Solution Guidance Expanded

To sell more server products, Microsoft has been quietly expanding the suite of Microsoft Solution Offerings (MSOs) —packages of software, architectural guidelines, custom code, and services designed to solve a particular business problem, such as building an e-commerce site. Microsoft is also producing two new types of documents—Patterns and Practices Guides, and Project Guides—aimed at helping customers and partners build pretested server-based solutions at lower cost and risk. Although most of these new guides are quite detailed, parts of Project Guides are more pertinent to sales and marketing than to developing solutions.

The information in these documents is essential for Microsoft to gain greater acceptance in the data center; product documentation manuals and resource kits provide little guidance on how to build overall solutions. In a manner similar to the way Microsoft ships resource kits after a product launch, customers can also expect new or updated MSOs, Patterns and Practices Guides, and Project Guides to follow future releases of Windows and the .NET Enterprise Servers.