Last week the Office 2010 beta was released.  This includes both the office client as well as SharePoint 2010 (see my previous post for download links).

So, given this, I thought I’d sit down with Jonathan Stuckey, Solution Specialist for Office and spend some time exploring what is new in Office 2010 and why  its worth downloading and planning for.

This podcast is a little longer than normal at 30 minutes. Once you’ve listened, if you haven’t already, download the Beta from here.

Just a quick heads up.  If you are involved in SharePoint today, and want to go to the SharePoint 2010 Ignite training we are planning for January – you’ll need to be certified.  That’s right – you’ll need to have your exams done and dusted before you can register for the training.

The exams are easy (no – really they are), so if you’ve been working with SharePoint extensively for over a year, just book a date and go sit them. If you haven’t been working with SharePoint that long or extensively, you might want to do some study first, but you shouldn’t have too much trouble preparing.

The exams you’ll want to cover are as follows:

For developers:

- Exam 70-541: TS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development

- Exam 70-542 TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Application Development

For Infrastructure or IT Pros:

- Exam 70-631: TS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Configuring

- Exam 70-630: TS: Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring

Just thought you’d want to know.  Oh, and yes there will be a fee to go on the Ignite training, but it will be reasonable – just enough to cover costs.

This morning we officially released the Beta for SharePoint 2010 (although MSDN and TechNet subscribers have access for a few days) and Office 2010.

What’s new in SharePoint 2010?  A few weeks ago I sat down with Chris Johnson from the SharePoint team and recorded a podcast that explores some of the new features in SharePoint 2010 – have a listen to see what is new.

In Office 2010, there are also a bunch of new features, but here are just a few worth watching out for:

1. Revamped Outlook client – full ribbon support, and a heap of new features including user experience, one click mail management, ignore entire conversation threads, inline voice mail and voicemail to text previews
2. Excel Business intelligence – pull massive amounts of data into Excel and mix it up with other data sources – Trade Me (for example) are looking to use this to analyze every trade ever done on Trade Me – with a standard desktop machine and Excel.
3. Collaboration – this is a sleeper.  Multiple people can now work on the same document/sheet/etc at the same time in different locations.
4. SharePoint Workspace – take SharePoint sites offline and sync them automatically – very cool

Look for more on Office 2010 in next week’s podcast.

For the moment, go and get the bits from the links below:

• Office 2010 Beta
• SharePoint 2010 Beta

In addition to SharePoint and Office, we have also shipped a bunch of other goodies too:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP
• SQL Server 2008 R2 - PowerPivot for Excel 2010 November CTP
• Exchange 2010 RTM Trial
• Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM Trail
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
• Silverlight 4
• Forefront Security

Plenty to tinker with if you have the time and inclination – get into it!

Since Ray Ozzie came on board there has been a stream of work in progress at Microsoft that is designed to allow Microsoft to build and deliver cloud based solutions to customers big and small around the world.

Part of this vision for the cloud includes turn-key enterprise applications such as Exchange Online and SharePoint online and the rest of the BPOS suite, but in addition, we have been hard at work to produce a cloud offering that allows ordinary .Net developers (as well as the anything but ordinary New Zealand .Net community) to write code for and deploy solutions.

In this podcast, Scott Wylie gives us a brief overview of Microsoft Azure – including how to pronounce it!

Being an MVP is both a privilege and intensely rewarding. It also serves as a great starting place for some excellent opportunities.  Many Microsoft staff (including me) started as a MVP and some of the best known and loved stars of technical communities are MVP’s.

In this interview with Rose Stammell MVP lead for Australia and New Zealand, we talk about what an MVP is, how you become one and look at some of the specific examples of what MVP’s go on to do.

Enjoy.

Its been just over a year since I became the Product Manager for SQL Server, BizTalk and Visual Studio.  I took on SharePoint in May, and have really enjoyed that, so I’ve recently taken the opportunity to move a short step sideways.

From today I will be managing SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and Microsoft Online Services (Business Productivity Online Services – or BPOS).

I’m going to miss SQL Server and the Application Platform stack, but I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into the online services business here in New Zealand.

Going forward you’ll see a few less SQL Server blog posts and a few more in the world of Online Services and Exchange Server.  At least for the moment.

While at the SharePoint conference, I was struck by the potential for Access Services for SharePoint.  I shared my thinking in a previous blog post, but I was also fortunate enough to sit down with Ryan and Johanna from the Access team and Steve Letford to talk about Access Services a little more. 

We asked the questions we thought technical people would ask like how will is scale if an app is poorly written and how does it manage large tables and what does it do with the network, but we also talked through some of the other things that this technology offers to business, such as the ability to clean up Access databases that appear around the environment while also providing tremendous business agility by creating short term Line of Business applications quickly to streamline business processes.

I hope you see why I think Access Services is a game changer after listening to this podcast.