Monday was a gush of fresh air for the 2.2 million members community of Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) that were announced that as of that day they will be receiving new benefits that will help them successfully deploy and support new technologies by increasing the access to Microsoft’s internal resources and networking with their peers.
As Microsoft is preparing for the "Windows Server 2008" launch, the new benefits are being introduced and customers have already started taking advantage of the resources available. "As new technology is released, Microsoft is investing in unique benefits for MCPs that provide ongoing value that will help them improve their performance on the job while distinguishing themselves from their peers," says Lutz Ziob, general manager of Microsoft Learning.
The new MCP program features include:
Knowledge Base Access – that’s basically access to the extensive partner-level Microsoft Product Support knowledge Base that wasn’t available before to all, just to the Most Valuable Professionals and Microsoft partners. The whole point of it is to give the MCPs the chance to become more valuable to their peers and employers because of the inside track of important technical issues provided.
MCP Community Profiles – any MCP will be able to build and maintain his own landing page on Microsoft.com web site in order to ease the interaction inside the community and increase their visibility. Security levels include visualizing the personal profile by the worldwide public, MCP peers or just by Microsoft.
MCP Member Directory Search – it’s an option to plane locate other MCPs whereabouts for professional networking, mentoring and community involvement.
Transcript Manager – all credentials earned by MCPs are now combined into one single transcripts, available for download in both PD and XPS formats. The transcripts can easily be forwarded by MCPs to their respective managers because of the new option.
Certificate Manager – it really shortens the period within which new credentials can be downloaded as high-resolution Microsoft certifications.
Logo Manager – the option to download logos from the Library of Microsoft certification in order to be used for the MCPs resumes, web sites and business communications has been prolonged. "Microsoft certification gives you a way to connect with Microsoft because of the MCP program," says James Kovacs, a Microsoft MVP – Visual Developer, Solutions Architect. "You start getting the newsletter and seeing what other people are doing with certifications and what other training opportunities are out there. It’s a career builder."
After spending five years focusing on building software and services for mobile phones, Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it will be supporting the Verizon Wireless Open Development Initiative and Any Apps, Any Device option offered by Verizon Wireless.
It was Microsoft Corp’s Senior Vice President of the Mobile Communications Business Pieter Nook that announced the big step forward and he was reported as saying that "Microsoft is very excited to see Verizon Wireless make such a bold move to satisfy the demands of wireless consumers. As people’s mobile needs become more sophisticated and varied, they will require smarter and more adaptable mobile devices. We are proud to support any open access that puts more power in people’s hands to connect them to the information they want when and where they want it."
Microsoft’s rich experience with the mobile phones technology includes more than 140 phone designs created by more than 48 device manufacturers worldwide, more than 18 thousand applications are supported by Microsoft Mobile (MM) while just last year more than 11 million MM licenses were issued.
Wednesday brought in good news for the Redmond based giant, proving that despite not acquiring YouTube is still one of the worst managerial decisions made, steps have been taken to level the playing field with the now Google-owned video sharing service.
Numbers in from Compete showed that by taking Soapbox under the MSN Video umbrella, the visitors flocked towards it and thus created a so-far worthy YouTube competitor. "Extraordinary gains were realized by the Microsoft family of video sites, which includes MSN Video and Live Search Video, catapulting the Redmond rival into 2nd place, three spots ahead of its rank in September. MSN/Live Video grew 25.3% to 35M visits on the strength of 21M visitors.
Meanwhile, major losses struck Yahoo! Video, MySpaceTV and Heavy.com. MySpace’s decline is particularly troublesome given that it’s the 3rd straight month of double-digit losses for the social networking giant. Since July 2007, MySpace has seen its online video market share halved to 7.6%," revealed Compete's Alex Patriquin.
Thursday happily rolled around with the announcing of several strategic efforts to be made by Infosys Technologies Ltd. in order to deepen the services it already provides Microsoft Corp. with, among which a new dedicated vendor offshore facility (VOF) and a Microsoft Dynamics Concept Center.
The partnership between the two companies goes as back as 1998, the year when Infosys, a world leader in consulting and information technology, brought in to the table measurable enhancements to productivity, customer and partner experience and by that helping Microsoft be the giant it is today.
Moorthy Uppaluri, CEO of Microsoft IT-Global, stated, "Together with Infosys we are creating technology solutions that enable the businesses of our customers and stakeholders to be People Ready. At Microsoft, we firmly believe that the talented people we engage with are our fundamental and most important asset, helping us accelerate the transformation and growth of our business. I expect this relationship to grow deeper and broader with time. The infrastructure and support that Infosys has dedicated to Microsoft represents its commitment to our continued success."
Some examples of joint projects are the architecting and deploying a business intelligence platform built on Microsoft’s next gen BI technologies, architecting and deploying a download site to help with Microsoft’s improving their customer experience level, the establishing of a Test Center of Excellence focused exclusively on quality assurance of IT solutions for the Redmond giant and so on.
And in case you were wondering what’s with the subtitle, Microsoft had a party to close down the week and it had two reasons: one is that Windows Vista turned one year on Friday or more exactly the business SKU of it. The other is that Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2 was granted an upgrade, available for download.
While not doing much more than its not-upgraded predecessor, the IE7 version completely turns its face from the Vista users and delivers them nothing at all despite the fact that they are taking that version of the browser by default.
"Internet Explorer 7 has been designed to make everyday tasks easier, provide dynamic security protection and improve the development platform and manageability. End user improvements include a streamlined interface, tabbed browsing, printing advances, improved search functionality, instant feeds (RSS), dynamic security protection and more.
This download is for Microsoft XP Service Pack 2 in English only. This custom IE7 download will be available during November 2007 - January 31, 2008," Microsoft announced on the download page.
I know it sounds far-fetched but it looks like the engineers over at the Redmond headquarters seem to be turning into party-animals that are going at it week after week… No, it really is far-fetched, erase that last remark.
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