Technically, this isn’t just a promotion for February. Free Outlook has been a perk of partnering with groupSPARK from the beginning. Offering anything for free is going to make people pay attention to what you are saying. When you say you will give away software that would normally cost them around $100, this should really make them take notice.

We’ve been working hard on improving our BlackBerry Enterprise Server Infrastructure. Our upgrades have been significant and will make our BlackBerry service even more robust. We wanted to share some of what we’ve done with you:

• Upgraded Blackberry Enterprise Server Infrastructure by adding two additional servers
• The plan is to have one BES server for each Shared Exchange server, and a set of BES servers to handle just the dedicated servers
• We’ve seen, through our testing and analysis that restricting the number of users on a Blackberry server to approx 250, will drastically improve performance and reliability.

We’ve got plans to attend a lot of events this year.

• ISPCon (spring and fall)
• HostingCon
• The Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference
• The Hosting Transformation Summit

We’ll also be attending a variety of other shows with Microsoft. We’ll make sure and keep you up to date with our event schedule so if you’re attending a show we will be exhibiting at you’ll be able to stop by and chat.

Today more than 85% of all electronic mail traffic on the Internet is unwanted, malicious or offensive. SMBs are under siege from a variety of increasingly sophisticated attacks from hackers, spammers, and phishers. Being a small business doesn’t afford “security through obscurity.”

groupSPARK’s Postini solution blocks spam, viruses, and email attacks, and provides sophisticated message management and policy enforcement capabilities.

With Outlook 2007, users can view calendars and contact lists stored on SharePoint sites, and create and manage sites for editing documents and organizing meetings. Outlook 2007 and Windows SharePoint 2007 support a new set of significantly enhanced functionality including:

 

• Read/write access to SharePoint items: calendars, tasks, contacts, discussions, and documents
• Synchronization of offline support of document library and lists
• Ability to check out and edit documents when offline
• Roll-up views of calendars and tasks across multiple lists and sites
• Unified view of personal and SharePoint tasks in Outlook 2007

 

Exchange Server 2007 is obviously something that groupSPARK and our partners have been waiting for. There are significant improvements over Exchange Server 2003. Here are just a few of those improvements…

• Advanced Anti-SPAM and Anti-Virus protection
• New data replication capabilities
• Unified messaging with fax and voice mail
• Improved performance and scalability

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As with all Microsoft software releases, there are many improvements over the previous release.

Outlook 2007 has a redesigned look and feel of its messaging interface, which makes composing, formatting, and acting on information an easier and more intuitive experience. You now get all the Outlook 2007 rich features and capabilities in an accessible location, which makes it easier to navigate your options.

Users benefit from a new scheduling assistant that automates time-consuming calendaring tasks, the ability to schedule and customize out-of-office communications, and managed folders that facilitate compliance needs.

You can connect Windows SharePoint Services documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Office Outlook 2007, giving you a central place to manage your information.

These are but a few of the major process improvements that you will see in Outlook 2007.

With Microsoft releasing their 2007 products, they will be generating a tremendous amount of buzz about products and services that you have in common with them. Monitor their actions and when a press release or new set of marketing collateral is put into the main stream, alert your customers or better yet, forward the information directly to them.