team of consultants that has extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. This guidance can be delivered on site or in a Live Meeting session.
Vulnerability Testing with File Fuzzer	Security	Consulting and Support	Fuzzing is a testing method that generates large amounts of invalid input to help uncover buffer overruns, integer overflows and other security and reliability issues in computer software. By applying advanced fuzzing techniques to files consumed by various software systems and their components the FileFuzzer tool and corresponding best practices help find security vulnerabilities software, including buffer overruns, elevation of privilege issues and other critical security problems.
Web Application Design Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Informal design guidance is available to provide knowledge transfer and Microsoft best practices focused on the design of ASP, ASP.NET, ATL Server, ISAPI, or Commerce Server components.
Win32 and .NET Code Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Guidance is available for a customer’s implementation of an application that uses Microsoft technologies. Subject matter experts will analyze an application's design, architecture, and code implementation to determine if Microsoft best practices are being followed and provide recommendations. This service can have various deliverables depending on the scope and customer need including focus on a single module or the entire application code.
WinDNA Troubleshooting Workshop	Development	Workshops	Provides participants with the tools and techniques to help troubleshoot, isolate, and solve complex issues faced when working with Microsoft Windows n-tier distributed applications. The workshop is composed of hands-on labs that explore the most common problems that developers face, including: access violations, low CPU hangs, high CPU hangs, and memory leaks. The tools covered in depth are: AutoDump+, Windows Debugger (WinDBG), and USERDUMP.
Windows Compute Cluster Server / HPC Developer Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	The Windows Compute Cluster Server/HPC Developer briefing is designed to assist developers to get started with porting HPC (High Performance Computing) applications to the Microsoft platform, running them, and diagnosing issues such as configuration and performance problems. It is delivered by a team of consultants that have extensive knowledge in guiding HPC ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications. This offering can be delivered on site or in a Live Meeting session.
Windows Critical Problem Management Workshop	Platforms	Workshops	Provides participants with skills that will enable them to interpret blue screens and identify common causes in addition to understanding the debugging process and the skills needed to work effectively with Microsoft Premier Support to resolve issues most efficiently.
Windows Live Platform Developer Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	The Windows Live Platform (WLP) provides a set of web services that enable developers, to quickly and easily create compelling Web applications with open and easily accessible APIs. Learn how you can leverage the services in the Windows Live Platform to deliver rich, interactive experiences on the Web. During this technical briefing you will get a broad look at the Windows Live APIs and development platform. You will learn: - What is the Windows Live Platform - Why would a web site integrate Windows Live services into their platform - How the Windows Live Platform is used by Microsoft partners today
Windows Presentation Foundation Briefing	Development	Consulting and Support	This half-day technical briefing is oriented at providing programmers and architects with an understanding of the capabilities of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This is not a marketing briefing. It provides an overview of the WPF architecture, particularly how it extends the Common Language Runtime (CLR) property and eventing model to better handle UI requirements. It also reviews the major feature sub-systems of WPF, giving code examples and resulting UI effects. Finally, the presentation reviews the current state of WPF in terms of development tools, 3rd party eco-system and appropriate deployment scenarios.
Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 Developer Workshop	Development	Workshops	This is a 4-day workshop intended to provide a Developer tour of the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services version 3 (WSS 3.0). WSS 3.0 is available as a Microsoft Update for Windows Server 2003 and later versions. WSS 3.0 is the underlying layer for a separately licensed product: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that provides other value-add components. All development done for WSS 3.0 will work without any additional effort on SharePoint Server 2007 websites.
Windows Vista Application Compatibility Lab	Development	Labs	The Windows Vista Application Compatibility lab is designed to assist in the identification of compatibility issues of 3rd party software on Windows Vista. It is delivered by a team of consultants that have extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. The lab is held at one of the Microsoft Premier lab facilities in WA, TX or NC. The typical duration is four days.
Windows Vista Application Compatibility Workshop for Developers	Development	Workshops	The Windows Vista Application Compatibility workshop is designed to assist in the planning or preparation of making applications compatible with Windows Vista. It is delivered by a team of consultants that has extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. This workshop is delivered at a customer site. The typical duration is between a day and a half and two days.
Windows Workflow Foundation Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) represents a paradigm shift for developers who are accustomed to writing .Net applications. WF represents a new way of software development in which you model your software in a design environment that represents what you would normally create in a code only solution. As a result of this paradigm shift, architects and developers are often challenged to try to understand where workflow fits into their applications and how to apply this new software modeling approach. Windows Workflow Foundation Guidance is generally delivered informally through a series of whiteboard discussions with subject-matter experts from Microsoft who can give you feedback on your design questions.
Works With Windows Server 2008 Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Works With Windows Server 2008 guidance assists in the preparation for submitting applications for the Works With Windows Server 2008 certification. It is delivered by a team of consultants that has extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. This guidance will be delivered on site. The typical duration is two days but depends on the complexity of the application.
Works With Windows Vista Guidance	Development	Consulting and Support	Works With Windows Vista guidance assists in the preparation for submitting applications for the Works With Windows Vista certification. It is delivered by a team of consultants that has extensive knowledge in guiding ISVs and Enterprises with their respective applications and LOB products. This guidance will be delivered on site. The typical duration is two days but depends on the complexity of the application.
WorkshopPLUS - Active Directory: Troubleshooting (Windows 2003)	Platforms	Workshops	This 4-day workshop provides the skills required to understand and successfully troubleshoot Active Directory Installation, Group Policies, and Logon Failures within Active Directory, File Replication Service, and Active Directory Replication.
WorkshopPLUS - Advanced .NET Debugging	Development	Workshops	4-day WorkshopPLUS course develops the skills required to troubleshoot and resolve common scenarios such as hangs, crashes, and memory leaks in both WinForms and ASP.NET applications using various tools and techniques. Coverage includes both Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 and focuses on debugging both during testing and after the application has been released into production. Attendees must be experienced application developers who understand foundational concepts such as processes, threads, call stacks, memory management, and some experience with debugging tools.
WorkshopPLUS - Advanced Win32 User Mode Debugging	Development	Workshops	4-day WorkshopPLUS course provides a background on Win32 User Mode processes and explains different debug scenarios and troubleshooting strategies. It also discusses debug symbols, verifying symbols, mapping from source code to Assembly Language, use of Watson,debugging of USER.DMP files, and advanced debugging techniques.
WorkshopPLUS - Defense in Depth	Security	Workshops	The Defense in Depth 3-day WorkshopPLUS course provides students with the skills required to ensure that host servers are secure and protected from unwanted access or intrusion. This workshop covers security threats, countermeasures, and Windows Server 2003 strategies, tools, and best practices for helping to comprehensively secure the server from file system, applications, and server communications across the network. The workshop also focuses on the use of the security rich features of Windows Server 2003 to help detect and defend against security threats that target your most valuable organizational assets. The workshop contains Level 300 content. Please review the target-audience information and contact your Microsoft Services representative to ensure that this workshop is appropriate to the student’s experience and technical expertise.
WorkshopPLUS - Exchange Server 2003: Database Recovery 2	Messaging	Workshops	This 3-day delivery provides students with the skills required to successfully back-up, restore, repair, and recover Exchange Server 2003 databases.
WorkshopPLUS - Exchange Server 2003: Troubleshooting	Messaging	Workshops	This 3-day workshop provides students with the knowledge and practice to troubleshoot Exchange Servers.
WorkshopPLUS - IIS 6.0 Critical Problem Management	Development	Workshops	The IIS 6.0 Critical Problem Management 3-day WorkshopPLUS course provides participants with skills and techniques that will enable them to implement processes and utilize tools to achieve the following objectives in a production environment: - Reduce mean time to restoration of service by ensuring that all critical systems are properly configured for debugging before a critical problem occurs, thus avoiding reboots to enable debug support - Reduce mean time to resolution by teaching the skills to diagnose the cause of many critical problems and the skills to make quick and effective decisions about next steps.
WorkshopPLUS - SQL Server 2000: Performance Tuning and Optimization	Database	Workshops	4-day WorkshopPLUS course provides information on SQLServer 2000® general architecture, index and page structures, performance troubleshooting tools, memory architecture, programming efficiency, and optimization techniques.
WorkshopPLUS - SQL Server 2005: Performance Tuning and Optimization	Database	Workshops	This 4-day workshop provides information on SQL 2000 index and page structures, performance troubleshooting tools, memory architecture, programming efficiency, and optimization techniques.
WorkshopPLUS - Strategic Enterprise Operations	IT Operations	Workshops	The Strategic Enterprise Operations 3-day Workshop presents an overview of the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) with a strong focus on the critical processes of change, configuration, and release management. Students will also learn about and discuss IT operations challenges; available process frameworks and standards such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and ISO20000; and end-to-end service definition. The workshop includes the Talkeetna simulation where students manage multiple, disruptive changes to critical IT services supporting a fictitious airport; key concepts of change, configuration, and release management are reinforced within the simulation. The workshop concludes with an action-planning session where students define and document actionable steps to apply workshop learning in their current environment.
WorkshopPLUS - Windows Server 2003: Automation & Administration Using Scripting	Development	Workshops	This 5-day workshop provides hands-on experience to automate Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP environments by leveraging the power of Scripting, WMI, and ADSI.
WorkshopPLUS - Windows Server 2003: Clustering Essentials	Platforms	Workshops	This 3-day course covers the configuration, architecture, and troubleshooting of key problem areas. Students will also be provided with the best practices for installing and administering a clustered environment.
WorkshopPLUS- SQL Server 2005 Failover Clustering Workshop	Database	Workshops	Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Failover Clustering workshop is a 3 day workshop. This workshop provides database administrators the knowledge and skill on how to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Failover Clustering. This workshop also points out differences in the failover clustering implementation of SQL Server 2005 compared to that of SQL Server 2000.
Writing Managed Code with VC++ 2005 Workshop	Development	Workshops	Focuses on using Visual C++ 2005 to develop and integrate with the .NET Framework version 2.0 with a goal to familiarize developers and architects up with the internals of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and an overview of the base class libraries within the .NET Framework. Attendees will also receive a thorough understanding of C++/CLI (which is the language binding for writing managed code in VC++ 2005) followed up with a deep dive into native/managed code interoperability.
XP Embedded Workshop	Development	Workshops	Provides students with the technical skills required to develop embedded solutions with Windows XP Embedded.

Disclaimer

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property. Copyright 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Visio, Windows, Windows NT, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

MSPA Newsletter, October 2008 Issue

Lori Turner — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:32:00 GMT

In the October 2008 issue of the MSPA Newsletter, read about:

Helping Partners with Architecture and Design Challenges. Whether our partners are building a new solution or updating an existing one, they usually face critical architectural decisions that could impact their product as it gets built, delay the product or present adverse effects over time. Many of our partners have architects and senior designers in house to handle these challenges effectively. However, our partners often seek help and advice from Microsoft Services to make sure that they make well-informed decisions during the design stage, rather than spending extra time and effort to fix problems that crop up after deployment. Read more from Alok Srivastava about architecture and design and learn about the services that we offer our MSPA customers in this area.
ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) and Silverlight are all the rage these days. In this month’s newsletter, we highlight some services that we offer around these key technologies.
Application Compatibility. Naturally, with the releases of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, we have seen an increase in the number of requests from our ISVs around the topic of application compatibility on the newest operating systems. We have consultants that are dedicated to application compatibility; they provide guidance and advice to our partners on this topic and often engage in Application Compatibility Labs in Redmond, WA and throughout the United States. We have a number of videos where you can meet the consultants and learn from their experiences and advice.
Upcoming tech talks and open registration workshops that you can sign up for today. In October, we have scheduled tech talks for VSTS/TFS 2008 and Silverlight 2 -- these are tech talks that we deliver exclusively to our MSPA customers. The newsletter also contains a listing of the workshops open for registration in various locations throughout the US.

MSPA Newsletter October 2008.pdf

Several SharePoint Announcements

Cliff Green - MSFT — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:50:12 GMT

Last week was a busy one regarding announcements and updates to SharePoint. Below is a quick summary of each of the announcements.

Using SharePoint in a Hyper-V environment
August Cumulative Updates for WSS and SharePoint. Language specific releases are here. The accompanying KB articles will be released soon.
WSS and MOSS SDK 1.4 released. You can read the product group official release statement here.
Release of the SharePoint Best Practice Series
Announcement of the Administration Toolkit 2.0

Cliff Green
Sr. Application Development Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS
ISV Practice