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The third member of Microsoft’s new trio of small business servers, codenamed “Small Business Server 7″ is running behind the other two, and is now set to go to public beta by the end of September.

The three new products — the “Vail” Windows Home Server release, the “Aurora” hybrid-cloud small-business offering, and Small Business Server (SBS) 7 — were all expected to hit new milestones before the end of August.

Link – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-small-business-server-7-beta-now-due-by-the-end-of-september/7311

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit team is working on a new solution incorporating Sysinternals Disk2VHD into the desktop migration process: P2V Migration for Software Assurance, and we’d like your feedback on it!

Even the most skilled IT shops, with resources to work through application compatibility challenges, often find a few users blocking roll-outs to entire sites or larger numbers of users due to:

• Compatibility of specialized, region or user-specific applications, browser customizations or USB device drivers.
• Missing installation files or media to install applications or drivers for testing or redelivery.
• Critical users who cannot risk losing any functionality of their current desktop environments and require a working backup before moving to Windows 7.

Link – https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/content/content.aspx?ContentID=18328

Last week Microsoft released Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. It has received some great feedback and reviews from customers, experts, analysts, and the Exchange community.

The starting point for SP1 setup/upgrade should be the What’s New in SP1, SP1 Release Notes, and Prerequisites docs. As with any new release, there are some frequently asked deployment questions, and known issues, or issues reported by some customers.

Link – http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/09/01/456094.aspx

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete.

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2010/09/01/windows-phone-7-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Hotmail is making it easier for you to stay up-to-date and be productive on your phone. Starting today, you can get your email, calendar, and contacts pushed automatically to your phone using Exchange ActiveSync (EAS). EAS keeps everything in sync between your phone and Hotmail, so whatever you do on your phone, like delete an email, add an appointment, or update one of your contacts with a new number, will also be reflected on the web, and vice-versa.

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/30/hotmail-now-supports-push-email-calendar-and-contacts-with-exchange-activesync.aspx

Microsoft has released a beta refresh of its Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack (SP) 1 to selected PC and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) partners, company officials confirmed on August 30.

Microsoft made the refresh build — the build number of which is said to be Build No. 7601.17077 — available to a select group of testers on August 27. There’s no word (so far) on whether there is anything new in that refresh.

Link – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/new-test-build-of-windows-7-sp1-goes-to-select-microsoft-partners/7255?tag=content;selector-blogs

In June, we announced that as part of Windows Live Essentials beta, we brought together two programs, Windows Live Sync and the Live Mesh beta, into one: Windows Live Sync beta. We focused on four things with our beta release:

• Making it easy to access the PCs you use from anywhere
• Getting your files and folders on the PCs you use regularly
• Giving you enough space to sync your most important files and folders to the cloud
• Providing simple document collaboration over the web using SkyDrive

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/27/windows-live-sync-to-be-named-windows-live-mesh.aspx

Microsoft has delivered four developer previews of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 so far, but has yet to show off the new interface for its next-generation browser. That is expected to happen on September 15, during Microsoft’s beta launch event in San Francisco.

But maybe users won’t have to wait until then to get a glimpse of what’s coming. Microsoft Russia’s press site, on August 25, posted information and a photo that seem to be connected to the coming IE 9 beta.

Link – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/is-this-microsofts-new-internet-explorer-9-interface/7213

You have been eagerly waiting, and we have been working hard over the summer to deliver the latest Exchange Server 2010 enhancements as soon as possible. I am extremely happy to announce the availability of Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, ready for download here.

Link – http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/08/25/455861.aspx

The F# August 2010 CTP provides all the tools and resources needed to develop applications with the F# programming language. It is available as an MSI for use with .NET and Visual Studio, and as a ZIP for use with other CLI implementations and platforms, including .NET Compact Framework on Xbox 360, and Mono on Mac, Linux and other platforms.

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f8c623ae-aef6-4a06-a185-05f59be47d67

Yesterday, Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1 was made available to all MSDN subscribers. LightSwitch as announced at VSLive! earlier this month and is a new edition of Visual Studio.

With LightSwitch, is a rapid application development tool that allows you create line-of-business or departmental-type .NET applications connecting to data hosted in SharePoint, SQL Server, SQL Azure, or anywhere else information is stored.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dajung/archive/2010/08/20/visual-studio-lightswitch-beta-1-now-on-msdn.aspx

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a new iteration called "Microsoft Flight," coming soon to Windows. Microsoft said it will be "Live-enabled," meaning there will be some sort of online component through Windows Live.

The unveiling was part of the company’s larger announcement of games for Windows and for Windows Phone 7. Also revealed: "Age of Empires Online" and "Fable III."

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/aug10/08-16MSGamescomPCPR.mspx

Today we’re releasing an update to Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta. One of the main reasons we release betas is to allow early adopters to enjoy our products and provide feedback on their experience. First, we want to say thank you for your help. For Messenger alone, we had over 3 million unique users, 3.5 million updates to display pictures, 6.2 million video calls, and 7.6 million updates to status messages.

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/17/windows-live-essentials-2011-beta-refresh.aspx

Microsoft has updated the SSMA (SQL Server Migration Assistant) family of products to include support for both Access and MySQL. This release makes it possible to move data directly and easily from local Microsoft Access databases or MySQL databases into SQL Azure. Microsoft refreshed the existing SSMA family of products for Oracle, Sybase and Access with this latest v4.2 release.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usisvde/archive/2010/08/17/migrate-mysql-access-databases-to-the-cloud-with-sql-server-migration-assistant.aspx

We are very pleased to announce that today the Preview of Windows Small Business Server Codename “Aurora” is available for download.

Windows Small Business Server Codename “Aurora” is part of the greatly anticipated next generation of our award winning Windows Small Business Server, and represents a significant departure from our traditional on premise version because Aurora will be Microsoft’s first server to deliver both on premises and cloud computing capabilities for small businesses.

Link – http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/08/16/announcing-windows-sbs-codename-aurora-preview-availability.aspx