The view from inside Redmond

“Top 20 iPad Apps.” “Why the iPad stinks!” “The iPad banned in Israel — but now unbanned.” I’m pretty tired of the repetitive storyline here. Where can a journalist/blogger find a decent angle for his column? It’s time to go to the source of all things Windows: Microsoft. I’ll be at the Redmond, Wash., headquarters next week to do some digging.

I’m on a quest, not merely for a coffee mug from the Microsoft store (although I’ll certainly be buying gifts) but to find serious features to report back to my faithful Enterprise Windows audience. The trip begins next week, and I’m excited to say I have interviews lined up with a variety of development teams and support personnel.

Here is a preview of the schedule:

Meeting with the SharePoint team: SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 will be released on May 12, according to Arpan Shaw, director of SharePoint. I’ve been in the beta program for both products, but there are many enterprise features I haven’t had the chance to demo yet. I’ll have a solid 90-minute one-on-one with the team to see the best it has to offer. Stay tuned.

Meeting with the Exchange team: Exchange 2010 SP1 is fast approaching, and I’m eager to talk to the team about a couple of items that will be enhanced in SP1. For example, in the initial version of Exchange 2010, Messaging Records Management 2.0 (the replacement for folder management policies) had a command-line PowerShell-only management interface. But Exchange 2010 SP1 offers a graphical interface, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in action. Plus, there are enhancements to federation, to the Exchange Control Panel, and to the mailbox archive features, so I’m anticipating an exciting conversation.

Services Advisor team: I’ll spend most of my time with this group. As an IT pro, my attention is usually all over the working parts of the technology, and many of you Enterprise Windows readers love that. But there is another angle to technology: how it is managed. IT decision management is becoming a growing part of Microsoft’s business offerings. It has Advisers that help blend or align business and IT, so I’ll explore the top issues to which customers come to Microsoft for help.

Customer Experience Improvement Program: These days, it seems as if you can’t install anything from Microsoft without being asked to join the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). I typically say yes, but I never know what is happening on the back end when making that selection. Supposedly the issues that my system faces gets sent to Microsoft for review. There must be some threshold in place that lets developers know when an issue is more than an isolated event and must be handled. But what is that threshold? Who makes the call that it’s a point requiring focus? How does the CEIP blend with IT feedback to create the map for the next version of any given product? I’m going to find out.

These are just a few highlights from my trip next week. I also hope to meet with several other teams to explore ideas related to the Enterprise Windows blog. It was either that or write something cheeky about the iPad!

If you have any questions for me to bring to Microsoft, by all means let me know. I’ll report on the most interesting questions and issues here, and for narrower queries, I’ll see if I can get direct feedback.

This article, “The view from inside Redmond,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of J. Peter Bruzzese’s Enterprise Windows blog and follow the latest developments in Windows at InfoWorld.com.