News Thursday: BizTalk Server RTM, Visual Basic CTP and more of the week’s Server and Tools news
Microsoft announces BizTalk Server 2010 RTM and General Availability date
Today Microsoft has announced the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of BizTalk Server 2010 and general availability for purchase starting October 1st, 2010.BizTalk Server 2010 is the seventh major release of Microsoft's flagship enterprise integration product, and enables businesses to:
- Maximize existing investments by using pre-integrated BizTalk Server 2010 support with both Windows Server AppFabric and SharePoint Server 2010 to enable new composite application scenarios;
- Further reduce total cost of ownership and enhance performance for large and mission-critical deployments through a new pre-defined dashboard that enables efficient performance tuning and streamlining deployments across environments, along with pre-integration with System Center;
- Efficient B2B integration with highly-scalable Trading Partner Management and advanced capabilities for complex data mapping.
According to Steven Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer at GCommerce, "GCommerce has bet our mission-critical value-chain functionality on BizTalk Sever 2010 which we use to automate the secure and reliable exchange of information with our trading partners. Additionally, the Windows Azure Platform allows us to extend our existing business-to-business process into new markets such as our cloud-based inventory solution called the Virtual Inventory Cloud (VIC), which is based upon Windows Azure and SQL Azure. This extension to our trading platform allows us to connect our buyers experience from the purchasing process within VIC all the way through to the on-premises business systems built around BizTalk. This new GCommerce capability drives both top-line revenue as well as reduces bottom line costs, by making special orders faster than before."
To learn more regarding the BizTalk Server 2010 release please visit Zane Adam's blog or the BizTalk Server website.
Visual Basic CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Announced September 2010.
Today Microsoft announced the Visual Basic CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP that will allow Visual Basic developers to start evaluating Windows Phone applications. Windows Phone is a current focus area for Microsoft, with the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW last week and Windows Phones to be released by the end of this year. Visual Basic developers will now have the opportunity to take part in this momentum, while evaluating the current technology preview.
For more information please visit the Visual Basic Developer Center and the following blogs: S. Somasegar's Blog, Jason Zander's Blog, VB Team Blog and Windows Phone Developer Blog
Microsoft makes commitment to Openness in the Cloud: New tools and SDKs expand choices for PHP developers targeting Windows Azure
This week at the Open Source India conference, OSI Days 2010, Microsoft announced the availability of a new set of developer tools and Software Development Kits (SDKs) for PHP developers that want to build applications for Windows Azure. More information about this week's announcement is available here.
Microsoft's War on Cost: More savings come from Hyper-V and System Center, not VMware
Elliott Morris, manager of Microsoft's War on Cost team within STB shares some interesting survey findings about cost-savings using Hyper-V and System Center on the Virtualization Team blog.
Windows SBS 7 Preview Now Available
The Windows Small Business Server (SBS) "7" public preview is now available for download on the connect site.
To learn more about Windows Small Business Server "7", you can visit the SBS site or the The Official SBS Blog for more information about this release.
Windows Phone 7 Toolkit Video Demos
Scott Guthrie and Charlie Kindle shared how Microsoft is setting developers up to succeed with great tools that make it easy to develop apps with the Windows Phone 7 Toolkit. Check out the cool new demos and general enthusiasm from the release on Channel 9 and the Developer News Center.
Microsoft's New Web Hosting Gallery
The new Microsoft Web Hosting Gallery can help businesses find the right hosting partner for their Web application. The Gallery assists in finding a local provider that supports the technologies you need, with shared or dedicated hosting at an affordable price. More information about the program can be located the Hosting Insights blog.
