The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance belongs to a family of appliances that provides solutions to meet an organization’s business needs. The appliance is a standalone, self-contained appliance that leverages the latest Microsoft technologies for sharing data. It is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 with PowerPivot. The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance is cost effective and helps organizations experience the benefits of self-service business intelligence.

The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance belongs to a family of appliances that provides solutions to meet an organization’s business needs. The appliance is a standalone, self-contained appliance that leverages the latest Microsoft technologies for sharing data. It is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 with PowerPivot. The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance is cost effective and helps organizations experience the benefits of self-service business intelligence.

The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance belongs to a family of appliances that provides solutions to meet an organization’s business needs. The appliance is a standalone, self-contained appliance that leverages the latest Microsoft technologies for sharing data. It is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 with PowerPivot. The Hewlett-Packard Business Decision Appliance is cost effective and helps organizations experience the benefits of self-service business intelligence.

Microsoft Office 2010 is designed to let you work how, when, and where you want, letting you get things from a PC, the Web, and even a smartphone. Many of the features in Office 2010 can be found consistently across multiple programs. This Learning Snack describes some of the key new and improved common features across these programs and how they enable you to bring your ideas to life, help you work with others more effectively, and enable anywhere access to your work.

This snack provides tools for students to understand and better use the Microsoft Office Excel Reports functionality in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0.

This Snack provides an overview of some helpful functionality available in Returns Management in the Field Service Series in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. This overview includes sending inventory to scrap, adding a restocking fee, and creating a Depot Management work order to track costs.

Windows Azure is the Microsoft cloud-computing platform that helps organizations build and deploy applications to a Microsoft-hosted infrastructure and pay only for services used. It offers compute, storage, and networking resources as services. Businesses can utilize these cloud-based assets to transform their existing server-based systems into dynamic environments.

Many organizations have benefited by employing the Windows Azure platform. This snack describes how Outback Steak House, Kelley Blue Book, and Domino’s Pizza have benefited by using Windows Azure.

Dynamics CRM Online is a powerful, easy-to-use CRM solution that is delivered as a service in the cloud on a pay-per-use basis. It offers a complete suite of marketing, sales, and customer service capabilities with a familiar Microsoft Office Outlook experience. With Dynamics CRM Online, organizations can analyze customer information, understand their customers better, and develop stronger customer relationships.

This snack explains how organizations can benefit by using Dynamics CRM Online. This snack also describes how the features and tools included in Dynamics CRM Online help organizations meet their unique business needs.

This Learning Snack provides a brief overview of some important new functionality in the Distribution Series modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. It focuses on Auto-Receiving in transit transfers, changes made to the purchasing returns process, and Encumbrance Management integration with Purchase Order Approvals.

Microsoft Windows Azure platform supports various Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies and provides a flexible environment and several open-source resources to develop cloud-based applications and services. This cloud-based platform is built to maximize interoperability. It supports various commonly used Internet protocols, such as HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML to ensure data portability from an external development environment.

This snack explains how Windows Azure resources, such as the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse, the Windows Azure SDK for PHP,  the Windows Azure SDK for Java, and the Windows Azure Tomcat solution accelerator helps create cross-platform applications that run on Windows Azure.

Microsoft BizTalk Host Integration Server offers a powerful set of tools and technologies to seamlessly connect host systems with new applications. This cost-effective host integration solution helps organizations preserve their investments in currently deployed legacy systems and at the same time deploy state-of-the-art applications. This Learning Snack describes the cool capabilities of BizTalk Host Integration Server. It explains the benefits of host integration in terms of managing application, data, network, and security integration efficiently. Additionally, this Snack illustrates how an organization can effectively integrate new applications with existing host systems to achieve its business goals.  

To increase efficiency and improve the accuracy of business processes, two or more organizations may need to integrate their systems with the help of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). These integrated systems also need to communicate with a variety of customer and supplier applications through secure transactions to provide real-time information. This Learning Snack describes how Microsoft BizTalk Server can help organizations integrate disparate business processes into a single entity so that it can facilitate seamless access, storage, sharing, collaboration, and flow of information.

In today’s competitive world, making quick and informed business decisions is more important than ever. To facilitate this, business end users need the flexibility to gain end-to-end visibility of various business processes. With the BAM feature in Microsoft Biztalk Server, business end users can access real-time information about the state of a business process. BAM includes a collection of tools, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and services that help monitor relevant business metrics. This Learning Snack describes the various features of BAM. It also describes the BAM workflow that involves business analysts, system administrators, developers, and business end users.

Organizations need to optimize their IT infrastructure so that it can keep up with their growing business needs. Microsoft provides three models that define a roadmap for organizations to reach infrastructure maturity. This Snack describes the Core Infrastructure Optimization (Core IO) model, which can help organizations improve the current state of their IT infrastructure in terms of cost, security, and agility.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables developers to build rich solutions easily, rapidly, and efficiently. This Learning Snack demonstrates how you can use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to create and deploy your solutions. It also demonstrates how you can build Silverlight applications using the SharePoint 2010 client object model and use LINQ to SharePoint to create SharePoint entities.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 includes an enhanced user interface that provides IT professionals with a streamlined administration experience. This Learning Snack describes the features of the SharePoint 2010 user interface. It demonstrates how the new Central Administration console enables you to perform several administrative tasks from one central location. The Learning Snack also describes how Shared Application Architecture can be used for flexible deployments in SharePoint 2010.

The User Account Control (UAC) feature was first implemented in the Windows Vista operating system to protect computers from malicious software and unauthorized system changes. Based on feedback from users and administrators, the UAC feature has been significantly enhanced in the Windows 7 operating system to give users greater control of their computers and provide administrators with more granular configuration settings. This Learning Snack explains how UAC works and shows you how to configure UAC security settings. It also describes the key UAC enhancements in Windows 7.

People who have more than one computer in their homes would want to create a home network so that they can easily share and access files and printers across the network. This Learning Snack describes the new desktop and taskbar features in Windows 7 that help you effortlessly manage your applications, folders, and windows. It also demonstrates how to use features like Aero Peek and Aero Shake to manage open windows. This Learning Snack will also show you to how create taskbar icons to easily access frequently used applications and Jump Lists to save files on your desktop without the clutter.

People who have more than one computer in their homes would want to create a home network so that they can easily share and access files and printers across the network. This Learning Snack describes the HomeGroup feature in Windows 7 that helps you create a home network in a snap. It also demonstrates how to create a home network by using the HomeGroup feature.

Typically, when users have computer problems, they call help desk to resolve them. But if users have Windows 7 running on their computers, they can take advantage of its new features and tools to solve their computer problems without calling the helpdesk. This Learning Snack explores new ways to manage and troubleshoot common computer problems in Windows 7 by using the troubleshooting platform, Action Center, and Problem Steps Recorder.

Windows 7 includes several tools and utilities that simplify desktop deployment. One of these tools is Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM). DISM combines the functionality of several image management tools, which were available in Windows Vista. With the help of DISM, IT professionals and Desktop Configuration Administrators can deploy operating system images to computer systems efficiently and quickly. This Learning Snack describes the features of the DISM tool. It also demonstrates some of the commands that administrators can use while preparing and servicing Windows images offline by using this tool.  

The Windows 7 client operating system offers innovative technologies that improve performance, reliability, security, and compatibility. It also offers new capabilities that help organizations to improve user productivity, enhance security, and reduce operating costs. Because Windows 7 is built on the same platform as Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server, the investments you make in Windows Vista readiness—application testing and hardware assessment—will help speed adoption of Windows 7 in your environment.

Browsing, organizing, and finding information that is stored not just on the local computer, but also beyond it has become a necessity for most users. This Learning Snack describes Libraries in Windows 7 and how they can be used to organize data efficiently. It also describes the search improvements in Windows 7 and demonstrates how users can browse and find information stored across multiple computers, Web sites, and servers as easily as searching their own local computer.

These days, more users are working from branch offices or home offices instead of the central office. Although advances in mobile computers and wireless broadband have enabled users to be more productive, the productivity of mobile users is still limited by their connectivity to corporate resources, while away from the office. The changing structure of business puts more pressure on IT professionals to provide a high-performance and secure infrastructure for connecting remote users and branch offices while minimizing costs. Windows 7 offers solutions that enable users to stay connected whether they are travelling or working from home and enables IT professionals to better manage mobile computers. This Leaning snack describes Windows 7 remote connectivity technologies, such Mobile broadband, DirectAccess, VPN Reconnect, and BranchCache.

This Snack explains the Hyper-V features such as Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volume available in Windows Server 2008 R2. The Live Migration feature helps you move a virtual machine between two hyper-V host servers without any interruption of service. The Cluster Shared Volume feature of failover clustering with Live Migration provides increased reliability. The Snack also explains how to use Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2.

This Snack explains the BranchCache feature available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. BranchCache is used for locally caching frequently-used content on the branch office computers. This optimizes network utilization and improves user experience at branch offices.

This Snack explains management enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2, such as remote management with Server Manager, Best Practice Analyzer (BPA), Active Directory Administrative Center, Windows PowerShell 2.0, and SConfig on Server Core. These enhancements reduce the effort for managing physical and virtual servers by providing enhanced management consoles and automation for repetitive day-to-day administrative tasks. The Snack also explains enhancements in power management that provide better energy efficiency and performance by reducing power consumption and lowering overhead costs. In addition, the Snack explains how to use these enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2.

There are many hosting options available for IIS based web sites, and no one hosting type is right for everyone. Determine which type of hosting is right for your and then learn about the tools that can make deployment of your site easier. This snack steps through using Visual Web Developer Express to deploy a site and how the powerful Web Deployment Tool can package an entire site including the database and custom configuration settings for deployment. 

Rich Internet Applications have evolved from being a novelty on a Web site to an indispensable tool to engage and inform your customers. This tutorial demonstrates how you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder in conjunction with IIS7 and Silverlight to incorporate high quality video in your Website and provide a rich experience to your customers.