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We've something interesting going on with CRM this week
http://www.cob-blog.com/cobweb_support/
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We've something interesting going on with CRM this week
http://www.cob-blog.com/cobweb_support/
One of the great benefits of being an important partner to Microsoft is the access we get to the movers and shakers in the organisation. Being a Microsoft Gold Partner does not automatically entitle to the sort of access we get at Cobweb. I am typing this in my Seattle hotel room at the equivalent of 3:00 am in the morning because I am a member of the Service Provider Partner Advisory Council – but more of that in a moment.
Last Wednesday, I was invited to attend a round table dinner hosted by Gordon Frasier the current Managing Director of Microsoft UK. In attendance were some of the most important Partners for Cobweb including a number of the large Systems Integrators, the guys who design, build and deploy some of the biggest IT projects in the UK and worldwide. We were, of course given a very articulate view of the Microsoft’s view of the future by Gordon, but what was most interesting to me was that the other Partners showed a lot of interest in prospect of Microsoft opening up this “hosted” market place, indeed I picked up a couple of contacts who were interested in our SharePoint V3 and Hosted CRM V4 offerings coming later in 2008.
Back to Seattle...
It’s going to be a fun session later on this morning, my feedback is that the US Partners are taking te Microsoft move into Hosted Services hard, not surprised really, my feeling is that Microsoft is much more pervasive in the US than the UK and will take more market share more quickly, coupled with the fact that the release is only round the corner here. We are not just covering Microsoft Online Services though, the purpose of this group is for partners to get a much deeper understanding of how to get the best from the partnership and influence where we can, and of course, where appropriate share best practice.
Mark
I've just updated an article about using Entourage with Exchange Server mailboxes on our web site here. The main update is about how to get perform a GAL lookup from the Entourage client without using LDAP.
Entourage functionality can be extended easily using scripts, including one to perform GAL lookups using OWA over the internet. It's simple to install and easy to use thanks to the readme file included in the download. You can get it from here.
Daniel
Microsoft released an update to Office 2008 for Mac yesterday, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948057. There are a number of Entourage 2008 reliability improvements including contact and calendar synchronisation with Exchange server. This has been a problem for a lot of users, as contacts were not synchronising between Entourage 2008 and Exchange.
If have an Exchange mailbox and use Entourage 2008 you should think about installing the update.
Daniel
I have just noticed in amongst the iPhone SDK and software beta news that Apple have announced support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. This is great news for iPhone users, but is it good news for email administrators?
Apple are going to build ActiveSync in to the iPhone out of the box to provide calendar, contacts, push email, GAL and remote wipe over the air. There is no mention of other Exchange security policies such as, device encryption or the ability to disable phone functions (camera or SMS).
My boss has no excuse now, he has to buy me an iPhone. Purely for testing of course.
Get more from the Apple web site here, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/03/06iphone.html.
Microsoft have a Q&A here, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/mar08/03-06EASqa.mspx.
Daniel
