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Microsoft said it is readying two new online services, and one updated online service, for its Dynamics Enterprise Resource Planning package -- all to debut next year.The company also said that its ERP hosting business has more than doubled in the past year as it moves more of its software and services business into its emerging Azure services cloud.

It ended up being a somewhat different PDC conference than we had anticipated, and even to a certain extent, than we were led to believe. Maybe this was due in part to a little intentional misdirection to help generate surprise, but in the end, the big stories here in Los Angeles this week were more evolutionary than revolutionary.

On Oct. 28, 2008, Steven Sinofsky, then senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live, stood on stage at the Professional Developer's Conference to announce the first preview release of Windows 7, the operating system that would succeed the poorly received Windows Vista.

Microsoft Windows chief Steven Sinofsky took to the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2009 keynote stage on Wednesday morning to bask in the afterglow of Windows 7's successful launch and ask that developers create compelling new applications that build on Windows 7 technologies.

Microsoft's Bing search engine accounted for 9.9 percent of all web searches in the United States, up from 9.4 percent the previous month. However, most of that gain clearly came at the expense of Yahoo! since market leader Google also expanded its share, from 64.

Despite the fact that Microsoft recently posted its first declines in revenue and earnings in its history, stockholders today at the company's annual shareholder meeting appeared forgiving.None of the audience harangued the company for not doing better in the current economy, although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took a defensive stance on the company's performance anyway.

Much of the value proposition for Windows Azure -- the star of the show Tuesday at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles -- has been its ability to open up new business avenues for customers who had not been able to envision hosting high-intensity data center operations before.

The Day 2 keynote is actually still ongoing at the time I'm writing this -- it's run 20 minutes over schedule, and the SharePoint demos are still going on. But here's an assessment of the information we've received thus far today: First of all, the first news on Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft has unleashed the public beta of Microsoft Office 2010. The Office 2010 beta includes updated versions of Word, excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace, and Communicator. You can download it right now from the Microsoft Office 2010 beta site.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that SAP will be the preferred partner for customers buying its budgeting, planning and forecasting applications, a move that's clearly intended to send a message to Oracle.The deal represents an extension of the two software giants' existing and largely amicable relationship as well as their shared disdain for Oracle.

Windows 7 took the Professional Developer Conference stage this morning in the guise of Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows & Windows Live division. Sinofsky stood before the crowd of Microsoft developers as a victor. Last month, his team released Windows 7 nearly flawlessly and to generally positive reviews (PDC Day 2 live blog).

Microsoft opened the second day of its Professional Developer Conference 2009 with the announcement of Silverlight 4 and a progress update on Internet Explorer 9.But the presentation began with a look back. The opening keynote came from Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division of Microsoft.

Microsoft has extended the availability of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store to include Windows Mobile 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1 devices. The broader availability is a benefit for both users and developers, but it may not do much to help the Windows Mobile platform capture market share.

The reason Windows Vista seemed slow, and somehow, strangely seemed even slower over time, is now abundantly clear to Microsoft's architects: The evolution of computer hardware, particularly the CPU, exceeded anyone's expectations at the time of Vista's premiere in early 2007.