SplatMan_DK's Journal: Microsoft World Partner Conference 2008 kicks off

With surprisingly little attention from the media, Microsoft has kicked off the World Partner Conference (WPC) 2008 in Houston, Texas. It is the 9th time that Microsoft are bringing their partners together and this year over 10.000 people and 1700 Microsoft partners are attending the conference.

Much like last year, Hosting and Software as a Service (SaaS) are big topics, although there is also room for the expanding Dynamics suite of Business solutions (with a primary focus on the Dynamics CRM solution). In addition Microsoft has revealed the release date for Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008. Both will be available to customers on November 12, although they are already available to Microsoft Partners for testing.

Windows Home Server has some attention this year as well. Microsoft started pushing their Home Server product more seriously at CeBit in March, and that trend is still holding.

Channel Insider has a few more details, and Steve Ballmer's keynote tomorrow may reveal more interesting bits from Redmond.