Microsoft talks about Hotfixes, Service Packs and Project 14 (and Office 14?)

Microsoft talks about Hotfixes, Service Packs and Project 14 (and Office 14?)

Un article intéressant sur OFFICE 14,

Yesterday I listened to an excellent webcast organised by the Microsoft Project User Group (MPUG). Ludovic Hauduc, the General Manager of Microsoft Office Project, discussed hotfixes, service packs, the infrastructure update and Project 14. Much of what he said was also relevant to other Office products such as Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and SharePoint Server (MOSS), as SharePoint like Project is part of the Office 2007 suite of products, for which culumative updates, service packs and the improves as per the infrastructure update are all released at the same time. More information on this webcast can be found on the MPUG blogs, "Next Release of Project Could Appear in August 2009 Timeframe".

Ludovic explained how Microsoft were now releasing cumulative updates for the Office products every two months, following a similar practice that Exchange and SQL had followed for the last two years. The first cumulative update was in August 2008 and then October 2008. They are now working on the cumulative update for December 2008, then Service Pack 2 will be released early 2009, followed by culumative updates probably in March 2009 and then in May 2009. (I keep a list of SharePoint version numbers for each SharePoint update on my blog, which you can find here.)

The predictability of these updates, Ludovic says, will allow Microsoft's customers to optimise their own processes and proactively plan the inclusion of updates into their environments. Every cumulative update or service pack is accumulative, so customers can, for example, decide to skip an update, but yet know that when they do apply a more recent update, all fixes are rolled up in the update they decide to install. However customers MUST test these updates first in their own environments before applying them in production.

Ludovic stated that with the August update, they had introduced a new process of batching together fixes, and that he was proud of the results. He states that “Quality is a Journey”, and what he and his team have learnt in supporting Project 2007, they will be able to bring forward into Office 14 and beyond. Because Project 2007 was such a departure from Project 2003, they never had the opportunity of bringing forward improvements (fixes) from 2003 into 2007. 2003 and 2007 were close cousins, but 2003 was a dead end. However Project 14 is an incremental release of Project 2007. Project 14 will not depart drastically from Project 2007 and literally any hotfix or service pack for Project 2007 will make its way into Project 14. This just wasn't available in the previous versions.

Ludovic also had time to discuss Project 14 - to hear all the information, MPUG members can listen to the webcast on the MPUG site. He mentioned that his team and many teams within Microsoft, plus a number of the Technical Adoption Partners (TAP) are using the M1 build of Project 14. In fact, the project team are using the M2 build (one month old) to plan the work of Project 14. The use of the test builds within Microsoft is known eating their own dog food, and he stated that they had more dog fooding on Project 14 than on any other release combined.

This webcast was recorded and can be listed by members of MPUG. A basic membership of MPUG is free, but doesn't allow you to login to the MPUG site, but will allow you to listen to some of the WebNLearn webcasts and receive the newsletter. Microsoft talks about Hotfixes, Service Packs and Project 14 (and Office 14?)

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P. Erol GIRAUDY
Président du Club MOSS 2007 et MUG.
Vice-Président Club UGO2007
http://clubmoss2007.org/
http://www.mugfrance.fr/
http://www.viadeo.com/fr/profile/pierreerol.giraudy