Microsoft Forefront codename “Stirling” is an integrated security suite that delivers comprehensive protection across endpoint, servers and the edge that is easier to manage and control.

By delivering simplified management and providing critical visibility into threats, vulnerabilities, and configuration risks, Forefront codename “Stirling” helps you protect your business with greater confidence and efficiency.

“Stirling” suite includes:

• A central management server and dashboard
• The next generation of Forefront Client Security
• The next generation of Forefront Security for Exchange Server
• Forefront Online Security for Exchange
• The next generation of Forefront Security for SharePoint
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway (Next generation of ISA)

Microsoft just released the first Beta version of Exchange Server 2010, formerly code-named Exchange Server “14″.

You can use Microsoft HealthVault Connection Center to upload data to HealthVault from health and fitness devices (such as blood pressure monitors, pedometers, glucometers and many others) and the HealthVault Gadget for Windows Sidebar. HealthVault Connection Center connects your device, your computer and your HealthVault record to manage the upload process for you.

HealthVault Connection Center Beta 2 provides quick and easy upload of device data to HealthVault and helps you use the data with Web sites and applications that work with HealthVault. This most current release includes:

• A simpler, more engaging user interface
• Guided setup to find and install compatible devices
• Ability to select multiple records for upload (for multi-user devices)
• Ability to set upload preferences for each device you use
• Improved support to prevent upload of duplicate data
• First-time uploads will be much faster, and all uploads will take up significantly less space in a HealthVault record.
• You can report any failures in the installation program back to Microsoft, with error codes and detailed logs. This improvement helps us solve any problems you might encounter and improve the product for all users.
• You will be less likely to experience unexpected messages in Connection Center if you install or connect a new device when you already have other installed devices.

Microsoft Producer 2007 for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 makes it easy to capture and synchronize audio, video, slides and images – creating engaging rich media presentations. Capture, synchronize, and publish audio, video, slides, and images to create rich media presentations viewable in a browser.

This beta release of Producer is intended primarily for customers who have used Producer 2003 and have requested that Microsoft provide an updated version that is compatible with PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2003, Internet Explorer 7, and Windows Vista.

After the beta of Producer 2007 ended, Microsoft will review feedback received from customers who participated in the beta and determine whether any bug fixes need to be made to Producer. A final version of Producer 2007 will be made available for download on the Office Download Center.

System requirements

• PC with at least 305 MB hard disk space to install Producer 2007.
• Additional hard disk storage is required for any audio or video content you capture using Producer 2007.
• Windows Vista or Windows XP (SP2) operating system
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 or PowerPoint 2003
• Internet Explorer 7.0

Benefits
Through the online provider, the Sign-in Assistant helps a Windows 7 application running on one computer identify and communicate with other computers that are associated with the same Windows Live ID. Just by linking your Windows Live ID to the user account on each Windows 7 computer you own, you enable those computers to identify each other and work together more easily than has been possible in the past. Applications can take advantage of this capability to support scenarios as in the following example:

On his homegroup, Bob wants to share certain documents with his wife but not with his kids. Simply by specifying his wife’s Windows Live ID user name, Bob can give his wife exclusive permission to access documents on his computer.

Forefront TMG Beta 2 can help you:

• Protect users from Web browsing threats (Secure Web Gateway)
• Control network Access at the edge (Firewall)
• Protect users from e-mail threats (E-mail Protection)
• Protect desktops and servers from intrusion attempts (Network Inspection System, Security Assessment Sharing)
• Enable users to remotely access corporate resources (VPN, Secure Web Publishing)
• Simplify management and deployment
• Integrate with the Forefront Security Suite (codename Stirling) to provide a unified security solution for protecting all of the assets in your organization

Note: Connecting Forefront TMG to a Stirling Server is supported only with the public Beta 2 of Forefront Codenamed Stirling

Entourage 2008 used Exchange Web Services functionality to support Free/Busy, Out of Office Assistant, delegation, and Autodiscover service. In the Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, Exchange Web Services provides folder and item synchronization, notes, tasks, and categories synchronization with the Exchange Server and for several calendaring improvements.

What’s new?

Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta makes significant strides with several updates. These include notes, tasks, and categories synchronization, logging, and calendar improvements. The following paragraphs discuss the new and improved features that are added when you install this latest version of Entourage.

Notes, Tasks, and Categories synchronize with Microsoft Exchange Server
Users can synchronize their notes, tasks, and categories with the Exchange Server. For example, a user can add tasks in Entourage. This task list is synchronized with the Exchange Server, which lets the user view those tasks from any of the Exchange Server clients: Entourage, Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Web Access Premium. Also, categories are synchronized with Exchange Server and are compatible with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

Autodiscovery
The Autodiscover service was introduced in Entourage 2008 for Mac SP1 to configure a user’s Exchange account settings automatically. In Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, the Autodiscover service keeps user account settings up-to-date after the account setup.

• It runs in the background every time that you start Entourage.
• It also runs at a server-defined interval, typically every hour, to make sure that the Exchange Server settings are always kept up-to-date. For example, when a user’s Microsoft Exchange Server information changes, Entourage 2008 reconfigures the user’s profile automatically.
• The service also runs if a network failure occurs while Entourage is connecting to the Exchange Server. If Entourage connects to the Exchange Server with updated settings from the Autodiscover service, those settings are stored and used for future connections.

Enable Logging (troubleshooting) preference
You can enable logging for diagnostic purposes by selecting the Enable Logging (troubleshooting) preference. Microsoft Customer Support Services uses the diagnostic information to identify issues, such as Exchange synchronization, calendar, LDAP, and Autodiscover service issues.

Support for attachments in Exchange calendar events
Users can add attachments to the calendar meetings. If users send an invite with attachments, the meeting in the invite’s calendar shows the attachment.

Important:

• Your Entourage client must be connecting to an Exchange Server 2007 Server with Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4 or later installed for this beta to work.
• The Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta will not connect to Exchange Server versions prior to 2007 with Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4. Previous versions such as Exchange Server 5.5, 2000, and 2003) do not have the Exchange Web Services feature that enables the Entourage for Exchange Web Services to connect.
• If you are not currently connecting to an Exchange Server 2007 server with Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4 or later installed or are unsure of what version of Exchange Server you are connecting to, please do not continue with this beta until you have confirmed that you meet this minimum requirement.
• The Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta will need to be installed on top of an exsting licensed Office 2008 for Mac install.

MED-V is a desktop virtualization product planned to become part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) MED-V is based on Microsoft’s acquisition of Kidaro, a company that made desktop virtualization tools, and aims to resolve a number of problems with application compatibility on newer OSs. One such problem is applications that run on Windows XP or Windows 2000 but aren’t compatible with Windows 7 and Windows Vista. A large amount of testing and application “shimming” (a process that lies to an application to make it run on an OS it shouldn’t) is required to make sure legacy applications will run on Vista. The effort needed can be a major obstacle to adopting newer OSs and it’s quite possible that a given application simply can’t run on Windows 7 or Vista.

You have two choices today for applications that can’t run on a new desktop OS. You can run the application on a terminal server (assuming the application can run on a terminal server) and have users remote to the terminal server to run the application. Your other option is to use a client virtualization solution, such as Virtual PC, to run a legacy OS image, such as Windows XP, that can then host the legacy application. The virtual approach means the user has their normal desktop and another desktop that represents the Virtual PC image of XP. This is confusing for most users, with two Start buttons, two sets of menus, two file systems, two desktops, and so on.

MED-V builds on the Virtual PC approach by using Virtual PC 2007 as a client-side virtualization platform to host an XP or Win2K image that runs the legacy applications. The MED-V application then seamlessly integrates the application running on the legacy OS with the user’s main desktop. MED-V integrates Start menu options, notification tray icons, clipboard sharing and file system interoperability between the VM and the local OS. The architecture is shown here.

The user doesn’t know that a virtual machine (VM) is running on the desktop, nor that the application they are using isn’t running on their local OS. As shown here, MED-V handles the transplanting of the application window from the VM to the user’s local desktop. Essentially the only hint to the user that the application is running in a different environment is that the application will use the theme of the XP or Win2K VM instead of the Windows Aero theme that may be used on the local desktop.

MED-V handles not only the integration of legacy applications and the local OS but also provides the mechanism to store and distribute VM images, provides image updating, and implements policies about what data can be transferred between the VM and the local desktop and the length of time the virtual image can be used.

MED-V integrates with Internet Explorer and can be configured to automatically redirect certain URLs entered on the local PC to a legacy IE version running in the VM. This redirection solves problems with websites that aren’t compatible with the latest Internet Explorer browser.

You will also be able to use MED-V as a delivery mechanism for virtual images and give users two complete desktops. In this scenario, they would essentially run a Virtual PC window on their desktops and not take advantage of MED-V’s seamless application integration.

MED-V is currently only planned to be supported on Vista and XP 32-bit platforms and will be available as part of MDOP in the first half of 2009.

MED-V may change the way companies adopt new OSs, because instead of performing all the application testing and validation under the new OS before adopting it, a company can upgrade to the new OS and run applications that aren’t supported or tested in the MED-V environment. The company can then migrate applications to Vista over time. At least, that’s what Microsoft would like.

In the future, you’ll see MED-V transform away from making legacy applications run on newer OSs, because Microsoft is stressing better compatibility between OSs. MED-V will become a tool that helps deploy complete virtual desktops to address scenarios such as giving corporate images to non-corporate machines and enabling better business continuity through easy virtualization deployment, uses that will help productivity of contract, offsite, and work-at-home users.

The first Beta version of Microsofts new BizTalk Server has been released today.

Microsoft BizTalk Server, often referred to as simply “BizTalk”, is a business process management (BPM) server. Through the use of “adapters” which are tailored to communicate with different software systems used in a large enterprise, it enables companies to automate and integrate business processes. Offered by Microsoft, it provides the following functions: Business Process Automation, Business Process Modeling, Business-to-business Communication, Enterprise Application Integration and Message broker.

In a common scenario, BizTalk enables companies to integrate and manage business processes by exchanging business documents such as purchase orders and invoices between disparate applications, within or across organizational boundaries.

Development for BizTalk Server is done through Visual Studio .NET.

Features

• The use of adapters to simplify integration to Line of Business Applications (eg. Siebel, SAP, IFS Applications, JD Edwards, Oracle), Databases (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2) and other Technologies (Tibco, J2EE, etc)
• An engine for modelling Business Rules in a pseudo-English format. This is a forward chaining rule engine.
• Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), which allows a dashboard, graphical view on how the modelled Business Processes are doing.
• A unified Administration Dashboard for monitoring deployments of solutions, etc on BizTalk servers in your environment.
• Built-in EDI(Electronic Data Interchange) functionality supporting X12,HIPAA and EDIFACT.
• Accelerators which offer support for standards like RosettaNet, HL7, SWIFT, etc.
• Ability to do graphical modelling of business processes in visual studio, graphically mapping (with the assistance of functoids) between different message formats, and building pipelines to decrypt, verify, parse messages as they enter the system via adapters.
• Users can automate business management processes via Orchestrations.
• BizTalk integrates with other Microsoft products like Office, InfoPath and SharePoint to allow interaction with a user participating in a workflow process.
• Extensive support for Webservices (consuming and exposing)
• RFID support

The BizTalk Server runtime is built on a publish/subscribe architecture, sometimes called “content-based publish/subscribe”. Messages are published into the system, and then received by one or more active subscribers.

BizTalk uses adapters for communications with different protocols, and specific software products such as SharePoint. Some of the adapters that were included in Server 2006 product included the Base EDI (Covast), File, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, SOAP, SQL, MSMQT, Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0, and the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) adapters. Some are available through third parties.

The BizTalk Server 2009 Beta is available for download on Microsoft Connect.
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=218

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms

• Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and Unix servers-all through a single console.
• Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms.
• Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Improved management of applications in the data center

• Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.
• Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.
• More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management

• Faster load times for views and results.
• Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta integrates the functionality delivered within the Cross Platform Extensions Beta. New betas of the Interoperability Connectors will be available shortly.

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta 1 is available for download through Microsoft Connect.
https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/Downloads.aspx?SiteID=446

The Introducing Geneva whitepaper by David Chappell provides an in depth look at all of the components of the “Geneva” platform. A biref data sheet providing an overview of the Geneva platform including system requiremnts is also available.

“Geneva” Framework
Previously called “Zermatt”, the Geneva Framework helps developers build claims aware .NET applications that externalize user authentication from the application, plus custom security token services (STS).

“Geneva” Server
Geneva Server, an STS for IT that issues and transforms claims and other tokens, manages user access, and enables easy federation.

Windows CardSpace “Geneva”
Windows CardSpace Geneva for helping users navigate access decisions.

This beta release of Producer is intended primarily for customers who have used Producer 2003 and have requested that Microsoft provide an updated version that is compatible with PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2003, Internet Explorer 7, and Windows Vista.

After the beta of Producer 2007 ended, Microsoft will review feedback received from customers who participated in the beta and determine whether any bug fixes need to be made to Producer. A final version of Producer 2007 will be made available for download on the Office Download Center sometime during Fall/Winter 2008.

System requirements

• PC with at least 305 MB hard disk space to install Producer 2007.
• Additional hard disk storage is required for any audio or video content you capture using Producer 2007.
• Windows Vista or Windows XP (SP2) operating system
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 or PowerPoint 2003
• Internet Explorer 7.0

A newer version of Microsoft Producer 2007 has been released. Please read this post for more information and download links.

Cross Platform Extensions Beta extends the monitoring and management capabilities of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to non-Microsoft platforms, including HP-UX®, Sun Solaris™, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, and SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server environments.

The package includes:

• Setup Documentation and Whitepapers
• Operations Manager installer files
• Unix Agent installer files

New in this beta:

• Operations Manager x64 support
• Gateway role support
• IBM AIX 5.3

What is “Zermatt”?
The Microsoft Code Name “Zermatt” is a framework targeted for .Net developers to help them to build claims-aware applications to address today’s application security requirements using a simplified model that is open and extensible and can improve security. Developers can build externalized authentication capabilities for their applications and build custom “identity providers”, often referred to as Security Token Services (STS). Zermatt can be used in any web application or web service that uses the .NET Framework version 3.5.

Major Features

• Building claims-aware applications: The framework makes it easier to build identity aware applications. In addition to providing a new claims model, it provides applications with a rich set of API’s to reason about the identity of a caller using claims. The framework also provides developers with a consistent programming experience whether they choose to build their applications in ASP.NET or in WCF environments.
• Building Security Token Services (STS): The framework makes it substantially easier for building a custom security token service (STS) that supports the WS-Trust protocol. These STS’s are also referred to as an Active STS. In addition, the framework also provides support for building STS’s that support WS-Federation to enable web browser clients. These STS’s are also referred to as a Passive STS.
• Creating Information Cards
• ASP.NET Controls: ASP.NET controls simplify development of ASP.NET pages for building claims-aware Web applications, as well as Passive STS’s.

As an application developer, by building claims-aware web applications and services, you’ll spend less time worrying about where to find identity attributes for users and have more time to focus on building a great application that solves real business problems. By relying on claims, you’ll be able to personalize your applications more effectively, and implement important security features such as authorization and auditing, without baking one particular authentication method into your application, or writing queries against a corporate directory. By centralizing identity management in this fashion, the IT pros can build the most efficient possible queries against their directories and give your application the identity details that it needs about users. And becoming claims-aware means you’ll be in much better shape when you’re asked to implement single sign on and perhaps even identity federation. Zermatt is a framework for building claims-aware web applications and services, and even issuing authorities, should you need to roll your own. Or better yet, buy a pre-built authority like the upcoming version of ADFS. Claims-based identity is the wave of the future. Get on board with Zermatt today!

A newer version of the Zermatt/Geneva SDK has been released. Read this post for more information and download links.

• File Server Migration Wizard which copy shared folders, files, and their security settings from a source file server to a target file server.
• DFS consolidation root wizard which maintain the original Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of files after they are migrated to a new server.

This release of Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit adds support for migrating and consolidating servers running Windows Server 2008. No new features have been added in this release.

Whats new?

• Active Storage Platform: Enables the Windows platform to restrict access to portable devices (such as a USB Flash Device) via a certificate or password authentication based on the IEEE 1667 standard specification.
• Image Mastering API update for Blu-Ray media: This feature enables the Windows platform to do master style optical burning on Blu-Ray media.
• Smart Card Driver: This provides support for new form factors, such as ICCD/CCID.

You can join the beta on Microsoft Connect via this link:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=434

The .NET Micro Framework aims to make embedded development easier, faster, and less expensive by giving embedded developers access to the modern technologies and tools used by desktop application developers. Additionally, it allows desktop .NET developers to use their skills in the embedded world, enlarging the pool of qualified embedded developers.

Changes in version 3.0:

• Visual Studio 2008 now supported: .NET Micro Framework V3.0 now runs under Visual Studio 2008. Additionally, .NET Micro Framework V2.5 projects can also be built using VS 2008 and the .NET Micro Framework V3.0.
• DPWS CodeGen tools: The .NET Micro Framework v3.0 now includes a tool, MFSvcUtil.Exe that can be used to generate .NET Micro Framework DPWS client proxies and DPWS Service stubs from WSDL files.
• USB Device support: In addition to allowing debugging over USB, hardware running the .NET Micro Framework 3.0 can now act as USB devices using the Microsoft.SPOT.Hardware.UsbClient namespace.
• Stylus/Touch Panel support: Using touchscreen-enabled hardware, or the new touchscreen emulator, you can create code that reacts when UI elements are pressed, captures “ink” for signatures or jotted notes, or handles gestures for UI navigation. You can access this functionality through Microsoft.SPOT.Touch, Microsoft.SPOT.Ink, and new extensions to the Microsoft.SPOT.Presentation namespaces.
• Secure Sockets support: The .NET Micro Framework v3.0 now supports Secure Sockets Layer (*SSL) networking for secure communications.

A newer version of the .NET Micro Framework SDK has been released. Read this post for more information and download links.