The 14-second video features Dave Girouard, Google Enterprise president, and 10 Google employees standing behind him. Girouard says, “On behalf of the Google Apps reseller team, I want to say thank you for taking the time to learn about this exciting new program.”

The employees then yell, “Go Apps resellers!”

Google Apps Education Edition, which offers email, word processing, instant messaging and other programs for college students and faculty, is already gaining some traction in the channel. But there’s also concern that Google’s focus on Web-based applications could take away on-premise sales opportunities for solutions providers. Maybe this “Google Apps reseller team” will help address those issues.

UPDATE (7:04 p.m. Eastern): The owner of the video has removed it from YouTube. 

Company CEO Steve Ballmer some years ago told solution provider partners that the vendor would offer self hosted ERP and CRM applications as needed. It was all about customer choice, he said.

Others at the company immediately downplayed that notion–at least vis-a-vis hosted ERP– saying  the model wasn’t cooked etc. etc.. It was not lost on those insiders how controversial that effort would be to existing partners who already hosted Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

At PDC 2008 last month, corporate vice president for Microsoft Online, Dave Thompson opened the door on the discussion again.

“So what is Microsoft Online? Very simply, it’s enterprise class software delivered via subscription services, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. And today, we offer Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, CRM Online, OCS Online. We offer Exchange-Hosted Services, Office Live Meeting. But that’s really just the beginning. In the future, all our enterprise software will be delivered as an option as an online service. And the key value prop of Microsoft Online Services is that it provides the best experience. These are the richest collaboration tools, the market-leading collaboration tools, but they’re available in a much easier-to-use form, and easier to administer, and easier to buy. And they provide a faster way to get to that value. It’s easier to stay up to date because we do it for them, and they can deploy as an online service in minutes instead of months.” (italics mine.)

So here’s hoping that Steven Elop will address this issue Monday when he announces availability of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM.

Cisco said in a statement that the Jabber acquisition would enable presence and messaging to be used in WebEx Connect and its UC platform to provide both “on-premise and on-demand solutions.” Cisco executives said in August they would make Webex collaboration announcements this month, and those will also likely be part of this collaboration strategy.

“Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs,” said Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice president of the collaboration software group, in a statement. “Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.”

Cisco is not actually leading the way when it comes to open source collaboration, since, for example, Novell’s Teaming collaboration offering is open source and can integrate into most emailing, calendaring and enterprise 2.0 applications.

Also, Cisco is not alone in identifying collaboration as a space for immediate movement. Last week, IBM announced an expansion of its enterprise Web 2.0 strategy, which will enable social software platform Lotus Connections to integrate into iEnterprises’ CRM software, as well include new mashup capabilities. IBM also announced The Center for Social Software, a social software research center that will serve as the incubator for new enterprise 2.0 products.

For Cisco, the Jabber acquisition also brings a new set of customers to maintain and possibly up-sell. The Department of Homeland Security, Wells Fargo and FedEx are just a few of Jabber’s extensive list of major customers that have both implemented its products and built up customized applications based on XMPP.

“This isn’t just a technology, this is an ecosystem,” said Peter O’Kelly, principal analyst at O’Kelly Consulting. “It’s in Cisco’s best interest to keep that vibrant community.”

O’Kelly added that Cisco has a good track record of acquiring companies and “not breaking them.”

The Jabber acquisition is expected to close in the first half of fiscal year 2009. Upon the deal’s close, Jabber employees will be incorporated into the Cisco Collaboration Software Group.

That’s the gist of Ron Herardian’s article in — get this — Dominopower.com. This may be trolling but there’s a lot of truth in what Herardian, a longtime contact and a Domino partner by the way, has to say.

The tremors from Cambridge can be felt here, nearly five miles away as I type. Ed Brill et al.  must be gnashing their collective teeth.

Herardian makes good points. There’ve been ample Notes/Domino vs. Microsoft Exchange Server stories over the years. The truth is the tide ebbed for Domino some time ago. Exchange pulled ahead if only due to Microsoft’s enterprise license agreements. And Microsoft is on something like version four of its hosted Exchange, which is deployed by ISPs who, by the way, really know what they’re doing when it comes to scale.

But Exchange isn’t even the issue any longer. No one cares about Exchange. Or Domino.

Writes Herardian:

“This shift is the consolidation of small and medium enterprise systems onto Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings categorically enabled by Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX. Large businesses in the US must stem rising costs for messaging and collaboration systems. Companies will either outsource these systems or undergo radical consolidation using more scalable, lower-cost products.”

Microsoft has acknowledged this shift in its “Live” and Online services push. Herardian does not think IBM/Lotus has done the same. Microsoft long ago came to the conclusion that on-premise e-mail is beside the point — Mail has become so cheap, such a commodity that it can easily live anywhere and users want to pay cents, not dollars, per mailbox. (Not that they would ever actually verbalize that.)

(More here on Microsoft Office Live efforts.)

Ron? Put your flak jacket on, buddy. Incoming!

David Sterling, a senior software development engineer for Exchange Web Services, has released “The Autodiscover Song,” about the Autodiscover feature in Exchange. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Todd Bishop calls it an “Elton John-style musical treatment,” but he’s being way too kind. It’s slow, it’s not catchy, and for a song that’s supposed to be tongue-in-cheek (I think), it’s not even funny.

Here’s the verse that really gets me:

Call it once for each mailbox of interest
Pair the link and mailbox for each request
If you encounter errors
Refresh once again
For more information search MSDN

It can’t be a good sign when even a spoof song about your product mentions errors and where to look for help. Maybe Microsoft should spend less time at the piano and more time fixing these errors.

Reaction to the song on the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog has been mixed, with comments ranging from “I think it can be number one on the charts!” to “I think you all have too much time on your hands and need to get some lives!”

But my favorite comment comes from a reader called “TheITDude,” who wrote, “This song would sound good with MORE COWBELL!”

None of Microsoft’s recent songs have exactly set the world on fire lately. The Windows Vista SP1 spoof video for “Rocking Our Sales” by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band was called “the most painful Microsoft video ever made.” And lest we forget channel chief Allison “A-Fresh” Watson’s rap video at this year’s Worldwide Partner Conference.

The incentives are thought to be less than the 10% fee Microsoft offers partners for bringing customers into the Microsoft-hosted CRM Online but would at least indicate that Microsoft plans to cut partners in on the action.

BPOS is Microsoft’s SMB analogy to the hosted services it has already brought to large companies including Energizer Holdings LLC.

Another big question is whether Microsoft will finally address the big hosted ERP question. As in, will Microsoft host ERP itself anytime in the near future? The company has gone back and forth on that one for some time.

Early returns from some partners converging on Houston. First, one longtime Microsoft partner was very gruntled (is that a word? If not it should be) about the company’s choice of venue. “How do you show your partners love? Drag them to Houston after the fourth of July weekend,” he said.

Here’s another unintended message: Flipping around the hotel TV, one channel has played nothing but a “Windows 98 is shutting down” splash screen for a day now. Things could be worse: It could be Vista.

It started when Microsoft challenged Lotus’ 1-2-3 spreadsheet dominance with the aforementioned Excel. Then it went after Lotus’ Notes email-and-collaboration success.

Since then much has changed: IBM bought Lotus for big money, for example, but the rivalry continued.

Microsoft took on Lotus Notes in mail-and-collaboration with Exchange Server. Then it switched strategy, deciding to enlist SharePoint its proxy warrior in collaboration, irritating partners that had been encouraged to write tools for Exchange. Anyone remember XSOs?Or Office Designer? Didn’t think so.

A common parlor game each January before Lotusphere was anticipating what Notes-to-Exchange migration tool would be announce that week.

Now IBM says that Quickr can uproot SharePoint in portals/collab. That’s a big statement given how SharePoint has spread like kudzu — largely because Sharepoint licenses are included in volume license agreements.

Anyway, with this Sharepoint-to-Quickr push, what’s old is new again. But somehow it seems desultory. The big question is whether, in this economy and with stressed IT budgets, anyone outside the vendors and their partner partisans care any more about these melees.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

Early test versions of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (previously known by the code name Centro) will be online Tuesday with a preview of Small Business Server 2008 to surface soon thereafter, said Joel Sider, senior product manger for the Windows Server Solutions Group.

Both products are due by year’s end.

The company also unveiled pricing for the mid-market bundle. Windows Essential Business Server Premium Edition (with Windows Server, Exchange Server, Forefront Security for Exchange, System Center Essentials management, Forefront Threat Management Gateway aka the new ISA Server) will list for $7,163 per server. All prices include five CALs. Additional CALs will list for $195 each.

The standard edition, which includes one less Windows Server license, will list for $5,472. ($81 per extra CAL.)

Microsoft has raised prices for Small Business Server.

The current SBS 2003 R2 Standard Edition lists for $599 and the premium edition was $1,299.  The new standard SKU will list for $1,089 with additional CALs $77 each. Premium is now $1,899 with each new CAL $189.

Sider said the price change reflects “additional value going into the server” and that per-CAL pricing has fallen. Before users had to buy a five-pack CAL license minimum for $489  but can now add CALs incrementally. “You can also buy a mix of premium and standard CALs –only buying CALs for the users needing to touch the premium servers. And, the CALs now extend to other servers on the network,” he noted.

As before SBS is for up to 75 users with a “sweet spot” of 10 to 50 users; EBS ranges up to 300 users.

As for another burning question surrounding the product family — that of naming conventions — Sider said there is no plan to change what some partners say is confusing branding.  Let it be noted here that “confusing” is a cleaned-up version of what some partners are calling the branding.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

Warning customers against posting personal data to the Web is one of the most important services VARs can provide.

Many in the business community are enamored of social networking sites and appear to feel that more is more when it comes to “sharing” their lives on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, insert-your-favorite-social-site here.

The problem with that is  cyber miscreants lurk just waiting to pounce on these nuggets. Something as innocuous-seeming as college affiliation, job history, names of family and friends can be used by social engineers to craft e-mail messages that will suck you in. That simple click will then unleash threats on your very own hard drive. Executables embedded in Word or Excel or PDF attachments will search your data to harvest -and secretly send out– passwords, account numbers, and other riches.

This online information trove is like a “playground for hackers,” says Yacov Wrocherinsky, CEO of Infinity Info Systems, a New York Sage Software and Microsoft partner specializing in business applications.

And for high-net-worth (ie. rich) executives who are  likely targets, it’s important that their wives, kids, friends also be careful about what personal details they divulge.

The beauty of LinkedIn is members can see who their associates know. “It’s great for making connections or for finding people if you’ve lost their business cards,” Wrocherinsky says. But that doesn’t mean you should bare any more than is absolutely necessary.

And on the less-business oriented of the social networking sites, say Facebook, people tend to put in way too much information-birthdays, anniversaries, travel plans, kids names, etc. All of that is gold for social engineers with evil intent.

George Brown, CEO of  Database Solutions, a Cherry Hill, N.J. solution provider tells his customers to keep their data zipped and not to post anything they are not required to do by law . As it is now with SEC filings for public companies, a lot of information about execs is already out there. No need to supplement that for the bad guys, Brown says.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techhtarget.com.