TechDays Canada 2010 Is Coming!
Microsoft Canada is gearing up for TechDays 2010 to provide IT professionals will all the latest tips, tricks, and news on all the cutting edge Microsoft technologies. I love being part of these events because there is always something new to learn, experts discuss topics with, and peers to debate with about new technologies and techniques . The new TechDays website is up today with new dates, speakers, and track information. The following is a summary of what you can expect with TechDays this year:
Dates & Locations
TechDays 2010 will be held on the following dates and locations:
 | Vancouver September 14-15 Vancouver Convention Centre |  | Edmonton October 5-6 Shaw Conference Centre |
 | Toronto October 27-28 Metro Toronto Convention Centre |  | Halifax November 2-3 World Trade and Convention Centre |
 | Ottawa November 9-10 Hampton Inn and Conference Centre |  | Ottawa November 9-10 Palais de Congres |
 | Winnipeg December 7-8 Winnipeg Convention Centre |  | Calgary December 14-15 Calgary Stampede |
Tracks & Sessions
Canada's TechDays 2010 will be offering six tracks that include over 50 sessions. The six tracks at TechDays 2010 currently include:
Developing for Three Screens and the Cloud
In this track you will learn how to develop and enhance web, mobile, and desktop applications while examining how to leverage the Cloud where it makes sense. This track will also discuss Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, Windows Phone, Silverlight and other technologies that can help enhance the application experience for your users.
Optimizing the Development Process
In this track you will learn best practices and techniques for delivering robust solution using Microsoft’s application lifecycle platform, Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010. This track will also discuss change management, quality, and deployment techniques.
Collaboration: The Next Generation
In this track you will learn how to leverage key technologies like SharePoint 2010, Unified Communications, Office 2010 to increase productivity, reduce the burden on IT, and enable user collaboration using a rich web or mobile clients. This track will also discuss business productivity infrastructure in the Cloud and on-premise.
All About Deployment
In this track you will learn how to leverage tools in Windows Server 2008 R2, the System Center product line and others to help make deployments run more smoothly. This track will also discuss how to integrate Office 2010, your own line-of-business applications, and virtualization technologies into your deployments.
Managing and Helping to Secure Your IT Infrastructure
In this track you will learn how to migrate to and implement on-premise and Cloud-based infrastructure components to help reduce costs and increase agility. This track will also discuss Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization, Forefront suite of security products, and the System Center suite of products provide a robust solution for deploying, managing, and securing your organization datacenter. Additionally, this track will teach you how to monitor and automate your infrastructure to help increase availability.
Local Flavours
In this track will be showcasing the great work that is happening in your region of the country. This track will also allow local individuals who have a passion for technology share their knowledge and expertise.
Registration and Cost
The full conference price this year will be approximately $699.99 plus applicable taxes. If you take advantage of the early bird price that will be available up to six weeks prior to the event, you will pay approximately $349.99 plus applicable taxes which is almost 50% savings. To keep update on all the latest TechDays 2010 news visit the Canada TechDays website at http://www.techdays.ca/, follow their facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/TechDays-Canada/91715813010, or follow the conversation on twitter at #techdays_ca. If you have attended TechDays in the past watch your email for more exciting TechDays news.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Editions
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has four different editions to choose from to help meet your business needs.The following is a small overview of each edition and what features each provide:
SharePoint Foundation 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a good starting point of business that want to try a free Web-based collaboration software to create blogs, wikis, community workspaces, web and document collaboration quickly and easily. SharePoint Foundation is intended for small to medium size businesses who want to get involved in Web 2.0 technologies without having to make a large investment. SharePoint Foundation uses SQL Server Express and Search Express out of the box so there will be limitation as to how big your SharePoint environment can grow (See Software Requirements For SharePoint 2010 article for more details). SharePoint Foundation 2010 includes the following features that are outlined www.sharepoint.com:
- Accessibility
- Audience Targeting
- Blogs
- Browser-based Customizations
- Business Connectivity Services
- Business Data Connectivity Service
- Developer Dashboard
- Discussions
- Event Receivers
- External Data Column
- External Lists
- Backup and Restore
- Language Integrated Query (LINQ) for SharePoint
- Large List Scalability and Management
- Managed Accounts
- Mobile Connectivity
- Multilingual User Interface
- Multi-Tenancy
- Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
- Permissions Management
- Presence
- Quota Templates
- Read-Only Database Support
- Remote Blob Storage (SQL Feature)
- REST and ATOM Data Feeds
- Ribbon and Dialog Framework
- Sandboxed Solutions
- SharePoint Designer
- SharePoint Health Analyzer
- SharePoint Lists
- SharePoint Workspace
- Silverlight Web Part
- Site Search
- Solution Packages
- Support for Office Web Apps
- Unattached Content Database Recovery
- Usage Reporting and Logging
- Visual Upgrade
- Web Parts
- Wikis
- Workflow
If you have never tried SharePoint before and are wondering if it is a right fit for your company you can download Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 for free at from the Microsoft Download Center. For more information Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 visit What's new in SharePoint 2010?, Feature Differences between SharePoint 2010 Foundation vs. Server Standard vs. Server Enterprise, SharePoint Foundation 2010 Product Information, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Business Value, Getting started with SharePoint Foundation 2010, Planning guide for SharePoint Foundation 2010, Operations guide for SharePoint Foundation 2010, TechNet's Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Resource Center, and SharPoint 2010 Feature Gallery.
SharePoint Server 2010 Standard
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition contains all the functionality within Microsoft SharePoint Fountains and includes enhanced document management, content management, records management, collaboration sites, social computing sites (MySite, blogs, wikis, etc), and enterprise search features. As discussed in the Software Requirements For SharePoint 2010 article, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 only comes in a 64-bit version. SharePoint Server 2010 Standard includes the following features outlined that are outlined on www.sharepoint.com:
- Ask Me About
- Basic Sorting
- Best Bets
- Business Connectivity Services Profile Page
- Click Through Relevancy
- Colleague Suggestions
- Colleagues Network
- Compliance Everywhere
- Content Organizer
- Document Sets
- Duplicate Detection
- Enterprise Scale Search
- Enterprise Wikis
- Federated Search
- Improved Governance
- Keyword Suggestions
- Managed Metadata Service
- Memberships
- Metadata-driven Navigation
- Metadata-driven Refinement
- Mobile Search Experience
- Multistage Disposition
- My Content
- My Newsfeed
- My Profile
- MySites
- Note Board
- Organization Browser
- People and Expertise Search
- Phonetic and Nickname Search
- Query Suggestions, "Did You Mean?", and Related Queries
- Ratings
- Recent Activities
- Recently Authored Content
- Refinement with Social Tags
- Relevancy Tuning
- Rich Media Management
- Search Scopes
- Shared Content Types
- SharePoint 2010 Search Connector Framework
- Status Updates
- Tag Clouds
- Tag Profiles
- Tags
- Tags and Notes Tool
- Unique Document IDs
- Windows 7 Search
- Word Automation Services
- Workflow Templates
For more information about SharePoint Server Standard Edition visit What's new in SharePoint 2010?, TechNet's SharePoint Server 2010 Resource Center, Micorsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Product Information, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Capabilities, SharePoint 2010 Overview Evaluation Guide, SharePoint 2010 Walkthrough Guide, SharPoint 2010 Feature Gallery, Deployment Guide For Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2010, and Feature Differences between SharePoint 2010 Foundation vs. Server Standard vs. Server Enterprise.
SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition contains all the functionality within the standard edition of SharePoint Intranet and additionally includes Access Services, InfoPath Form Services, Excel Services, Performance Point Services, Business Data Services, Visio Services, Word Automation Services, web service capabilities, and the ability to upgrade to FAST search. As discussed in the Software Requirements For SharePoint 2010 article, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 only comes in a 64-bit version. SharePoint Server 2010 Standard includes the following features outlined that are outlined on www.sharepoint.com:
- Access Services
- Advanced Content Processing
- Advanced Sorting
- Business Data Integration with the Office Client
- Business Data Web Parts
- Business Intelligence Center
- Business Intelligence Indexing Connector
- Calculated KPIs
- Chart Web Parts
- Contextual Search
- Dashboards
- Data Connection Library
- Decomposition Tree
- Deep Refinement
- Excel Services
- Excel Services and PowerPivot for SharePoint
- Extensible Search Platform
- Extreme Scale Search
- InfoPath Forms Services
- PerformancePoint Services
- Rich Web Indexing
- Similar Results
- Thumbnails and Previews
- Tunable Relevance with Multiple Rank Profiles
- Visio Services
- Visual Best Bets
- Web Analytics
For more information about SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition visit What's new in SharePoint 2010?, TechNet's SharePoint Server 2010 Resource Center, Micorsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Product Information, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Capabilities, SharePoint 2010 Overview Evaluation Guide, SharePoint 2010 Walkthrough Guide, SharPoint 2010 Feature Gallery, Deployment Guide For Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2010, and Feature Differences between SharePoint 2010 Foundation vs. Server Standard vs. Server Enterprise.
SharePoint 2010 Online
Microsoft SharePoint Online 2010 is a hosted Microsoft SharePoint Server that is setup, provisioned, maintained and upgraded by Microsoft. Using cloud computing technology, Microsoft SharePoint Online provides you with the functionality of SharePoint 2010 without a team of dedicated IT staff managing the environment. Microsoft SharePoint Online is ideal for small or medium size companies that want to simple collaborate online. Although it will not be available until the first quarter of 2011, SharePoint 2010 Online will have standard and enterprise editions that include sandbox solutions so customers can upload customs code to their SharePoint Online environment. You can try Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Online for 30 days at the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal. For more information on cost and features visit SharePoint Online Product Information, Microsoft SharePoint Online, SharePoint Online Video, and SharePoint Online in the 2010 wave.
Happy SharePoint Day!
Today is the official release date for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. I am so excited and waiting impatiently for the Microsoft festivities to begin. The webcast will be starting at 11:00am EDT with a keynote by Stephen Elop the President of Microsoft Business Division. Let the SharePoint 2010 adventure begin!
