Toronto, Canada — During the second day of Microsoft Corp.’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), top executives from the company announced new training, tools and other programs that enable partners to deliver compelling new cloud services to their customers.

Satya Nadella, president of the Server and Tools Business, announced a community technology preview (CTP) of new technologies that enable hosting service providers to use their Windows Server data centers to deliver capabilities consistent with services running in Windows Azure. In addition, he announced a new program that gives partners guidance, training and software tools to help customers transition from VMware’s virtual infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud.

“We’ve taken everything that we’ve learned from running data centers and services at a global scale to usher in the new era of the cloud OS,” Nadella said. “Microsoft offers partners modern yet familiar technology to meet customer demand on their path to the cloud.”

With the new CTP, hosting service providers can offer customers turnkey cloud services, including high-scale websites and virtual machine hosting with an extensible self-service portal experience. These capabilities, which run on Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft System Center 2012, will offer hosting providers some of the same experiences and services recently announced by Windows Azure. Go Daddy, the largest global Web hoster, is piloting these new capabilities to deliver new cloud services for customers.

“Customers view Go Daddy as an IT partner with which they can grow,” said Scott Brown, vice president of Product Development – Hosting, at Go Daddy. “These new capabilities give customers a seamless path to expanding their online presence. In addition, the improved site performance, scalability and availability all lead to a more enjoyable experience for our customers and their visitors.”

In addition, the new program announced on stage, Switch to Hyper-V, will allow partners to grow their virtualization, private and hybrid cloud computing practices while also helping customers improve IT agility at a lower cost with Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

Already, partners are making significant progress in helping their customers with this transition. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner FyrSoft recently helped Iowa -based Pella Corporation migrate nearly 100 percent of its VMware infrastructure — nearly 700 VMware virtual machines — to Hyper-V, moving the company beyond virtualization to a private cloud solution. With the Microsoft private cloud, Pella has evolved its business while reducing IT costs and improving efficiencies. Server and Tools Business Corporate Vice President Takeshi Numoto further details partner opportunities in the era of the cloud OS on a blog published today, and more information can be found here.

In addition, in a keynote that further reinforced how Microsoft is working with its partners to transform businesses throughout the world, Microsoft Business Solutions president Kirill Tatarinov highlighted the incredible opportunity in the year ahead for partners focused on selling business solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics.

“Microsoft brings together technologies in a way that no other company can match,” Tatarinov said. “Microsoft Dynamics takes full advantage of the amazing innovations Microsoft is delivering, and we’re actively supporting our partners in developing and delivering a complete, modern, flexible and cloud-based business solution to grow their businesses. There’s never been a better moment to be a Microsoft Dynamics partner.”

With a renewed focus on building enterprise partnerships, Microsoft announced new global independent software vendors that are choosing or extending their solutions across Microsoft Dynamics. Companies such as Campus Management Corp., Cenium Inc., Cincom Systems Inc., PROS Pricing and Technosoft that are industry leaders in their markets are embracing the Microsoft Dynamics solutions to expand their offerings and in some cases as the core foundation on which to build their unique industry-focused solutions.

For instance, global hospitality and hotel solution organization Cenium is extending its Microsoft Dynamics-based business offerings in areas such as property management, procurement, human resources and point of sale; and Campus Management, a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for higher education, is planning to expand global reach by leveraging Microsoft Dynamics AX and providing institutions of any size or complexity more choices when it comes to student information systems and enterprise resource planning solutions.

Other keynotes included the following news and momentum updates from Microsoft senior executives:

Thom Gruhler , corporate vice president of Windows Phone Marketing, took the stage to demo Windows Phone 8 and highlight that Windows Phone is now a true extension of the Windows that 1 billion users worldwide know and use today.

Laura Ipsen , corporate vice president of Worldwide Public Sector, provided an overview of Microsoft’s National Plan and citizenship efforts, including empowering youth and driving societal change through the proliferation of Microsoft technology.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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Members of a popular online community have collectively organized to form a political action committee which aims to support legislation and candidates fighting for electoral reform, individual liberties, and the Internet community.  The group, Test PAC, Please Ignore is able to collect donations to use in strategic messaging, ad campaigns and web promotions to fight against misinformation and to support causes that further the interests of the community.

Ran exclusively by Internet community volunteers and first established on Reddit, the organization has officially filed paperwork to register with the Federal Elections Committee (FEC). tp

“We had an idea. You’ve got a vast community of people passionate about various political issues or interested in running for office themselves and they don’t know where to start,” said Test PAC treasurer Andy Posterick.  “Our community spans so many areas of expertise; we knew we needed to organize.”

While not officially affiliated with Reddit, Test PAC and its volunteers will still take their input from other members of the community.  They have established a comprehensive set of rules that will allow members in good-standing of the Reddit community to vote to determine how the PAC spends its money. The groups’ standard of transparency and community input is something that distinctly separates the organization from other political action committees.

The enthusiasm garnered from Internet communities, like Reddit, that received high-profile exposure for its protest of HR 3261 and S.968 (SOPA and PIPA), and the boycott of GoDaddy.com is credited for the intense organization and establishment of Test PAC, Please Ignore.

Test PAC is currently developing a broad plan and establishing positions on current events, political issues, and stances on pending legislation. The website is now officially up and running with the capacity to accept donations.

Chairman Jeromie Whalen added, “It is my philosophy that money should never be a barrier to participation in anything, and anyone who wants to be involved is welcome.”

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