James Moody: Geek in Paradise

It’s the first day of the World Wide Partner Conference in Denver, CO and Microsoft isn’t wasting any time letting the world know of what’s coming down the tubes to a PC near you.

Dynamics Live CRM will be released to customers early for a trial period before switching to a paid subscription per user model. Trial users will get to test drive the Professional version of the offering, with an Enterprise version coming in 2008. Pricing will be competitive with other offerings on the market. Testing is expected to begin this quarter so head over to CRM Live to apply now.

The Dynamics line of products will be extending better support and training to Partners, as well as offering a new product called the Entrepreneur version to allow companies to start using the Dynamics suite earlier in their lifecycle.

They also outlined a slew of new products/tools/services coming to better enable Partners to meet the needs of their clients. The One-Stop Licensing tool is something I can’t wait to see as it’s something that I’ve been a tad confused with for awhile. As part of that announcement, they announced the Official launch date of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 to be on February 27, 2008.

Expanded Partner opportunities for those in the Information Worker Business.

There’s probably more that I’m missing at this time, but I have work to do. You can follow the Conference at Digital WWPC or follow Steve Clayton’s Live Blog of the event.

Off to upgrade Who’s We Studios to Vista!

Tags: Microsoft WWPC Partner CRM Dynamics

The Official Microsoft Silverlight site has a blurb at the bottom of their page that it is officially going “Silverlight-enabled” live tomorrow, April 30.

They already have free trials of Expression Studio (contains Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Blend and Expression Media), Silverlight Samples, IE Developer Toolbar (Beta 3), Visual studio 2005 and the Silverlight SDK up on their Tools and Resources page. New Desktop wallpapers are also available for download as well as the Silverlight CTP on the Downloads page.

They also have a Blog page linking to their Development, Rich Media and Evangelism focuses, as well as forums dedicated to each focus.

It should be quite interesting to see how Silverlight moves into territory once controlled by Adobe’s (previously Macromedia’s) Flash. Rumors have been heard that Microsoft will be Open Sourcing some/all of the Silverlight code to match Adobe’s Flash Open Sourcing plans. That would be a great move on Microsoft’s part to give the Open Source advocates a little less ammo in their tirades against Redmond. We shall see!

The launch of the Silverlight site coincides with the beginning of MIX07 being held in Las Vegas, NV from April 30 to May 2.

UPDATE: The Windows Vista Blog posted some nifty information for Vista Ultimate Users. The Silverlight Team has posted a Silverlight Dreamscene on the Microsoft Download site, which is to be released this week at MIX07. You can grab it early in 16:9 or 4:3 format now, before anyone else.