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It’s not too late to apply. Many states are still offering the Elevate America vouchers.

Check out Microsoft’s page HERE for a list of states with outstanding and available vouchers.

Microsoft, in an effort to strengthening the U.S. economy and increase global competitiveness, has set up a program to improve access to the education and workforce readiness skills required for twenty-first century jobs. In support of this commitment, Microsoft’s Elevate America initiative provides one million vouchers for Microsoft e-learning courses and select certification exams at no cost to recipients. Elevate America will be implemented in cooperation with states across the country as part of Microsoft’s overall effort to help train two million people over the next three years.

Visit the Microsoft site to check local availability for this program and use your vouchers to get Microsoft Office 2007 Training, Windows 7 Training, Project 2007 Training, and other Microsoft Training course at KeyStone Learning Systems.

In a recent announcement, Microsoft has offered us a little tease. It seems the first public beta of Microsoft Office 2010 will be available in November 2009. We don’t know exactly when in November, just that November is the month. We also don’t know if they’ll be charging for this beta as they did late in the Office 2007 beta release.

For the last few months, some in the industry have been testing Office 2010 (me included) under a special limited-release technical preview. I’m really looking forward to the public beta. In my time spent using the technical preview, I have to say I like it. However, since I was very familiar with Office 2007, making my upgrade to 2010 was fairly seamless for me. I mean, there were a few new things to learn about, but for the most part, Office 2010 looks and feels like Office 2007.

The buzz in the industry is that many users will be upgrading straight from the 2003 version to 2010 (much like many are making the jump from Windows XP to Windows 7, skipping Vista altogether). This leap presents a much larger knowledge gap as Office 2003 users haven’t had time yet to become accustomed to the new GUI of Office products, like the Ribbon.

Such an upgrade presents a challenge to companies who now have to consider employee training in addition to hardware and software resources to handle these new products.

Subscribe to the KeyStone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Windows 7 and Office 2010 Training and Windows 7 & Office 2010 news and special subscriber offers.

Thursday’s Smart IT Sessions 2009 web conference provided attendees from many top organizations with key information they needed for planning around Windows 7 migration and upcoming Microsoft titles like Office 2010, Project 2010, and SharePoint 2010.

The Smart IT Sessions conference was live on Thursday, September 24th, and featured a full day of presenters including Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott and topics based around Windows 7 and what to expect from Microsoft in 2010.

In summary, Windows 7 looks ready for enterprise use. As Paul puts it, “Is enterprise ready for Windows 7?” Issues to consider are budget and training plans. “We are proud to be part of this event,” said Rob Kingyens, COO of KeyStone Learning Systems, “Many CIO’s and IT pro’s have been asking about these topics and it’s great to be able to bring the information to them.”

A case study with CDW‘s Doug Miller showed that Windows 7 migration can improve efficiency, cut support cost, and increase end user productivity, and Ben Armstrong (Virtual PC Guy) illustrated the value of using virtualization to support migration efforts and ensure access to legacy systems.

Mary Jo Foley provided a great overview of the tentative Microsoft Timeline, highlighting Office 2010 and other 2010 Microsoft resources for IT Pro’s coming out in the upcoming year. Office 2010 should provide many time-saving features and increase end user productivity, but most likely will not be available till Q2 or later next year.

Whatever your migration plans, SharePoint and Project Management are sure to play a critical role in effective ECM and EPM. Andy Hopkins (Chrysalis BTS) covered a real world case study for SharePoint Enterprise Content Management and Robert Happy and David Blair (Project Management Practice, Inc.) provided tips and tricks for Project 2007 users, as well as a peak at the upcoming Project 2010 and new Project Server 2010.

I will provide summaries for each session in upcoming posts. Access to recorded sessions, slide decks, and other resources can be found Here.

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Yesterday I attended the Region 2000 Technology Council “Wired Wednesday” luncheon.

A packed room of Region 2000 Technology Council members were attentive and full of questions after the presentation. “What’s Next in the Microsoft World?” by Corinne Hoisington, was informative and entertaining, covering a live tour of Windows 7 RC and the Office 2010 alpha. (recording to be available later this month)

Her presentation was rich with multi-media including music and video clips, as well as a live demonstration of the Windows 7 touch-screen capabilities on a touch-pad. I was especially impressed with her poise and quick recovery when a technical difficulty derailed the planned demo of Windows 7 Speech Recognition (a non-Windows 7 issue before you say anything).

I was able to talk to Jonathan Whitt, Executive Director for the Tech Council, and he was gracious to allow me a few minutes to share about the upcoming Smart IT Sessions 2009 Conference on September 24th. “This (Smart IT Sessions 2009) ties in perfectly with today’s topic.” commented Mrs. Hoisington.

The Region 2000 Technology Council provides regional development leadership within the 2,000 square miles that surround Lynchburg, Virginia, providing a single point of contact to the public and private sector for regional planning services, economic development, marketing, and workforce training. Their new website will be up soon here.

Subscribe to the KeyStone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Windows 7 Training and Windows 7 news and special subscriber offers.

Not officially, but through a “leaked” source, we’re learning a few things about Microsoft Office 2010. Specific to our enterprise-level customers, it looks Beta 1 of Office 2010 is slated to include new volume-licensing activation tweaks as well as a new upload center that we think may be related to the much anticipated Office Web Apps.

With all this being said, it seems that the only things the folks at Microsoft are willing to confirm are that the Technical Preview went out in July and they still expect to ship the finished version of Microsoft Office 2010 in, well, 2010.

If you want the full scoop, check out this article.

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I was excited to read this in TechCrunchIT today. (by Cameron Christoffers)

Probably the single biggest obstacle in enterprise use of Macs has been the absence of Outlook. Microsoft has finally announced the availability of Outlook in the next version of Mac Office, which should be available for the 2010 holidays.

In addition, Microsoft has taken steps toward making the current Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition experience more Outlook-like.

The new business edition of Mac Office will be, “designed to provide Mac users with better connection to Microsoft Exchange Server and improved compatibility across platforms.” Cameron reports. Microsoft’s Mac unit is building the new Outlook software from the ground up to ensure compatibility with Mac features like backup and hard-drive search.

Subscribe to the KeyStone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Mac Office 2010 and Outlook 2010 Training news and special subscriber offers.

That was the rumor, at least. But, it seems it’s now been confirmed through a simple “Whois.com” search that the owner of Office.com is, indeed, Microsoft. There have been rumblings of late that Microsoft is positioning itself to compete with the growing popularity of online document availability, such as Google Apps. It seems Office.com may be their way in and just in time to coincide with their pending release of Office 2010. TechCrunch offers more information here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/the-complete-guide-to-microsofts-office-2010/.

Subscribe to the KeyStone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Office 2010 Training news and special subscriber offers.

With over 500 Million people using Microsoft Office, it’s fair to say that Microsoft has done a great job keeping up with the ever changing needs of the desktop workforce. With office 2010 looming on the horizon, we can only assume it will be another hit.

In a great article, “A Quickie with Microsoft Office 2010,” Chelsi Nakano with CMS Wire lays out three steps for success that Microsoft has taken with this new suite.

Step 1: Become One with the Web. The success of online document management with some of Microsoft’s chief competitors has shown that this is an area to take seriously, and Microsoft is answering with a handful of free web browser versions of Office, including Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Step 2: Up Your Sharing and Collaboration Game. Office 2010 will be filled with real time functionality, with a focus on SharePoint, enhanced video and image editing tools in PowerPoint (including the ability to compress slide shows for sharing), browser versions of Word and Excel (a new feature called Sparklines provides more intuitive interpretation of charts), and some UI improvements to Outlook.

Step 3: Hollywood, Baby! Finally, Microsoft has upped it’s marketing game, again, providing preview videos for each tool and a full blown Office 2010 Movie Trailer! Very entertaining, despite the gimmicky presentation. Check it out!

Subscribe to the KeyStone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Office 2010 Training news and Office 2010 special subscriber offers.

This week, Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit announced the release of SP2 for Mac Office 2008.

Service Pack 2 (Mac Office 12.2.0 – available from Mactopia or by Auto Update) will include standard stability, performance, and security updates among other improvements for PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. With the addition of Office Live Workspace access, users will be able to take advantage of Microsoft’s online space for collaboration and document storage as well.

Another new feature, Document Connection, will integrate with SharePoint and Office Live Workspace, and includes improved support for Apple’s Web browser, Safari.

MacBU warns however that users running Entourage for Web Services beta should wait to install SP2 until after a few final changes are made – but no dates were given.

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