Date Published: June 2008.
Author: Claudio Vacalebre.
Soundtrack: For Test, Author: Claudio Vacalebre.
13th June 2008, HMC 4.5 has been released!
I'm so excited and happy to release this issue, which includes the content from the official HMC 4.5 brochure presenting the new Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5.
Quoting Chris Vandenberg, Principal Group Manager at Microsoft Hosting Solutions Division: "This is absolutely the best tested, most richly-featured, best supported HMC ever. HMC 4.5 is definitely the way to go."
Chris's is my preferred trusted advisor on the matter, he has been dedicated on the HMC project for years running a team of great people; I read his words as very promising!
Bringing Affordable, Enterprise-Grade Communications
Services to Small and Medium-sized Businesses
Successful small and medium-sized businesses often find
themselves competing with much larger organizations and
navigating complex, changing business conditions. To maintain
momentum and gain agility, they need a messaging and
collaboration system that allows them to compete successfully.
Doing so often means moving from conventional POP3 and
Web-based e-mail to more richly featured, extensible messaging
technology that offers enterprise-class e-mail services, supports
mobile devices, and drives productive collaboration. Typically,
these businesses have limited IT resources and must keep
operational costs and complexities to a minimum.
With Microsoft® Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration
(HMC) version 4.5, you can address the communication needs of
small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers and pursue a
share of the world’s expanding market for hosted business e-mail
services, anticipated to grow to more than U.S.$1 billion by 2010.
Deploy HMC 4.5 and use it to provide hosted, customized IT
services that address the complex needs of your SMB customers.
Aim to increase your value to this growing market by assisting
customers to streamline communications and boost productivity,
while also taking steps to increase your profitability and reduce your
operational costs. A highly scalable solution that addresses today’s
communication and collaboration needs, HMC 4.5 can empower
your customers to take their business to the next level and help
you compete more effectively by providing powerful, economical
software-based services.
With HMC 4.5 within your technology infrastructure, you can
design and deliver enterprise-class, hosted IT services at an
affordable price point for your customers. Help SMBs reduce and
control IT costs by offering hosted solutions as an alternative to
on-premise installations. Allow your customers to allocate important
resources to building their businesses rather than running and
supporting complex on-premise IT infrastructures. Watch your
customers grow and succeed as they make significant productivity
gains using services based on HMC.
Using HMC 4.5 as the foundation, you can add services to your
portfolio of offerings that can generate more business with existing
customers. The flexibility and wide-ranging capabilities of HMC
enable you to create compelling bundles of services for your target
markets. For example, you can combine connectivity services with
e-mail services. Or, you can enable hosted communications and
collaboration features that optimize the use of technologies already
present in customer businesses.
Microsoft conducts extensive testing to help ensure the reliability
and high performance of HMC under demanding conditions and
workloads, and provides fully validated reference architecture
for ideal deployment scenarios. HMC 4.5 is designed to be
implemented rapidly and with potentially low overhead, which
can help you launch revenue-generating services quickly.
Extensive automation and efficient, centralized management
capabilities in HMC 4.5 help you keep your operational costs low.
As a solid platform for service enablement, HMC 4.5 allows you to
focus your energies on creating and delivering services that can
enhance your customers’ businesses and require minimal hands-on
support. HMC 4.5 includes the latest and most advanced iterations
of Microsoft products and technologies, along with enhanced
update management, provisioning, and reporting services.
HMC 4.5
helps you to:
• Provide a compelling, mobile • experience beyond
the desktop by facilitating simplified device discovery,
configuration, and management; offers an enhanced Microsoft
Office Outlook experience on mobile devices; and gives access
to e-mail and scheduling information through any telephone.
• Deliver applications as customized, value-added
services, optimized with business-specific capabilities for
market segments, such as professional and financial services,
healthcare, the public sector, and others. Bundle services to
address customer needs comprehensively, and use Windows®
SharePoint® Services to deliver custom applications.
• Automate and simplify provisioning tasks using the
Microsoft Provisioning System. Allow customers to lower
operational costs with self-management features for their users.
• Enhance the availability, security, and reliability of services
and information with the advanced operations management,
monitoring, and reporting features in HMC 4.5, as well as
built-in safeguards against spam and viruses.
HMC 4.5 can help SMBs improve how they communicate and
conduct business by:
• Providing business-class communications. HMC 4.5
helps mobile workers to communicate effectively. On-the-go
professionals can enjoy a rich, familiar experience on their
mobile devices, including access to public folders and calendar
views in Office Outlook and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
SP1. Companies can customize the user interface to integrate
with their specialized applications.
• Complying with regulatory mandates for information
management. With HMC 4.5, companies can manage
their e-mail communications to better facilitate their
compliance with regulations regarding archiving, retention,
and safeguarding of e-mail messages, and help reduce the
risk, cost, and complexity of regulatory compliance. HMC 4.5
enforces privacy and other restrictions, following organizational
policies for information protection. HMC archives and deletes
messages automatically as user profiles demand, and allows
exceptions for business-critical mail.
• Improving team collaboration. Using browser-based tools,
people can collaborate, share information, and manage
documents and projects in team workspaces, blogs, and
wikis. They can instantly conference over the Web or through
audio and video channels to manage communications and
collaboration dynamically, as needs change.
• Making common business tasks fast, productive, and
consistent. Customizable application templates within
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 streamline the
performance of frequent processes, including recruiting and
hiring, event and meeting planning, customer service and
support, the management of team calendars and employee
timecards, and much more.As a
Use HMC 4.5 to address several critical customer scenarios, including:
Messaging and management of e-mail messages, attachments, and business tasks. HMC 4.5 lets you extend your reach to SMB
customers, small office and home office customers, and even individuals. Services can range from reliable, scalable e-mail functionality to
additional storage, shared calendars and contacts, and hosting of personal domains.
Direct, multichannel communications. Using the contact information stored in Microsoft Active Directory®, Microsoft Office
Communications Server 2007 manages all communications, including e-mail, instant messaging, audio, video, Web conferencing, and
PC-to-PC calling. Office Communications Server 2007 enables presence, so people can determine whether others are available before
contacting them in the most practical way—for example, by instant messaging, a phone call, or a video conference.
Secure, productive collaboration and sharing of digital assets. Windows SharePoint Services gives you a way to host team Web sites
that can become a customer’s preferred avenue for effective teamwork and content exchange.
The table below highlights the advantages of the key elements of HMC 4.5.
As a Microsoft partner, you can benefit from business
and technical expertise and resources from Microsoft.
Learn more about the solution at Microsoft Hosted Messaging official site
Join the Microsoft Communications Sector Hosting
Community at Hosting Community official site.
HMC 4.5 Press Release.
HMC 4.5 @ Tech Net site.
Service Providers Web Site.
MPS SDK.