The final session I attended was Deploying & Scaling OCS Group Chat services.
In summary, MS have acquired a product which provides a chatroom facility (similar to IRC), but provides security (AD based) and logging. Whilst does require a separate server to run on than the OCS Messaging server, there is no additional application licensing required.
At present, it does require a separate client, but it does coexist niceley with the OCS client and there is plans to combine the two clients in future.
Some of the examples cited as potential benefit cases is project discussion rooms (because an archive of discussions is made) and global support teams, as members can come online and read the previous 18-24 hours discussions to see what issues/topics were discussed.
-------------------
This is my final blog post from TechEd 2008. See you in Berlin in November 2009!
Friday, November 7, 2008
TechEd 2008, Day 5, 14:45
I attended a session called "A case of the unexplained", presented by Mark Russinovich.
If you've worked with Windows at the technical level for more that a few years, you've probabaly heard of Mark. Or, if not, you've used software he's written. Anything from SysInternals, and much of the stuff in the Resource Kits, he's had a hand in it somewhere.
The session today was demonstrating how to diagnose performance problems, application crashes and the dreaded blue screen of death. There's a useful toolset from MS SysInternals which (when used correctly) can help you identify which software package, even down to which DLL, is causing problems and why.
It's heavy techy stuff, and not something we'd expect lower level analysts to do. It also takes a good deal of time and patience. But if a problem occurs often enough, or is critical enough, there are steps we can take.
If you've worked with Windows at the technical level for more that a few years, you've probabaly heard of Mark. Or, if not, you've used software he's written. Anything from SysInternals, and much of the stuff in the Resource Kits, he's had a hand in it somewhere.
The session today was demonstrating how to diagnose performance problems, application crashes and the dreaded blue screen of death. There's a useful toolset from MS SysInternals which (when used correctly) can help you identify which software package, even down to which DLL, is causing problems and why.
It's heavy techy stuff, and not something we'd expect lower level analysts to do. It also takes a good deal of time and patience. But if a problem occurs often enough, or is critical enough, there are steps we can take.
TechEd 2008, Day 5, 11:45
The session I just attended was called "Connecting your world". Whilst it was mainly aimed at consumer grade people, it demonstrated a lot of the new features in Windows Live and LiveMesh, such as mobile blogging and photo tagging, synchronising files via the cloud (to dekstops and Windows Mobile devices, etc.
They also showed some of the new photo gallery and manipulation tools that Microsoft Labs are producing. Photosynth is already in production, but they are intending to have photo stitching and High-Def stitching and viewing intergrated into Vista very soon. If you want to know more about these, I will no doubt be demoing them to the Mars Photography club very soon.
Final part was a demo of the new features in Virtual Earth, and World Wide telescope, which have both recently been upgraded. For VE, it's mainly US data that has upgraded.
They also showed some of the new photo gallery and manipulation tools that Microsoft Labs are producing. Photosynth is already in production, but they are intending to have photo stitching and High-Def stitching and viewing intergrated into Vista very soon. If you want to know more about these, I will no doubt be demoing them to the Mars Photography club very soon.
Final part was a demo of the new features in Virtual Earth, and World Wide telescope, which have both recently been upgraded. For VE, it's mainly US data that has upgraded.
TechEd, Day 5, 10:15
Just attended a session on Certificate Management in Exchange.
Not much to report - it was predominantly about SSL certificates when publishing Outlook Web Access or Exchange RPC-over-HTTPS. Having our own certificate authority certainly makes it easier!
Not much to report - it was predominantly about SSL certificates when publishing Outlook Web Access or Exchange RPC-over-HTTPS. Having our own certificate authority certainly makes it easier!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Microsoft TechEd, Day 4, 18:00
Head's starting to spin a little, but I just attended a session called "21st Century Networking: Time to throw out your medieval gateways"
It's an interesting take on the state of network design, and starts off by telling us what we know is true, deep down, but never tell anyone: Network Firewalls are useless.
Because so much traffic tunnels over other ports, or random ports, or malicious code comes in via valid network ports, having a port based firewall is not going to stop stuff getting in or out.
And, nowadays, the operating system itself is reasonably secure. Attacks are coming in via applications and running services, rather than against the OS.
The solution to this is, basically, to retreat: The network, even an internal LAN, chould be considered a hostile place. Get use to it anyway, because IPv6 addresses are globally routable and tunnellable too.
So, to mitigate this, Microsoft recommend dividing client machines into to groups. Manage and Unmanaged.
Unmanaged clients are the PCs/devices beyond the control of the company. Home users, Internet cafes - ones not in the domain. To mitigate against risks from these, using two-factor authentication (Smart cards were the recommended one) and have the user access the corporate servers via MS's Internet Application Gateway software. This gets installed on the application server, and provides an application level firewall which can be modified based on the user's permissions. So, for example, if a user accesses a web page and there's data on the server that the user is not authorised to access, then the gateway filters out that information from the server's responses before allowing the server to client traffic.
Managed clients should have their own local firewall on by default, protecting that client from outside-in access. They should have an X.509 certificates and extensive IPSec policies delivered via Group Policy. Basically, the IPsec policy should contain the IPv6 address of every host in the corporate network (updated by GP every time they boot up), plus the IPv6 address of the corporate DNS server.
Using this method, the client can boot up anywhere in the world, in the company or from home. When the user tries to access a server, the corporate DNS server (which is public facing) provides the IP address. The IPSec policy then kicks in, requiring an encrypted tunnel between the client (using its own X.509 certificate, provided by the domain controller when the client machine joined the domain) and the server it is accessing (which has a certificate signed by the domain controller).
Totally invisible to the end user, and no VPN required at all, and protected against man-in-the-middle-attacks.
The servers, meanwhile, are hardened to only accept traffic coming from clients that are encrypted via IPSec, using valid certificate signed by the domain controller. Therefore, only pre-authorised clients can access them, but from anywhere in the world and with no LAN level firewall required.
As the speaker said: Implimenting this is 99% possible now with Windows software (the only piece missing to de-tunnel tunneled IPv6-over-IPv4 connections, which you can do on Linux but Windows won't have that until early next year).
What is significantly hard to do, is to convince bosses that you don't need a firewall anymore.
It's an interesting take on the state of network design, and starts off by telling us what we know is true, deep down, but never tell anyone: Network Firewalls are useless.
Because so much traffic tunnels over other ports, or random ports, or malicious code comes in via valid network ports, having a port based firewall is not going to stop stuff getting in or out.
And, nowadays, the operating system itself is reasonably secure. Attacks are coming in via applications and running services, rather than against the OS.
The solution to this is, basically, to retreat: The network, even an internal LAN, chould be considered a hostile place. Get use to it anyway, because IPv6 addresses are globally routable and tunnellable too.
So, to mitigate this, Microsoft recommend dividing client machines into to groups. Manage and Unmanaged.
Unmanaged clients are the PCs/devices beyond the control of the company. Home users, Internet cafes - ones not in the domain. To mitigate against risks from these, using two-factor authentication (Smart cards were the recommended one) and have the user access the corporate servers via MS's Internet Application Gateway software. This gets installed on the application server, and provides an application level firewall which can be modified based on the user's permissions. So, for example, if a user accesses a web page and there's data on the server that the user is not authorised to access, then the gateway filters out that information from the server's responses before allowing the server to client traffic.
Managed clients should have their own local firewall on by default, protecting that client from outside-in access. They should have an X.509 certificates and extensive IPSec policies delivered via Group Policy. Basically, the IPsec policy should contain the IPv6 address of every host in the corporate network (updated by GP every time they boot up), plus the IPv6 address of the corporate DNS server.
Using this method, the client can boot up anywhere in the world, in the company or from home. When the user tries to access a server, the corporate DNS server (which is public facing) provides the IP address. The IPSec policy then kicks in, requiring an encrypted tunnel between the client (using its own X.509 certificate, provided by the domain controller when the client machine joined the domain) and the server it is accessing (which has a certificate signed by the domain controller).
Totally invisible to the end user, and no VPN required at all, and protected against man-in-the-middle-attacks.
The servers, meanwhile, are hardened to only accept traffic coming from clients that are encrypted via IPSec, using valid certificate signed by the domain controller. Therefore, only pre-authorised clients can access them, but from anywhere in the world and with no LAN level firewall required.
As the speaker said: Implimenting this is 99% possible now with Windows software (the only piece missing to de-tunnel tunneled IPv6-over-IPv4 connections, which you can do on Linux but Windows won't have that until early next year).
What is significantly hard to do, is to convince bosses that you don't need a firewall anymore.
TechEd 2008, Day 4 14:00
I attended a session on "Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging Component description and overview".
You'd be forgiven for think this was a dry and boring topic because... it was. That was 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
You'd be forgiven for think this was a dry and boring topic because... it was. That was 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 4, 11:30
My first session for today was on Co-existence and Migration with Exchange Online.
Most of the session was about provisioning new users and migration from local Exchange. As far as Domino migration goes, there are 3 main strategies:
1) Use IMAP, and only migrate mail - no calendars or contacts
2) Migrate from Domino to Exchange locally first (on a staging server), then migrate up to Online. The speaker cited a US company that did this with 1,000 users in one weekend. Friday night they did the migration from Domino to Exchange, then on the Saturday pushed them up to Online. On the Monday, the majority of users used Outlook Web Access while they did client deployments.
3) Partner with a 3rd party vendor. Apparently, our good friends at Quest are about to release a toolset to migrate from Domino directly to Exchange online.
Most of the session was about provisioning new users and migration from local Exchange. As far as Domino migration goes, there are 3 main strategies:
1) Use IMAP, and only migrate mail - no calendars or contacts
2) Migrate from Domino to Exchange locally first (on a staging server), then migrate up to Online. The speaker cited a US company that did this with 1,000 users in one weekend. Friday night they did the migration from Domino to Exchange, then on the Saturday pushed them up to Online. On the Monday, the majority of users used Outlook Web Access while they did client deployments.
3) Partner with a 3rd party vendor. Apparently, our good friends at Quest are about to release a toolset to migrate from Domino directly to Exchange online.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 3, 18:45
The final session of today was a security based one with Jesper Johansson. If you ever get a chance to attend on of his sessions, it's well worth your time.
The main points of the talk was that the nature of security threats has changed in a number of ways. There is a vast reduction of the "hobbiest" or "vanity" hacker, replaced with hackers that are motivated by soley by money. This means that attacks are become more closely targeted, and less likely to draw attention.
The other effect of this is that attackers, spammers, etc. are business people - and they are prepared to go on the attack if their business model is threatened. This is what happened with Blue Security, a service which tracked spammers back to their source to see who authorised the spam and/or sold the product. The spammers not only performed a denial of service attack against Blue Security, but by using their own message tracking, they were able to determine which companies were using Blue's services, and attacked them in retribution, diving Blue out of business.
In addition, attacks are increasingly targeting the human element rather than technological attacks, encouraging the user to download software (Java apps, ActiveX, Flash, etc.) rather than directly breaking the operating system to implant malware.
The only solution to this is to educate users better (not more, but better) about how they can take responsibility for their own security, rather than relying on "someone else" to do it for them.
That's it for blogging today. I'm off to the Microsoft UK cocktail party, followed by the 1E drinks at a bar down the road. (As I'm representing Mat to them, I'll be sure to drink wine)
But, if I don't blog anything until about midday tomorrow, you'll know that it was a good night.
The main points of the talk was that the nature of security threats has changed in a number of ways. There is a vast reduction of the "hobbiest" or "vanity" hacker, replaced with hackers that are motivated by soley by money. This means that attacks are become more closely targeted, and less likely to draw attention.
The other effect of this is that attackers, spammers, etc. are business people - and they are prepared to go on the attack if their business model is threatened. This is what happened with Blue Security, a service which tracked spammers back to their source to see who authorised the spam and/or sold the product. The spammers not only performed a denial of service attack against Blue Security, but by using their own message tracking, they were able to determine which companies were using Blue's services, and attacked them in retribution, diving Blue out of business.
In addition, attacks are increasingly targeting the human element rather than technological attacks, encouraging the user to download software (Java apps, ActiveX, Flash, etc.) rather than directly breaking the operating system to implant malware.
The only solution to this is to educate users better (not more, but better) about how they can take responsibility for their own security, rather than relying on "someone else" to do it for them.
That's it for blogging today. I'm off to the Microsoft UK cocktail party, followed by the 1E drinks at a bar down the road. (As I'm representing Mat to them, I'll be sure to drink wine)
But, if I don't blog anything until about midday tomorrow, you'll know that it was a good night.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 3, 16:45
Just stepped out of a session on integrating OCS 2007 with IP PABX systems. The demo was fairly limited (people build entire careers out of this stuff - how much can you do in 90 minutes?) but was demonstrating linking Cisco Call Manager to an OCS Mediation server.
Nice stuff, and given that OCS 2007 Release 2 supports dial-in conferencing too, deploying OCS could potentially provide all the services Mars conferencing, video conferencing and voicemail too.
One of the suggestions floated was that for companies which already have a heavy investment in a PABX, you can replicate the environment and have a secondary dial plan with a prefix. So, for example:
I have extension 1151. If someone from a "standard desk phone" (or an external caller) were to call that number, it would ring on my desk. If they were to call 1151 from an OCS client, it would ring on OCS.
But... if they rang "91151" from a desk phone, it would bridge to the OCS client. When I go home at night, or travel OCB, I can forward my desk phone to "91151" and have the calls follow me.
Also note that, now Windows Server 2008 R2 supports microphones/inbound audio over a terminal services link, it would be possible to publish OCS as a server based application and have voice capability.
Nice stuff, and given that OCS 2007 Release 2 supports dial-in conferencing too, deploying OCS could potentially provide all the services Mars conferencing, video conferencing and voicemail too.
One of the suggestions floated was that for companies which already have a heavy investment in a PABX, you can replicate the environment and have a secondary dial plan with a prefix. So, for example:
I have extension 1151. If someone from a "standard desk phone" (or an external caller) were to call that number, it would ring on my desk. If they were to call 1151 from an OCS client, it would ring on OCS.
But... if they rang "91151" from a desk phone, it would bridge to the OCS client. When I go home at night, or travel OCB, I can forward my desk phone to "91151" and have the calls follow me.
Also note that, now Windows Server 2008 R2 supports microphones/inbound audio over a terminal services link, it would be possible to publish OCS as a server based application and have voice capability.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 3, 14:45
Just come out of a session on Desktop Virtualisation Scenarios. Quite interesting, and a lot of it relates to the work that Stan is interested in regarding SDS roaming and things like that.
A few key points were:
A few key points were:
- They discussed again about drive encryption, both for laptops AND desktops - for desktops mainly because it mitigates the risk of harware being stolen or improperly disposed at end of life.
- Application virtualisation (via Microsoft's App-V - foremerly Softgrid) got a big push - particularly because it makes provisioning and re-imaging machines much faster. Only the thin OS needs to be pushed out, and the user can pull down just the applications they need as they use it.
- Offline folders has been revamped a bit in Vista, to imporve the speed (I'd presume it might need SMB v2 as well). The key thing was using Offline folders in conjuction with App-V can help in two scenarios:
a) Laptop users, can work offline or online transparently, but the data files are automatically sync'd to the server where they can be backed up. Using BitLocker to encrypt the drive mitigates the damage if the laptop is lost or stolen, but the data is backed up properly too with no end user action required, and is pushed down automatically to the replacement machine when they log in. (In this respect, offline folders might be a better solution than Sharepoint for H: drives)
b) A user can roam between a desktop, laptop and Terminal Services session / VDI desktop freely, and have all their applicationms and data files follow them transparently. - Microsoft have a product called "Windows Fundementals for Legacy PCs", which is a scaled down version of XP Embedded which provides a basic UI, Internet Explorer and TS Client - just enough to get to a terminal services session or VDI desktop. They demonstrated it using a 9 year old laptop with 128Mb providing a full Vista desktop.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 3, 12:15
My brain is officially full. Lots of information from the Q&A session on Migrating Domino and Groupwise to Exchange. Not much on Groupwise, so fortunately most of the discussions were about Domino.
Firstly, the Microsoft Application Analysis tool is now depreciated, because the results were not always accurate and didn't provide good information. So, it's been dropped from the Transport Suite and there's no plans to re-release it. MS recommends partnering with BinaryTree or Quest, whom have better tool sets.
The Transport Suite 2007 is apparently more reliable that Exchange Connector 2003. The way they got that improvement was by dropping API based mail transport and using SMTP to transport the mail! :-)
There are still a lot of issues for long term co-existence. One specific one which causes problems is by having a recurring appointment with attendees from both sides of the connectors. Both sides will receive and process the message OK, but if the meeting owner updates the meeting, those changes won't flow across properly. (Apparently, the BinaryTree toolset has a fix for this issue too - MS doesn't)
There's a lot of other issues which are in the presentation slides. Most of them are noted, but not fixed. Because of the problems, the trend nowdays is to migrate as quickly as possible - usually by moving the user across with an empty, or only one week's historical mail, then migrating the rest of the data soon after.
There are a lot of gotchas as far as migration goes and consolidation. Too many to mention here, but don't forget to ask me about them when I get back.
Firstly, the Microsoft Application Analysis tool is now depreciated, because the results were not always accurate and didn't provide good information. So, it's been dropped from the Transport Suite and there's no plans to re-release it. MS recommends partnering with BinaryTree or Quest, whom have better tool sets.
The Transport Suite 2007 is apparently more reliable that Exchange Connector 2003. The way they got that improvement was by dropping API based mail transport and using SMTP to transport the mail! :-)
There are still a lot of issues for long term co-existence. One specific one which causes problems is by having a recurring appointment with attendees from both sides of the connectors. Both sides will receive and process the message OK, but if the meeting owner updates the meeting, those changes won't flow across properly. (Apparently, the BinaryTree toolset has a fix for this issue too - MS doesn't)
There's a lot of other issues which are in the presentation slides. Most of them are noted, but not fixed. Because of the problems, the trend nowdays is to migrate as quickly as possible - usually by moving the user across with an empty, or only one week's historical mail, then migrating the rest of the data soon after.
There are a lot of gotchas as far as migration goes and consolidation. Too many to mention here, but don't forget to ask me about them when I get back.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 3, 10:00
The first session of the day was Deploying and Migrating OCS Server 2007 Release 2.
There's a few feature changes between 2007 and Release 2 - which is in Release Candidate at the moment but due out in February - such as dial-in audio conferencing to an OCS voice chat, better Windows Mobile and Blackberry integration and such. More details here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2PR.mspx
However, the architecture changes to support this mean that, like Exchange 2007, it requires 64 bit Windows under the hood. It also requires AD schema changes.
There's a few feature changes between 2007 and Release 2 - which is in Release Candidate at the moment but due out in February - such as dial-in audio conferencing to an OCS voice chat, better Windows Mobile and Blackberry integration and such. More details here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2PR.mspx
However, the architecture changes to support this mean that, like Exchange 2007, it requires 64 bit Windows under the hood. It also requires AD schema changes.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 2, 18:00
Final session of the day was on "Upgrading to Exchange 2007". Sadly, it was primarily about upgrading FROM Exchange 2003, but it did raise a couple of significant tid bits worth knowing.
Firstly, Exchange 2007 apparently doesn't have any mail routing configuration - it uses the Active Directory Sites and Servers configuration to determine which site is which, and follows the same replication topology that AD uses. This means that we'll need to consider this when designing the AD structure, and also lock down the topology against changes. If we went down the Exchange path, routing and replication changes would need stricter change controls involving both teams.
Secondly, Exchange cluster/failover changes require having the same operating system on both halves of the cluster. And, in-place upgrades of the OS are NOT supported for Exchange 2007 servers. In practical terms, this would mean that a ceentralised Exchange cluster built on Windows 2003 servers would have a lot of challenges when the time came to upgrade to OS to Server 2008. We'd basically need to build a new cluster, set up connectors and migrate the mailboxes individually. The user mailbox would be unavailable during the move.
So, to defer the pain, it would be easiest to deploy onto Windows 2008 servers, so we'd want a WST supported 2008 build first.
Firstly, Exchange 2007 apparently doesn't have any mail routing configuration - it uses the Active Directory Sites and Servers configuration to determine which site is which, and follows the same replication topology that AD uses. This means that we'll need to consider this when designing the AD structure, and also lock down the topology against changes. If we went down the Exchange path, routing and replication changes would need stricter change controls involving both teams.
Secondly, Exchange cluster/failover changes require having the same operating system on both halves of the cluster. And, in-place upgrades of the OS are NOT supported for Exchange 2007 servers. In practical terms, this would mean that a ceentralised Exchange cluster built on Windows 2003 servers would have a lot of challenges when the time came to upgrade to OS to Server 2008. We'd basically need to build a new cluster, set up connectors and migrate the mailboxes individually. The user mailbox would be unavailable during the move.
So, to defer the pain, it would be easiest to deploy onto Windows 2008 servers, so we'd want a WST supported 2008 build first.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 2, 15:30
Attended a session with Steve Riley, Senior Security Strategist with Microsoft Security. The session we called "Privacy: Who, What, Where?"
Most of the content covered was general in nature, and more covered risks associates with spyware, RFID chips, security breaches and such. The key message was that, in general, customers to a company don't seemed to be aware or concerned about information disclosure. As such, there is currently not much economic incentive for companies to take privacy and data security seriously. Often, it's cheaper to take the risk and pay government imposed fines rather than do the right thing.
Bitlocker, of course, rated a mention. Steve did say that now BDE supports additional fixed disks and removeable drives (as of Windows 7) that there is little benefit in using both BitLocker and Windows Encrypted File System - both mitigate against the same risks. Neither, though, will protect against documents being e-mailed or taken off a system using unencrypted devices.
One of the technologies to look at would be Windows Rights Management Server. Having a policy enforced by RMS would help manage the risk of a document "escaping" the network (or CTM.)
Most of the content covered was general in nature, and more covered risks associates with spyware, RFID chips, security breaches and such. The key message was that, in general, customers to a company don't seemed to be aware or concerned about information disclosure. As such, there is currently not much economic incentive for companies to take privacy and data security seriously. Often, it's cheaper to take the risk and pay government imposed fines rather than do the right thing.
Bitlocker, of course, rated a mention. Steve did say that now BDE supports additional fixed disks and removeable drives (as of Windows 7) that there is little benefit in using both BitLocker and Windows Encrypted File System - both mitigate against the same risks. Neither, though, will protect against documents being e-mailed or taken off a system using unencrypted devices.
One of the technologies to look at would be Windows Rights Management Server. Having a policy enforced by RMS would help manage the risk of a document "escaping" the network (or CTM.)
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 2, 12:30
The last session was on Exchange 2007 troubleshooting. Most of it was too techy to blog here, and primarily of interest only if we move to Exchange.
But they also covered off the general troubleshooting fundementals, these being (and I'm paraphrasing here):
Know your stuff;
Have a baseline, and proactively monitor systems to check for changes;
Think of the implications before you make a change.
We all know these things, but it's still good to be reminded occasionally.
Oh, and the other thing is that most of Exchange 2007 - and Windows 7 - advanced administration involved scripting in PowerShell. So, it's time to learn yet another scripting language!
But they also covered off the general troubleshooting fundementals, these being (and I'm paraphrasing here):
Know your stuff;
Have a baseline, and proactively monitor systems to check for changes;
Think of the implications before you make a change.
We all know these things, but it's still good to be reminded occasionally.
Oh, and the other thing is that most of Exchange 2007 - and Windows 7 - advanced administration involved scripting in PowerShell. So, it's time to learn yet another scripting language!
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 2, 10:15
First session was about Windows 7. A few new things, but evolutionary not revolutionary (tick that one off!)
One key technology is "DirectAccess" - need to get more information about this but apparently this, when used in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 R2, will allow seamless and secure access to corporate networks without needing a VPN. I have my doubts on what their definition of "secure" is, but will research further while I'm here.
Bitlocker encryption is being extended to removable disks/USB drives, and can be enforced by group policy - you can prevent a user writing to a USB device unless it's BitLocker protected. Someone should tell the UK Government this. Another advantage, of course, is that recovery keys can be backed up to Active Directory for easy recovery in the event of a forgotten password.
They've also made the Application controls (allowing only whitelisted applications) more flexible, - still could be a nightmare to implement first time, but would help prevent users from self-installing apps down the track.
One key technology is "DirectAccess" - need to get more information about this but apparently this, when used in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 R2, will allow seamless and secure access to corporate networks without needing a VPN. I have my doubts on what their definition of "secure" is, but will research further while I'm here.
Bitlocker encryption is being extended to removable disks/USB drives, and can be enforced by group policy - you can prevent a user writing to a USB device unless it's BitLocker protected. Someone should tell the UK Government this. Another advantage, of course, is that recovery keys can be backed up to Active Directory for easy recovery in the event of a forgotten password.
They've also made the Application controls (allowing only whitelisted applications) more flexible, - still could be a nightmare to implement first time, but would help prevent users from self-installing apps down the track.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 19:00
Session MGT327 - System Centre and the Desktop
This session revolved around desktop management using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. There wasn't much new information here - new for me, but most of it is information Mat already got from 1E
There were a few interesting tid-bits to watch out for, though. They cited a survey that said users generally only report 10% of application or workstation crashes to the helpdesk, of which only half of those (if that) ever get escalated past first level.
One of the features they're promoting is having the Dr Watson / Windows Error reporting subsystem upload crash reports to a Windows Sahre, where Operations Manager can analyse and report on them. This allows better visibility as to where there may be faulty hardware or a buggy device driver, which can be prioritised for repair or escalated to the vendor.
They spoke a great deal about the system installers and software distribution too, and driver management has been given a lot of attention, both in system upgrades and slipstreaming them into new installs.
Application distribution now supports multicasting, which may make NMC happier. You can also schedule a maintenance period (on a user/group or site level), to better manage application distribution and patching. Wake on LAN is also supported, so updates can be downloaded to desktop machines overnight.
There's also a bit of work done with Intel's vPro chipset, which can allow SCOM to do remote hardware inventory while a machine is powered down. Even to the point of changing BIOS settings or even re-flashing the BIOS.
Other conference notes:
1) There are discounts on Microsoft Press books - 30% off, with an additional 5% if you buy 3 or more. So, if there's anything you want me to get, let me know.
2) I've noticed a reasonable number of people using netbooks here, predominantly the Asus EeePCs but a few others. I suppose it makes a lot of sense, given that they're light weight and have good battery life.
This session revolved around desktop management using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. There wasn't much new information here - new for me, but most of it is information Mat already got from 1E
There were a few interesting tid-bits to watch out for, though. They cited a survey that said users generally only report 10% of application or workstation crashes to the helpdesk, of which only half of those (if that) ever get escalated past first level.
One of the features they're promoting is having the Dr Watson / Windows Error reporting subsystem upload crash reports to a Windows Sahre, where Operations Manager can analyse and report on them. This allows better visibility as to where there may be faulty hardware or a buggy device driver, which can be prioritised for repair or escalated to the vendor.
They spoke a great deal about the system installers and software distribution too, and driver management has been given a lot of attention, both in system upgrades and slipstreaming them into new installs.
Application distribution now supports multicasting, which may make NMC happier. You can also schedule a maintenance period (on a user/group or site level), to better manage application distribution and patching. Wake on LAN is also supported, so updates can be downloaded to desktop machines overnight.
There's also a bit of work done with Intel's vPro chipset, which can allow SCOM to do remote hardware inventory while a machine is powered down. Even to the point of changing BIOS settings or even re-flashing the BIOS.
Other conference notes:
1) There are discounts on Microsoft Press books - 30% off, with an additional 5% if you buy 3 or more. So, if there's anything you want me to get, let me know.
2) I've noticed a reasonable number of people using netbooks here, predominantly the Asus EeePCs but a few others. I suppose it makes a lot of sense, given that they're light weight and have good battery life.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 17:30
Attended session UNC205 - Exchange Online Administration and Management, which was basically an overview of the user management for Exchange online.
Interesting stuff, though how scalable the website is to a large company is not clear. One thing that did come across yet again is that everything is Active Directory centric, and to use any of MS's cloud offerings requires allowing them to store an AD replica on their systems.
On the plus side, they do have a single sign-on tool that works with (an auto-configures) Outlook, Live Messenger and Sharepoint.
Oh, and I had a chocloate donut during the break. Is that too much detail? Karoona said that communication is really important....
Interesting stuff, though how scalable the website is to a large company is not clear. One thing that did come across yet again is that everything is Active Directory centric, and to use any of MS's cloud offerings requires allowing them to store an AD replica on their systems.
On the plus side, they do have a single sign-on tool that works with (an auto-configures) Outlook, Live Messenger and Sharepoint.
Oh, and I had a chocloate donut during the break. Is that too much detail? Karoona said that communication is really important....
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 15:30 - Keynote speech by Brad Anderson
The keynote focussed on a number of areas, but the major ones were virtualisation, Operations Manager and cloud services.
They made quite a big deal about the HyperV and Live Migration - mentions of VMware were noticeably absent from that part of the speech! Basically, there's not much in that space that we don't have already.
Upcoming, however was application virtualisation which did raise one or two interesting ideas. EUT (well, Mike) is already looking a little at virtualised applications for deployment purposes, but one of the ideas mentioned for forthcoming technology is to run virtualised server applications. The idea is that you can hot-migrate an running application from Windows server to Windows server, between physical and virtual. Key point there is that you could migrate the application off, patch and/or reboot the server operating system, then migrate back, which might have interesting implications for server uptimes and SLAs.
Operations Manager Virtual Machine Manager was the next major topic - VMware did rate a mention here, mainly because it can manage both VMware and MS environments, and can manage physical and virtual hosts, something that VirtualCenter can't do. It can also drill down to applications and services (primarily web services), and report availability across multiple servers too. Given the renewed push for Service catalog and application SLAs, this could be a useful reporting tool. But, naturally, you need to put in the runt work to model the applications and dependencies first!
Cloud Services was the final major thing - going forward, MS is developing all their services such that they can be run locally or in the cloud (Microsoft's Cloud!), and migrated between. One of the demos they did showed moving 5 user mailboxes from Exchange running locally to Exchange Online - including content - with no end user reconfiguration or intervention. Naturally, they didn't talk about security or firewall ports required, but I'm sure the info is available somewhere.
Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 11:00
So far, so good.
Conference registration went smoothly and, yes, I did get a T-Shirt.
If you're reading this then the conference WiFi network is working. Blogging from my mobile today as there aren't many sessions and I wasn't sure what laptop charging facilities there were. (Not many, and most in use. Note to self - get extended run battery pack before next conference!)
Conference coffee is tolerable, but not great.
The keynote session is at 14:00 from Brad Anderson of MS' services division. I'll write more after that.
Friday, September 26, 2008
What next ?
My bag's heavy with IBM business cards. I must say it felt a bit weird having to write my name & email address on the back of people's own business cards every time they asked for my non-existent business card but hey, at least I don't have to carry my business cards around. Hmm.
The best thing about the conference was probably the networking piece. We now know some people perfect to help with our strategy work and over the next few weeks we'll be leveraging those contacts to progress our visioning/design/... In fact, following some of the one-to-one discussions we had during LoLA about where we are in our strategy definition work, IBM seem also very keen on giving us their best to make sure we don't become people-ready.
Overall, lots to look forward to in terms of working with IBM over the next few months. I will be setting up a "room" in Bluehouse to facilitate discussions with the relevant people in IBM - should be a fire test for their newest cross-organisational collaboration flagship : )
Next RDV @ Lotus Sphere 2009 !
The best thing about the conference was probably the networking piece. We now know some people perfect to help with our strategy work and over the next few weeks we'll be leveraging those contacts to progress our visioning/design/... In fact, following some of the one-to-one discussions we had during LoLA about where we are in our strategy definition work, IBM seem also very keen on giving us their best to make sure we don't become people-ready.
Overall, lots to look forward to in terms of working with IBM over the next few months. I will be setting up a "room" in Bluehouse to facilitate discussions with the relevant people in IBM - should be a fire test for their newest cross-organisational collaboration flagship : )
Next RDV @ Lotus Sphere 2009 !
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sneak Peek @ Notes 8.5 client
It (unsurprisingly) looks very much like Notes 8 but the developers have thrown in a couple of extra features. What I really liked was :
o Widgets in the client - Connections, QuickR, Sametime, etc. all accessible via the Notes client (not new, I know) but the way a user can seamlessly slide into the next collaboration tool with a simple click was quite impressive.
o The To Do's - you can in Notes 8.5, when writing up a mail, create a table of tasks allocated to people. When the mail is sent out, those tasks get separately sent as To Do's to the allocated people's mailboxes. I see in my crystal ball major uptake of this functionality in meeting-crazy Mars.
o Also cool is the ability to drag and drop emails from the mailbox to the To Do's list or even funkier, to the Calendar! And that, abracadabra, creates a meeting for you with the subject line <-- subject line of email, invitees <-- To's and cc's of email. Don't you love it.
It's funny though how much similar Notes 8 and Outlook look, and apparently it's not even by design ; )
o Widgets in the client - Connections, QuickR, Sametime, etc. all accessible via the Notes client (not new, I know) but the way a user can seamlessly slide into the next collaboration tool with a simple click was quite impressive.
o The To Do's - you can in Notes 8.5, when writing up a mail, create a table of tasks allocated to people. When the mail is sent out, those tasks get separately sent as To Do's to the allocated people's mailboxes. I see in my crystal ball major uptake of this functionality in meeting-crazy Mars.
o Also cool is the ability to drag and drop emails from the mailbox to the To Do's list or even funkier, to the Calendar! And that, abracadabra, creates a meeting for you with the subject line <-- subject line of email, invitees <-- To's and cc's of email. Don't you love it.
It's funny though how much similar Notes 8 and Outlook look, and apparently it's not even by design ; )
QuickR Next & Enterprise Content Management
Not much to blog here as Brian's already done it, but some work definitely coming up around Document Collaboration with QuickR hooked to an ECM. At the moment I don't think we have any widely used ECM in Mars (except our very own versions of it, H & S drives, which Mat is busy plotting to get rid of asap), so this will likely be a comprehensive piece of work. Perhaps a Proof of Concept which we can also aim at attempting a change in user behaviour as far as sharing is concerned?
Domino & Notes : Business Benefits
Two of the best sessions I attended was Parts I and II of an IBM marketing stint by the Notes/Domino (Microsoft Inquisition) sales team.
They talked about IBM market shares, industry predictions/stats (interesting to note btw that IBM are nearly suing Gartner because of a couple of "wrong" reports Gartner published quite widely). Some facts :
o Based on industry data, the TCO difference per user between a Domino and an Exchange shop is less than 60 cents (Domino @ $153.16, Exchange $153.70).
o Average cost of migration per user is $300.
o The cost of migration of applications from Domino onto a non-Domino platform, for a 2500 applications environment of average complexity, is about $6 000 000.
IBM are now also doing Notes applications migration cost analyses (the like EMC have recently done for us) with obviously the aim of convincing existing customers of the lack of value there is in the migration.
IBM can also help provide the ammunition required by their "allies" - ie. strategists - in their customer communities to help gain buy-in for Domino at decision-making levels in the company. This is one offer I will be happily taking advantage of over the next 4-6 weeks! If not the content, the approach I'm sure will help : )
Overall, the team seemed geared up to pull off some extreme IBM marketing over the next few months and will be doing anything short of dropping pink flyers from helicopters to make sure the world out there knows that Notes 8 is beautiful, Symphony beyond Office and Sametime Embedded a "first class citizen" :D
They talked about IBM market shares, industry predictions/stats (interesting to note btw that IBM are nearly suing Gartner because of a couple of "wrong" reports Gartner published quite widely). Some facts :
o Based on industry data, the TCO difference per user between a Domino and an Exchange shop is less than 60 cents (Domino @ $153.16, Exchange $153.70).
o Average cost of migration per user is $300.
o The cost of migration of applications from Domino onto a non-Domino platform, for a 2500 applications environment of average complexity, is about $6 000 000.
IBM are now also doing Notes applications migration cost analyses (the like EMC have recently done for us) with obviously the aim of convincing existing customers of the lack of value there is in the migration.
IBM can also help provide the ammunition required by their "allies" - ie. strategists - in their customer communities to help gain buy-in for Domino at decision-making levels in the company. This is one offer I will be happily taking advantage of over the next 4-6 weeks! If not the content, the approach I'm sure will help : )
Overall, the team seemed geared up to pull off some extreme IBM marketing over the next few months and will be doing anything short of dropping pink flyers from helicopters to make sure the world out there knows that Notes 8 is beautiful, Symphony beyond Office and Sametime Embedded a "first class citizen" :D
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Quickr Next
The last session on Tuesday was a demo/feedback session for some provisional new features of Quickr. The single most interesting new feature is the "Personal Place" - think of it as a web based replacement of the trusty H: drive. It also enables seamless transfer of documents into team spaces, and from there into enterprise content management systems.
The connector for windows file explorer allows familiar access to the documents, but the true power is the ability for users to work on any of those documents with others, including full versiong and editing control.
It will be interesting to see how the MS products compare...
The connector for windows file explorer allows familiar access to the documents, but the true power is the ability for users to work on any of those documents with others, including full versiong and editing control.
It will be interesting to see how the MS products compare...
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
SameTime Unified Telephony (SUT)
It's been a year since I last looked at SUT, and it's moved on leaps and bounds since then (it's actually a product rather than flash mock-ups!)
For those that don't know, SUT is the main Lotus play for the telephony integration which sits on top of SameTime, the Lotus Unified Communications platform.
The main idea behind SUT is that the user controls how they want to be contacted (Softphone, Deskphone, Cellphone, Voicemail etc) along with 'rules' for how to route their calls depending on things like their online status, location, time of day etc. What this means in practice is that you don't need to 'guess' where the person is or worry about calling them at an inconvenient time. It's all integrated right into the SameTime client, which then includes additional rich presence (i.e. it shows you whether I am currently on a call)
The product is now up and running, and while there are still some issues to work out with the network vendors around billing and call control, the product direction is now very focussed and it's looking really slick. It is clearly targetted purely at large enterprises, and I'll be talking with Steve next week to see how we can lay our hands on some early kit!
For those that don't know, SUT is the main Lotus play for the telephony integration which sits on top of SameTime, the Lotus Unified Communications platform.
The main idea behind SUT is that the user controls how they want to be contacted (Softphone, Deskphone, Cellphone, Voicemail etc) along with 'rules' for how to route their calls depending on things like their online status, location, time of day etc. What this means in practice is that you don't need to 'guess' where the person is or worry about calling them at an inconvenient time. It's all integrated right into the SameTime client, which then includes additional rich presence (i.e. it shows you whether I am currently on a call)
The product is now up and running, and while there are still some issues to work out with the network vendors around billing and call control, the product direction is now very focussed and it's looking really slick. It is clearly targetted purely at large enterprises, and I'll be talking with Steve next week to see how we can lay our hands on some early kit!
Productivity Tools for the Mobile Worker
A more detailed look today at some of the new/improved products in the mobility area.
The two most interesting products are Lotus Traveller - version 8.5 adds a lot more security features such as device wiping and device security compliance checking/enforcing, and Lotus Mobile Connect, which effectively is a native client-less VPN gateway for Lotus Notes - this is the product that enables the Ultra-Lite iNotes that is optimised for the iPhone.
What is really handy is that the products can operate in a 'proxy mode' within the DMZ (similar to our BES environment), and only the gateway servers need to be at the new version of Notes (8.5). This solution also handily delivers email to internet based users, which I vaguely recall was of interest to some of our users...
The backend email servers need to be at least up to 7.02
Finally, the last item worthy of note is the IBM Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (you've got to love those snappy product names), which is a bolt-on product to websphere which automatically adjusts the website to best fit your mobile device. Check out the IBM home site from different devices to see how/whether it works!
The two most interesting products are Lotus Traveller - version 8.5 adds a lot more security features such as device wiping and device security compliance checking/enforcing, and Lotus Mobile Connect, which effectively is a native client-less VPN gateway for Lotus Notes - this is the product that enables the Ultra-Lite iNotes that is optimised for the iPhone.
What is really handy is that the products can operate in a 'proxy mode' within the DMZ (similar to our BES environment), and only the gateway servers need to be at the new version of Notes (8.5). This solution also handily delivers email to internet based users, which I vaguely recall was of interest to some of our users...
The backend email servers need to be at least up to 7.02
Finally, the last item worthy of note is the IBM Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (you've got to love those snappy product names), which is a bolt-on product to websphere which automatically adjusts the website to best fit your mobile device. Check out the IBM home site from different devices to see how/whether it works!
Simplifying Notes ID Management
My first session today was a (far too) detailed look at the new identity vault mechanism that will be delivered as part of Notes 8.5
The basic mechanic seems to be that all the id files are stored in an identity vault (a specialised notes database), and allows specific functionality for the user to download their id file as required.
As the id file is now accessible centrally, this enables some 'forgotten password' type functionality which sounds good, but unfortunately is not compatible with the "Notes Shared Login" which is the functionality that allows single sign-on integration with the Windows account.
Strangely enough, when people were commenting that this "didn't seem very sensible or aligned with the rest of the Lotus vision", the response was that the best solution was to integrate everything direct with Active Directory!
Ho Hum, and I had such high hopes too...
The basic mechanic seems to be that all the id files are stored in an identity vault (a specialised notes database), and allows specific functionality for the user to download their id file as required.
As the id file is now accessible centrally, this enables some 'forgotten password' type functionality which sounds good, but unfortunately is not compatible with the "Notes Shared Login" which is the functionality that allows single sign-on integration with the Windows account.
Strangely enough, when people were commenting that this "didn't seem very sensible or aligned with the rest of the Lotus vision", the response was that the best solution was to integrate everything direct with Active Directory!
Ho Hum, and I had such high hopes too...
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Pursuit of Happyness & Chris Gardner... what "some" of the audience didn't tell you
By the time it was time for the surprise guest speaker to come on stage and wrap up the day, I was focusing hard on testing how far down my chair I could slide without actually falling off it. All I could hear was a vague buzz buzz... buzz buzz buzz... and then suddenly "Pursuit of Happyness"! That made me sit up rather quick and promptly feather up my layers (for the naive ignorant, that's part of a haircut) because I had these 2 uplifting microseconds of feverish blissful hope that the guest speaker was Will Smith! :D It wasn't though; as Chris Gardner rightly said, Will would probably not fit the budget ; )
Jokes apart, he was brilliant. There were of course the cheesy moments when people actually applauded the worst nightmares this guy's had in his life (doh!), but to hear the story from the man himself was very deeply moving. For those who didn't know, in real life his son was actually only 14 months old when they became homeless, not 5 years old as in the movie. Also, for those who didn't know, some of the audience was not reduced to tears. They fell.
Pleasantly surprising close to the day though. IBM we're told have a history of getting some rather special people to talk at their conferences; apparently they had Neil Armstrong Himself share his experience a few years ago. Anyway, I'm buying the Pursuit of Happyness book as soon as I'm back in the UK. And Brian said he'll be watching the movie, so I'm guessing some of the audience although they'll never admit to it did get a bit touchy feely about things eh? ; )
On this note, more after the breakout sessions tomorrow.
Jokes apart, he was brilliant. There were of course the cheesy moments when people actually applauded the worst nightmares this guy's had in his life (doh!), but to hear the story from the man himself was very deeply moving. For those who didn't know, in real life his son was actually only 14 months old when they became homeless, not 5 years old as in the movie. Also, for those who didn't know, some of the audience was not reduced to tears. They fell.
Pleasantly surprising close to the day though. IBM we're told have a history of getting some rather special people to talk at their conferences; apparently they had Neil Armstrong Himself share his experience a few years ago. Anyway, I'm buying the Pursuit of Happyness book as soon as I'm back in the UK. And Brian said he'll be watching the movie, so I'm guessing some of the audience although they'll never admit to it did get a bit touchy feely about things eh? ; )
On this note, more after the breakout sessions tomorrow.
"Peeling back the onion skin..."
... must be a taster of Management Speak 2.0 !
Most of today was indeed around peeling back the onion skin around the strategy of those 5 areas (see Brian's post further down); this time IBM definitely seems to have thought through the next few years thoroughly and the promised suite of products look impressive.
Before getting into the details though, a have-to-mention word about the "decor" of the main conference room. See they have this totally awesome 2-m-in-diameter yellow sphere - not that it could have been any other colour mind you - hanging over the stage, with a couple of projectors projecting these dynamic revolving fractal-like totally cool monochrome shapes and graphics on it. Absolutely mesmerising. So much so it actually managed to keep me quiet for quite a while. That's how cool it is. I want one for christmas.
Other than that, Connections in particular looked appealing, both in terms of functionality & UI, although there seems to be some major overlap between what Connections does and what Bluehouse does. The official IBM line on it is that Connections is focused more on internal company collaboration and Bluehouse on cross-company collaboration. Call it a marketing stunt but it appears that Connections is the fastest growing software in the history of IBM, with 500 new customers every Q.
As far as SaaS is concerned, it seems like IBM have definitely stepped into the space but although BlueHouse is already out there, it feels like it is still early days. In fact this October they are running some POC-type activities on Bluehouse with a number of partners & customers. There was also mention of IBM's new initiative around external hosting of email in multitenant environments. Once again, still early days but a space we will definitely be keeping an eye on.
"Elegant integration" was another theme that was brought up and indeed the suite of products on the table seem to seamlessly blend into each other. Presence is obviously key, but what I thought was "elegant" was how you can Sametime from Connections by clicking on somebody's name, from Sametime hop onto the phone or Lotus Notes and start an email to your favourite person by a single right click, from LN go into QuickR to see what documents your person has posted, from the document onto the Document Management solution etc. Pretty cool stuff. IBM seems to be quite far ahead as far as UC is concerned.
All the sessions today were general ones and very much focused on strategy. Tomorrow we break out into groups and work on the sections in more detail. Should be good.
Most of today was indeed around peeling back the onion skin around the strategy of those 5 areas (see Brian's post further down); this time IBM definitely seems to have thought through the next few years thoroughly and the promised suite of products look impressive.
Before getting into the details though, a have-to-mention word about the "decor" of the main conference room. See they have this totally awesome 2-m-in-diameter yellow sphere - not that it could have been any other colour mind you - hanging over the stage, with a couple of projectors projecting these dynamic revolving fractal-like totally cool monochrome shapes and graphics on it. Absolutely mesmerising. So much so it actually managed to keep me quiet for quite a while. That's how cool it is. I want one for christmas.
Other than that, Connections in particular looked appealing, both in terms of functionality & UI, although there seems to be some major overlap between what Connections does and what Bluehouse does. The official IBM line on it is that Connections is focused more on internal company collaboration and Bluehouse on cross-company collaboration. Call it a marketing stunt but it appears that Connections is the fastest growing software in the history of IBM, with 500 new customers every Q.
As far as SaaS is concerned, it seems like IBM have definitely stepped into the space but although BlueHouse is already out there, it feels like it is still early days. In fact this October they are running some POC-type activities on Bluehouse with a number of partners & customers. There was also mention of IBM's new initiative around external hosting of email in multitenant environments. Once again, still early days but a space we will definitely be keeping an eye on.
"Elegant integration" was another theme that was brought up and indeed the suite of products on the table seem to seamlessly blend into each other. Presence is obviously key, but what I thought was "elegant" was how you can Sametime from Connections by clicking on somebody's name, from Sametime hop onto the phone or Lotus Notes and start an email to your favourite person by a single right click, from LN go into QuickR to see what documents your person has posted, from the document onto the Document Management solution etc. Pretty cool stuff. IBM seems to be quite far ahead as far as UC is concerned.
All the sessions today were general ones and very much focused on strategy. Tomorrow we break out into groups and work on the sections in more detail. Should be good.
I bleed yellow
Believe it or not, some of the guys are wearing canary yellow t-shirts proudly acclaiming the yellow nature of their blood! A bit sad really, and they wonder why they are not people ready ... tut tut...
BlueHouse Jam Session
Yesterday we attended the Bluehouse Jam Session only to discover that it was actually targetted at early adopters of Bluehouse, ie a couple of SMB's & a few IBM partners, and not at all the strategic & visionary type session we had expected. It was therefore not the most relevant session for us and we ended up leaving after about an hour but a couple of points were raised which I thought were interesting insights into BlueHouse. Keeping in mind that Bluehouse is presented as being the Next Big Thing in Collaboration SaaS,
1. Email is not integrated in Bluehouse! Whaaat? will Will say :) According to IBM, BlueHouse is their brave attempt at liberating companies from chronic overdependence on email (sounds familiar?), hence the lack of our favourite tool in Bluehouse. My personal feeling is our users are too used to email for us to offer them this kind of revolution, & not evolution, forgive the pun :D
2. Bluehouse was initially targetted at SMB's but given the demand IBM is now presenting the offering to large businesses as well. On the other hand, SMB's are already experiencing issues around identity management & user access & provisioning which while perhaps workable in SMB's where the number of users is smaller, would be unacceptable for us. More on this once I've found out more about what IBM thinks the challenges are going to be once they go big business on the BlueHouse front and how they are planning to deal with them.
On the other hand, BlueHouse like all the other products we have seen so far are totally slick as far as the UI goes. Absolutely wicked :)
And now I'm running late for dinner so I'd better go! To be continued ...
1. Email is not integrated in Bluehouse! Whaaat? will Will say :) According to IBM, BlueHouse is their brave attempt at liberating companies from chronic overdependence on email (sounds familiar?), hence the lack of our favourite tool in Bluehouse. My personal feeling is our users are too used to email for us to offer them this kind of revolution, & not evolution, forgive the pun :D
2. Bluehouse was initially targetted at SMB's but given the demand IBM is now presenting the offering to large businesses as well. On the other hand, SMB's are already experiencing issues around identity management & user access & provisioning which while perhaps workable in SMB's where the number of users is smaller, would be unacceptable for us. More on this once I've found out more about what IBM thinks the challenges are going to be once they go big business on the BlueHouse front and how they are planning to deal with them.
On the other hand, BlueHouse like all the other products we have seen so far are totally slick as far as the UI goes. Absolutely wicked :)
And now I'm running late for dinner so I'd better go! To be continued ...
Lotus Leadership Alliance 2008
I'm here, and as Karoona already mentioned my Starwood hotel membership thing paid off with a nice room overlooking the ocean. A bit wierd looking down at passing helictopers though!
I've just finished the sessions of the first day, which have been about the Lotus strategy in 5 areas :
In other news, there were some nice tasters on mobile device integration across Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices - it looks like we will finally be able to retire OneBridge!
There is an interesting product called Foundations Start which is an appliance type model for small businesses or branch offices. In theory it covers both Messaging & Collaboration as well as Client Architecture. Possibly a solution for "Office on a Box"
Lots more to say but I will save it for the detailed sessions over the next two days.
The last session of the day was a surprise guest speaker, which turned about to be Chris Gardner who wrote the autobiography "The pursuit of happyness" which you may have read/seen. He is a hugely motivating speaker, although I did notice that some of the audience were reduced to tears ;-) If you get the chance to hear him tell his story then I'd encourage you to take the opportunity!
I've just finished the sessions of the first day, which have been about the Lotus strategy in 5 areas :
- Notes & Domino Roadmap
- Ultimate Web Experience
- Unified Communication & Collaboration
- Social Software
- Online Collaboration
In other news, there were some nice tasters on mobile device integration across Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices - it looks like we will finally be able to retire OneBridge!
There is an interesting product called Foundations Start which is an appliance type model for small businesses or branch offices. In theory it covers both Messaging & Collaboration as well as Client Architecture. Possibly a solution for "Office on a Box"
Lots more to say but I will save it for the detailed sessions over the next two days.
The last session of the day was a surprise guest speaker, which turned about to be Chris Gardner who wrote the autobiography "The pursuit of happyness" which you may have read/seen. He is a hugely motivating speaker, although I did notice that some of the audience were reduced to tears ;-) If you get the chance to hear him tell his story then I'd encourage you to take the opportunity!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
In a severely distorted format because Copy Paste does not work well from Excel, here is the agenda for the conference :
Sunday, September 21 2008 - Making Connections
10:30 - 5:00 Registration and social events
12:00 - 5:00 Bluehouse Beta Workshop, Lotus Connections Advisory Group Workshop
Monday, September 22, 2008 - Strategy, Platforms, and our Roadmap for Integration
8:30 - 8:45 Opening session Prep
8:45 - 10:15 Opening General Session: Overall vision and strategy, Where we've come this year; Where we're going, Keynote: Putting it all together - Integration and Linked Value across the product line and in your environment
10:15 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 11:45 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Roadmap: 8.5 and Beyond
11:45 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 Delivering the Ultimate Web Experience
2:00 - 2:15 Break
2:15 - 3:15 The IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration Strategy and Roadmap
3:15 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 4:45 The IBM Lotus Social Software "Collaboration 2.0" Strategy
4:45 - 5:00 Break
5:00 - 6:00 Lotus Online Collaboration Services - Software-as-a-Service Strategy
7:00 - 9:00 Dinner and Evening event
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Nuts and bolts: Messaging, Team-Collaboration, Document Management, Deployment, and Tools
Break-Out Sessions
Roundtables and workshops
UX Collaboratory sessions
7:15 - 8:15 Breakfast
8:30 - 9:30 Town Hall: Open forum for comments and questions to all Monday presentations
9:30 - 9:45 Break
9:45 - 11:00 IBM Lotus Notes PIM - Continuing to Extend User and Team Productivity
Working Together: IBM and RIM Collaborate to Enhance IBM Lotus Domino and the BlackBerry Experience
What's Next in IBM Lotus Sametime
Accelerating IBM WebSphere Portal Time to Value
IBM Lotus Quickr and IBM Content Management
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
11:00 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:30 Productivity Tools for the Mobile Worker
IBM Lotus Domino Storage - Past, Present, and Future
"Communications-Enable" Your Business Processes for Web 2.0 with IBM Lotus Sametime
Creating Custom IBM WebSphere Portal Applications
Domino Document Manager
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:45 (With ECSC) Archiving Roundtable: Understanding Your Needs…Sharing Our Vision
Reinventing IBM Lotus Domino Designer and Lotus Domino Web Application Development
Using IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony
IBM Mashup Center- Technical Deep Dive
Marketing Workshop Part 1: Understanding the Business Benefits of IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
2:45 - 3:00 Break
3:00 - 4:15 Strategies for Deploying IBM Lotus Notes 8
Simplifying ID Management with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5
Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony: Technical and Deployment Architecture
IBM Lotus Web Content Management
Workshop Part 2: Customizing Your Advocacy Strategy and Content
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
4:15 - 4:30 Break
4:30 - 5:45 Workgroup 1: Notes/Domino Deployment support and best practices
Application Development for the IBM Lotus Notes Client: NSF, Widgets, Composite Applications, Plug-ins, and More
Workgroup 2: Leveraging UCC
Workgroup 4: Wish list for IBM WebSphere Portal in 2009
Workgroup 3: IBM Lotus Quickr Roadmap and Requirements Prioritization
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
7:00 - 10:00 Dinner & beach party
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - The voice of the customer - Looking ahead
Break-Out Sessions
Roundtables
UX Collaboratory sessions
8:15 - 9:30 Innovating with IBM Research
Bare Metal Server to Lotus Domino in 30 Minutes Without a Domino Admin - Lotus Foundations
Adopting Social Software in the Enterprise
On Time, On Task, and In Touch: Lotus Notes Calendar, Task Management, and Social Networking
Deploying and Extending IBM Lotus Quickr
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
9:30 - 9:45 Break
9:45 - 10:45 The Future of Hosted Meetings
IBM Lotus Symphony -- Why You Should Pay Attention
Expand and Extend Your Investments with IBM Social Software and Web 2.0
The Lotus Vision through the Eyes of our Project Manager Persona
Using Business Partner Solutions to Extend Your IBM Lotus Quickr Investment
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
10:45 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:15 (With ECSC) Workgroup 1 PrepNotes/Domino Deployment Support and best practices
(With ECSC) Workgroup 2 PrepLeveraging UCC
(With ECSC)Workgroup 3 PrepMaking Collaboration 2.0 Work for the Customer
(With ECSC) Workgroup 4 PrepPortal Admin, Apps, and WCM Top 10 Recommendations
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
12:15 - 1:15 Lunch
1:15 - 3:00 Closing Session
3:00 - 3:15 Conference Wrap-up and UX Collaboratory raffle
Bluehouse is IBM's answer to SaaS in the collaboration area. I hope there will be a product demo in the workshop today; I'm looking forward to see the "integrated collaboration workspace", CRM & BI included!
On this note, the cleaning lady has arrived so I'll let her clean my room of all the sand, and by the way Brian did manage to get a room BOTH higher up AND with an ocean view, plus he didn't bring his camera, so I will be protesting. Not quite sure how yet.
More on Bluehouse this evening!
Sunday, September 21 2008 - Making Connections
10:30 - 5:00 Registration and social events
12:00 - 5:00 Bluehouse Beta Workshop, Lotus Connections Advisory Group Workshop
Monday, September 22, 2008 - Strategy, Platforms, and our Roadmap for Integration
8:30 - 8:45 Opening session Prep
8:45 - 10:15 Opening General Session: Overall vision and strategy, Where we've come this year; Where we're going, Keynote: Putting it all together - Integration and Linked Value across the product line and in your environment
10:15 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 11:45 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Roadmap: 8.5 and Beyond
11:45 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 Delivering the Ultimate Web Experience
2:00 - 2:15 Break
2:15 - 3:15 The IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration Strategy and Roadmap
3:15 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 4:45 The IBM Lotus Social Software "Collaboration 2.0" Strategy
4:45 - 5:00 Break
5:00 - 6:00 Lotus Online Collaboration Services - Software-as-a-Service Strategy
7:00 - 9:00 Dinner and Evening event
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Nuts and bolts: Messaging, Team-Collaboration, Document Management, Deployment, and Tools
Break-Out Sessions
Roundtables and workshops
UX Collaboratory sessions
7:15 - 8:15 Breakfast
8:30 - 9:30 Town Hall: Open forum for comments and questions to all Monday presentations
9:30 - 9:45 Break
9:45 - 11:00 IBM Lotus Notes PIM - Continuing to Extend User and Team Productivity
Working Together: IBM and RIM Collaborate to Enhance IBM Lotus Domino and the BlackBerry Experience
What's Next in IBM Lotus Sametime
Accelerating IBM WebSphere Portal Time to Value
IBM Lotus Quickr and IBM Content Management
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
11:00 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:30 Productivity Tools for the Mobile Worker
IBM Lotus Domino Storage - Past, Present, and Future
"Communications-Enable" Your Business Processes for Web 2.0 with IBM Lotus Sametime
Creating Custom IBM WebSphere Portal Applications
Domino Document Manager
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:45 (With ECSC) Archiving Roundtable: Understanding Your Needs…Sharing Our Vision
Reinventing IBM Lotus Domino Designer and Lotus Domino Web Application Development
Using IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony
IBM Mashup Center- Technical Deep Dive
Marketing Workshop Part 1: Understanding the Business Benefits of IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
2:45 - 3:00 Break
3:00 - 4:15 Strategies for Deploying IBM Lotus Notes 8
Simplifying ID Management with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5
Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony: Technical and Deployment Architecture
IBM Lotus Web Content Management
Workshop Part 2: Customizing Your Advocacy Strategy and Content
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
4:15 - 4:30 Break
4:30 - 5:45 Workgroup 1: Notes/Domino Deployment support and best practices
Application Development for the IBM Lotus Notes Client: NSF, Widgets, Composite Applications, Plug-ins, and More
Workgroup 2: Leveraging UCC
Workgroup 4: Wish list for IBM WebSphere Portal in 2009
Workgroup 3: IBM Lotus Quickr Roadmap and Requirements Prioritization
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
7:00 - 10:00 Dinner & beach party
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - The voice of the customer - Looking ahead
Break-Out Sessions
Roundtables
UX Collaboratory sessions
8:15 - 9:30 Innovating with IBM Research
Bare Metal Server to Lotus Domino in 30 Minutes Without a Domino Admin - Lotus Foundations
Adopting Social Software in the Enterprise
On Time, On Task, and In Touch: Lotus Notes Calendar, Task Management, and Social Networking
Deploying and Extending IBM Lotus Quickr
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
9:30 - 9:45 Break
9:45 - 10:45 The Future of Hosted Meetings
IBM Lotus Symphony -- Why You Should Pay Attention
Expand and Extend Your Investments with IBM Social Software and Web 2.0
The Lotus Vision through the Eyes of our Project Manager Persona
Using Business Partner Solutions to Extend Your IBM Lotus Quickr Investment
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
10:45 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:15 (With ECSC) Workgroup 1 PrepNotes/Domino Deployment Support and best practices
(With ECSC) Workgroup 2 PrepLeveraging UCC
(With ECSC)Workgroup 3 PrepMaking Collaboration 2.0 Work for the Customer
(With ECSC) Workgroup 4 PrepPortal Admin, Apps, and WCM Top 10 Recommendations
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
Be our GPS - your feedback on our newest ideas
12:15 - 1:15 Lunch
1:15 - 3:00 Closing Session
3:00 - 3:15 Conference Wrap-up and UX Collaboratory raffle
Bluehouse is IBM's answer to SaaS in the collaboration area. I hope there will be a product demo in the workshop today; I'm looking forward to see the "integrated collaboration workspace", CRM & BI included!
On this note, the cleaning lady has arrived so I'll let her clean my room of all the sand, and by the way Brian did manage to get a room BOTH higher up AND with an ocean view, plus he didn't bring his camera, so I will be protesting. Not quite sure how yet.
More on Bluehouse this evening!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Good moooooorning, Hollywooooooooood!
Although it's not quite morning yet. Let me explain.
Yesterday evening my (very cold*) plane touched down on time after a (super long) flight and out we walked into the (blistering*) heat of Miami airport. The notoriously famous immigration procedure which mothers tell their kids about when they don't want to sleep at night (the kids, not the mothers) actually only lasted 10 minutes and even made me chuckle to myself. See, when the nice lady at the desk found out I was attending an IBM Conference she said she in her heart of hearts much preferred "Apples" to "IBM's Microsoft", to which I nodded compassionately and even gave her a little sigh of sympathy, but didn't correct her out of fear that she might send me to Guantanamo Bay, which would have been bad. But she didn't, which was a relief.
(*) - whingeing about temperature, done!
Sadly that was the last good thing to happen in Miami airport. The luggage was 1 hour late, and of course, when the 10 000 suitcases started coming mine was the 10 000th to come out. Funny was how many guys they had working around the conveyor belts randomly lifting off some suitcases (but not others) and putting them on the floor all round the conveyor belts while the passengers drove themselves nuts dashing like headless chickens between the conveyor belts and the stack of suitcases and then back to the conveyor belts to look for their luggage. Maybe it's the american touch to the art of luggage claim.
Anyhow, by the time I left the airport it was already dark so didn't get to see any beaches or the sea or even any sunshine, sob sob, which leaves me very disappointed but looking forward to tomorrow. My Colombian driver pointed out in his delightful accent that the temperature was 32 C and the humidity, oh my god the humidity, at a seasonal 90%! Shopping tomorrow will feel like shopping in a sauna, should be a new experience.
Finally arrived at the (massive, 1500-room, on the beach) hotel at 08 30 and after some artful flashing of smiles at reception I was shown a very nice room, with a balcony, high high up in the skies, with a gorgeous city view. I'm going to be really gutted if Brian gets a room either 1) higher up or 2) with an ocean view. If he gets a room higher up AND with an ocean view I'll go on strike.
I can't though, because of course I forgot my camera and will need his.
So, dinner was in the uber romantically lit (ie not very lit) Japanase fusion resto downstairs with live flamenco music played by 2 fiery Spanish stallions. They were so good (at the music, I hasten to add) I stayed there until midnight and then came back and managed 2 hours of sleep before my body started thinking of Slough and how it needed to be there in a couple of hours and woke up.
It's now 5 40 and I've been up for nearly 2 hours doing strategy work. Sigh. Maybe I'll go for a swim and watch the sun rise.
And maybe tomorrow I'll blog something that actually has to do with IBM and Messaging, and maybe even Collaboration! And Mat will then not use his God admin rights to overrule as he says my minuscule author rights and delete my blog because it says nothing about EUT or the conference (yet).
But may I object beforehand, it does have to do with EUT and I certainly am on tour. Well, like my objection will count anyway ; )
I'll post the conference agenda later on today when I'm not in way-too-early-in-the-morning-crazy mood. Stay tuned!
Yesterday evening my (very cold*) plane touched down on time after a (super long) flight and out we walked into the (blistering*) heat of Miami airport. The notoriously famous immigration procedure which mothers tell their kids about when they don't want to sleep at night (the kids, not the mothers) actually only lasted 10 minutes and even made me chuckle to myself. See, when the nice lady at the desk found out I was attending an IBM Conference she said she in her heart of hearts much preferred "Apples" to "IBM's Microsoft", to which I nodded compassionately and even gave her a little sigh of sympathy, but didn't correct her out of fear that she might send me to Guantanamo Bay, which would have been bad. But she didn't, which was a relief.
(*) - whingeing about temperature, done!
Sadly that was the last good thing to happen in Miami airport. The luggage was 1 hour late, and of course, when the 10 000 suitcases started coming mine was the 10 000th to come out. Funny was how many guys they had working around the conveyor belts randomly lifting off some suitcases (but not others) and putting them on the floor all round the conveyor belts while the passengers drove themselves nuts dashing like headless chickens between the conveyor belts and the stack of suitcases and then back to the conveyor belts to look for their luggage. Maybe it's the american touch to the art of luggage claim.
Anyhow, by the time I left the airport it was already dark so didn't get to see any beaches or the sea or even any sunshine, sob sob, which leaves me very disappointed but looking forward to tomorrow. My Colombian driver pointed out in his delightful accent that the temperature was 32 C and the humidity, oh my god the humidity, at a seasonal 90%! Shopping tomorrow will feel like shopping in a sauna, should be a new experience.
Finally arrived at the (massive, 1500-room, on the beach) hotel at 08 30 and after some artful flashing of smiles at reception I was shown a very nice room, with a balcony, high high up in the skies, with a gorgeous city view. I'm going to be really gutted if Brian gets a room either 1) higher up or 2) with an ocean view. If he gets a room higher up AND with an ocean view I'll go on strike.
I can't though, because of course I forgot my camera and will need his.
So, dinner was in the uber romantically lit (ie not very lit) Japanase fusion resto downstairs with live flamenco music played by 2 fiery Spanish stallions. They were so good (at the music, I hasten to add) I stayed there until midnight and then came back and managed 2 hours of sleep before my body started thinking of Slough and how it needed to be there in a couple of hours and woke up.
It's now 5 40 and I've been up for nearly 2 hours doing strategy work. Sigh. Maybe I'll go for a swim and watch the sun rise.
And maybe tomorrow I'll blog something that actually has to do with IBM and Messaging, and maybe even Collaboration! And Mat will then not use his God admin rights to overrule as he says my minuscule author rights and delete my blog because it says nothing about EUT or the conference (yet).
But may I object beforehand, it does have to do with EUT and I certainly am on tour. Well, like my objection will count anyway ; )
I'll post the conference agenda later on today when I'm not in way-too-early-in-the-morning-crazy mood. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Keynote 2 Video
Found it here:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msnse/0804/33036/MMS2008-Day2-Keynote-bradand.wmv
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msnse/0804/33036/MMS2008-Day2-Keynote-bradand.wmv
Friday, May 2, 2008
AMD's managing a heterogenous environment
Yep there is a theme here ;-)
AMD are all about the out of band management - Management that operates with hardware resources and components that are independent of OS control. Think like an iLo card in an HP Server.
They are part of the DMTF standards body that are working to make standards for these types of devices and the functionality they offer. This should ensure all the vendors products are interoperable. In this case the standard discussed is DASH - Desktop and Mobile Architecture for Systems Hardware. It leverages WS-Management which is another DMTF standard.
The kinds of things you can do are:
AMD are all about the out of band management - Management that operates with hardware resources and components that are independent of OS control. Think like an iLo card in an HP Server.
They are part of the DMTF standards body that are working to make standards for these types of devices and the functionality they offer. This should ensure all the vendors products are interoperable. In this case the standard discussed is DASH - Desktop and Mobile Architecture for Systems Hardware. It leverages WS-Management which is another DMTF standard.
The kinds of things you can do are:
- Remote power on/off - wake for patching
- Remote boot
- Serial console redirect - change BIOS, watch boot sequence.
- HW and SW asset inventory - saves desktop visit if something fails.
Then some demos which were deathly dull, I have seen someone remotely power on/off a PC probably 5 times now!
Asset Inventory Service
I've seen a couple of sessions on this now so I shall summarise my thoughts.
Right now I'd say that this solution has only one place where we would consider it's use, and that's Royal Canin. Given the lack of network routing between the sites, this is a solution that would be able to deliver value very quickly (the installation would still need to be managed on a subsidiary by subsidiary basis though).
Microsoft have big plans for this product though, and some of the areas of interest are the software catalogue, which will be automatically referenced in Systems Center R2. To become a fully fledged service though, user authentication needs to be standards-based (I don't think the MS passport is an identity standard yet, but I'm sure Doug will correct me if I'm wrong) and the database will need to be accessible to enterprise business intelligence tools.
So apart from RC, I think this is one to look at again no earlier than version 2 (likely to be announced at Tech Ed later this year)
Right now I'd say that this solution has only one place where we would consider it's use, and that's Royal Canin. Given the lack of network routing between the sites, this is a solution that would be able to deliver value very quickly (the installation would still need to be managed on a subsidiary by subsidiary basis though).
Microsoft have big plans for this product though, and some of the areas of interest are the software catalogue, which will be automatically referenced in Systems Center R2. To become a fully fledged service though, user authentication needs to be standards-based (I don't think the MS passport is an identity standard yet, but I'm sure Doug will correct me if I'm wrong) and the database will need to be accessible to enterprise business intelligence tools.
So apart from RC, I think this is one to look at again no earlier than version 2 (likely to be announced at Tech Ed later this year)
Analysing 12000+ IT Environments
This was a great session, full of lots onf information about how the Micrsoft Operations Framework and the Infrastructure optimisation surveys have helped companies do their deployments and move from Basic-Standardised-Rationalised-Dynamic.
There are some self assessments online
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/mo/mof/moftool.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/assessment/launch.mspx
however, when we met with the NYC Account team they said they would get us the full survey.
Further info on the Infrastructure optimisation can be found here > http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/infrastructure/default.aspx
They follow ITIL and COBIT too.
They have been running these surveys for 3 years and realised certain problems:
There are some self assessments online
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/mo/mof/moftool.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/assessment/launch.mspx
however, when we met with the NYC Account team they said they would get us the full survey.
Further info on the Infrastructure optimisation can be found here > http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/infrastructure/default.aspx
They follow ITIL and COBIT too.
They have been running these surveys for 3 years and realised certain problems:
- Purchasing products does not always mean implementing
- Utilisation of products is usually around 0-10% of their feature set, some go up to 25% but virtually no one is ever above 50%. An obvious example the presenter said was Calendaring. All email has them and the ability to share, however the majority of employees are unaware/untrained etc.
The secret to service excellence is often pitched as people, process, technology. However it should read People+Process+Technology. Having one of two clearly does not make up for a lack elsewhere, the framework should help companies understand what they need to do.
There are 3 Infrastructure optimisation models that have been developed with Gartner and MIT. These are:
- Core Infrastructure Optimisation Model,
- Business Productivity Optimisation Model
- Application Platform Optimisation Model
Each of the above have the four stages of development - Basic-Standardised-Rationalised-Dynamic.
A nice metaphor was used to describe businesses that are trying to progress their IT without dealing with each stage in turn - like a ship with 40 anchors, buying a bigger boat wont make you go faster.
As much as you try to go faster/ more dynamically by implementing new technologies, if you do not deal with the problems you are facing at each stage, all you are doing is introducing more complexity and instability and actually making this worse.
Their research has shown that if in any of the 3 optimisation models a business is still at the basic level, they will never be above standardised in the other 2.
It was interesting to ave a bit more of an in depth look at the MOF and IO models, I had only really skim read them before. It is certainly worth us having a chat about our areas and where we think we are and what that means. Maybe a team meeting topic?
Application Virtualisation & Streaming
I've attended a whole bunch of sessions covering different aspects of this topic, so I'll try to summarise my thoughts now we're done.
Firstly, the App Virtualisation product finally gives the Microsoft management suite proper user-targetting for software distribution, which it has always lacked. The main business benefit of the product is reducing the need for regression testing of different applications (i.e. conflict solver no longer required!). There is a secondary benefit in allowing previously incompatible applications co-exist, thus increasing flexibility/agility. This would be a great solution for COMPASS running Office 2007 alongside previous versions of Office.
The streaming aspect might be useful to deploy to users with limited connectivity, and there is clear potential to use this deployment mode to enable centralisation along with NGN V2. Lots more work to do here but also some big opportunities.
In summary App Virtualisation is something that should definitely be on our roadmap, but it's not going be a solution for everything.
Firstly, the App Virtualisation product finally gives the Microsoft management suite proper user-targetting for software distribution, which it has always lacked. The main business benefit of the product is reducing the need for regression testing of different applications (i.e. conflict solver no longer required!). There is a secondary benefit in allowing previously incompatible applications co-exist, thus increasing flexibility/agility. This would be a great solution for COMPASS running Office 2007 alongside previous versions of Office.
The streaming aspect might be useful to deploy to users with limited connectivity, and there is clear potential to use this deployment mode to enable centralisation along with NGN V2. Lots more work to do here but also some big opportunities.
In summary App Virtualisation is something that should definitely be on our roadmap, but it's not going be a solution for everything.
System Centre Mobile Device Manager
I can't tell you just how bored I am of writing System Centre now
;-)
This lecture was about planning and deploying SCMDM. I thought it would be quite architectural but it was mostly run throughs of the wizards.
Key facts:
;-)
This lecture was about planning and deploying SCMDM. I thought it would be quite architectural but it was mostly run throughs of the wizards.
Key facts:
- Planning is very important as you need to touch many areas within IT - firewall, Active Directory and policies, security, SCCM and so on.
- Need to clearly define who 'owns' SCMDM due to the above.
- No Active Directory Schema changes are required
- Best Practices Analyser tool can be run pre and post deploymnet and it can report any errors or changes that need to be made.
- Device lifecycle is important to define as you don't wnat non-standard devices to cause problems.
- Coonsider who should support the end device and service, i.e. if the operator supports the phone but you support the service how are problems resolved where they interrelate? Need careful commercial negotiation before deployment.
- List of devices that will be Windows 6.1 can be found here > www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobiledevicemanager/devices.mspx
Mat's thoughts on the 3rd keynote
I know Brian has already covered some of it, I just had some additional notes that I thought were interesting.
- Microsoft are beginning to use Data Centres in a container. They have their first one installed in Boulder, Colorado which provides Virtual Earth. It is entirely powered by wind power.
- They have found System Centre a great help with acquisitions because it can now monitor and manager diverse environments and is massively scalable.
- Average is 1 engineer to manager 5000 servers!
- Internal Microsoft IT are basically the beta testers for all the System Centre products.
- They deal with 1 million events per day!
I think it would be very interesting to spend time with their team to see how they do things. Same for the desktop area who are more advanced in terms of the newer products and their use. I'll blog that in another post.
Extending SCCM to heterogenous environments
This was a session presented by Quest to talk about their products that can further enhance SCCM. It is designed to improve the ability of SCCM into non windows areas and help achieve a better ROI.
These are branded Quest Management Extensions (QMX) and contain the following functionality:
These are branded Quest Management Extensions (QMX) and contain the following functionality:
- Support for non Windows OS - Red Hat, Suse (server and desktop), OSX, ESX, HPUX via agents.
- Agentless (reduced functionality) for Novell, Ubuntu and network devices such as printers, switches, routers and mainframes.
- Can add non windows OS into Active Directory.
- Patch and software distribution to the above (1st bullet).
QMX for SCCM 2007 are the above except network devices, if that functionality is required you also need to purchase QMX for Device Manager.
Virtual Desktops
A quick update on the Virtual Desktop session, which was presented by Pete Downing of Citrix. The solution is fairly similar to the VDI (Remote SDS) solution that is under development internally, with a couple of noteable exceptions.
The Citrix solution (demonstrated on top of Windows Sever 2008 running Hyper-V) uses a very shiny looking web interface for the end user, and the network transport between the client and the virtual machine is ICA rather than the RDP protocol that most other solutions use. Citrix claim a 15x performance improvement over RDP (maybe it should have read 1.5x) but given our experience with Remote SDS on RDP at Doane, where performance is not comparable to the existing Citrix terminal server solution (ICA transport again), maybe we should be looking at this solution more carefully.
Other nice parts of the solution include the automatic virtual machine provisioning which includes some scripting for personalisation, but until we can get to a stateless PC image I think we'll continue to struggle with deployment. At least it's given me something to think about!
The Citrix solution (demonstrated on top of Windows Sever 2008 running Hyper-V) uses a very shiny looking web interface for the end user, and the network transport between the client and the virtual machine is ICA rather than the RDP protocol that most other solutions use. Citrix claim a 15x performance improvement over RDP (maybe it should have read 1.5x) but given our experience with Remote SDS on RDP at Doane, where performance is not comparable to the existing Citrix terminal server solution (ICA transport again), maybe we should be looking at this solution more carefully.
Other nice parts of the solution include the automatic virtual machine provisioning which includes some scripting for personalisation, but until we can get to a stateless PC image I think we'll continue to struggle with deployment. At least it's given me something to think about!
Virtual Machine Manager
This session was all about the System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) product. Microsoft realise that the virtual world is driving a massive amount of growth for example, last year, 1 in 3 Enterprises bought Softgrid, they predict next year that will have increased to 1 in 2 of all Enterprises.
They consider that virtualisation should be a skill you learn as part of a techie skill set, not a specialism you struggle to achieve. SCVMM is here to help!
SCVMM is basically a pretty gui front end driving Powershell scripts, at the end of each wizard you can generally click a 'View Script' button should you want to see how things work or use it to make automated scheduled jobs for example.
P2V functionality is built in (costs extra with VMWare) as is V2V (convert VMWare machines to MS), although SSCVMM 08 will have the ability to natively manage both MS machines and VMWare machines. The first product on the market to take this holistic approach. The 2008 version will also have the ability patch offline machines.
There will be a delegation web portal too, this allows a user to login and manage their machine via a browser. This saves giving too many rights or having to deploy an application to that end user just to make life easier. (We deliver the VMWare machine application via Citrix). This is all controlled by Active Directory Group policies.
It is worth considering Server Management Suite Enterprise as this contains SCVMM, SCDPM, SCOM, SCCM - basically all the System Centre products.
W2K8 Enterprise edition allows you to run 4 virtual machines with no need to buy additional OS lics, Standard only 1, but Datacentre is unlimited.
Due to this Microsoft claim Hyper-V is 1/3 the cost of an equivalent VMWare environment.
One note of caution was raised with a nice quote from Gartner - Virtualising without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualisation in the first place!
They consider that virtualisation should be a skill you learn as part of a techie skill set, not a specialism you struggle to achieve. SCVMM is here to help!
SCVMM is basically a pretty gui front end driving Powershell scripts, at the end of each wizard you can generally click a 'View Script' button should you want to see how things work or use it to make automated scheduled jobs for example.
P2V functionality is built in (costs extra with VMWare) as is V2V (convert VMWare machines to MS), although SSCVMM 08 will have the ability to natively manage both MS machines and VMWare machines. The first product on the market to take this holistic approach. The 2008 version will also have the ability patch offline machines.
There will be a delegation web portal too, this allows a user to login and manage their machine via a browser. This saves giving too many rights or having to deploy an application to that end user just to make life easier. (We deliver the VMWare machine application via Citrix). This is all controlled by Active Directory Group policies.
It is worth considering Server Management Suite Enterprise as this contains SCVMM, SCDPM, SCOM, SCCM - basically all the System Centre products.
W2K8 Enterprise edition allows you to run 4 virtual machines with no need to buy additional OS lics, Standard only 1, but Datacentre is unlimited.
Due to this Microsoft claim Hyper-V is 1/3 the cost of an equivalent VMWare environment.
One note of caution was raised with a nice quote from Gartner - Virtualising without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualisation in the first place!
Microsoft know how to party!
Seriously look at the rapture on the faces of the audience ;-)
The party also had Lan Halo, a chainsaw juggler, a stage for people playing rock band, free arcade games and so on. We stayed for a while but the rock, paper, scissors amazed us ;-)
Thursday, May 1, 2008
NSV
I have noticed that mid afternoon is when the Mars snackfood comes out, rest assured I am eating as much of it as I can and even taking some away in case I get hungry later! If I were in the Great Escape I would be the 'Scrounger'!
No doubt there will be a spike in Las Vegas net sales volume this week due to my gluttony ;-)
I'm a bit behind with my posts due to spending an hour or so working our why I was going to appear on the bad boy SFAR exception list and making sure I did not. We have the Closing Party tonight and are just about to meet the NYC Metro Area account team from Microsoft so I'll try to catch the posts up tomorrow morning, so mid afternoon UK time.
No doubt there will be a spike in Las Vegas net sales volume this week due to my gluttony ;-)
I'm a bit behind with my posts due to spending an hour or so working our why I was going to appear on the bad boy SFAR exception list and making sure I did not. We have the Closing Party tonight and are just about to meet the NYC Metro Area account team from Microsoft so I'll try to catch the posts up tomorrow morning, so mid afternoon UK time.
Poll Added!
On the right hand side below the Tag Cloud. We'd like to know if you have been reading and if it has been useful. From my perspective I have probably retained a lot more information by taking notes and then writing them up and having the opportunity to think about what has been said.
I was hoping people would comment, perhaps with questions that we could have found out for you. It could be we are providing all the right information for you anyway?
If it has worked, then maybe as different people go to event they can do the same and help keep everyone involved.
I was hoping people would comment, perhaps with questions that we could have found out for you. It could be we are providing all the right information for you anyway?
If it has worked, then maybe as different people go to event they can do the same and help keep everyone involved.
Is anyone there?
It's our last day tomorrow, so last chance for you guys to have us field any of your questions with the experts here.
I'd also like to take the opportunity to solicit feedback on our blogging experiment but as Mat is uber-blogging admin I'll leave it to him to add the polling thingy.
I'd also like to take the opportunity to solicit feedback on our blogging experiment but as Mat is uber-blogging admin I'll leave it to him to add the polling thingy.
How do they do that?
An interesting session for a couple of reasons. First, hearing about how exisiting customers are working around product limitations is a great way to find out the 'real' product limitations. Second, there was a discussion about 'best practice' application packaging and deployment which is as relevant to our current environment as it is to Microsoft System Center customers.
The slides are pretty good so I won't go into too much detail here, but some things we should think about are Desired Configuration Management (DCM) and a consistent hardware decommissioning process. Our process and organisation actually map fairly well to best practice with the noticeable exception of our insistence on 'bundling' the applications into monolithic updates, but it seems to me this stems from a lack of automation at the site end, so we should carefully consider what can be done to reduce the burden on our local infrastructure teams.
The slides are pretty good so I won't go into too much detail here, but some things we should think about are Desired Configuration Management (DCM) and a consistent hardware decommissioning process. Our process and organisation actually map fairly well to best practice with the noticeable exception of our insistence on 'bundling' the applications into monolithic updates, but it seems to me this stems from a lack of automation at the site end, so we should carefully consider what can be done to reduce the burden on our local infrastructure teams.
Where's the Party?
We were supposed to go to the Microsoft event on Tuesday night - we had tickets and everything, only to get to the venue and get told that the venue was 'at capacity'. Seems a bit odd to go to the trouble of ticketing an event and then distributing too many tickets, but what can you do?
What we did is to find a bar (can you guess which drink is Mat's?) and watch the world go by. We were assured that the bowl of suspicious looking green/white things were wasabi, but we chose to play it safe and order chunks of cow instead :-)
Last night we finally found a casino that had cheap enough tables for us to have a go at BlackJack (the thought of losing $50 a hand in the mainstream casinos was bit off-putting), and we spent an enjoyable couple of hours losing a few bucks, then winning it all back just to lose it some more. Overall we finished up, but there are plenty more days to go!
Third Keynote
So this morning's keynote was billed as "Reality of the Cloud", which was all about Microsoft's datacenters. You start to understand the scale of their datacenter operation really when they talk about 'piloting' a technology on 1,000 servers, and growth doubling from 10,000 to 20,000 server installations per month. The speaker was refreshingly honest and talked about recently starting to use the latest MS products to manage their environment as previous versions just didn't cut it.
It was also interesting to see the term 'Operation Excellence' in use, as well as her departmental key drivers being very similar to some of our principles (growth, efficiency and trust). I'm not sure MS are big on mutuality just yet though! Probably the most interesting thing she talked about was the impact on MS when acquiring companies, as they are often open-source, niche technology companies that are highly heterogenous. This has directly led to the interoperability features in the recent products.
In short an engaging keynote that drove home the scalability of the MS management products and an insight into the infrastructure that sits behind the scenes of services like hotmail and MSN.
It was also interesting to see the term 'Operation Excellence' in use, as well as her departmental key drivers being very similar to some of our principles (growth, efficiency and trust). I'm not sure MS are big on mutuality just yet though! Probably the most interesting thing she talked about was the impact on MS when acquiring companies, as they are often open-source, niche technology companies that are highly heterogenous. This has directly led to the interoperability features in the recent products.
In short an engaging keynote that drove home the scalability of the MS management products and an insight into the infrastructure that sits behind the scenes of services like hotmail and MSN.
Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation
This session was all about the "sixth" piece of MDOP. The Kidaro acquisition is not due to complete until May, so there are no release dates yet. They also confirmed that the pricing of MDOP will not change when this component is added in, always a surprise from Microsoft!
So onto the product itself, which is fairly clever. At a high level, it is basically a 'hidden' virtual PC installation running windows XP or Vista. Applications that are 'published' from the hidden virtual OS are presented seamlessly on the user's host PC. This could potentially be used to deliver an SDS XP experience on a non-standard workstation (e.g. contractor laptop). It's also the technology that was used to run the USB demo at the end of the keynote that Mat has already mentioned.
The product adds usability to the Virtual PC application in a number of ways. Firstly, the virtual machine is hidden, so the user experience is seamless. Updates to the VM image can be done on the fly, and the update mechanism promises to be very light on bandwidth as the agent checks if any of the updated components already exist on the host machine and only transfers the differences.
While it is very cool technology, I have to wonder about the horsepower required on the desktop to run this acceptably, and there are still a bunch of unanswered questions on how licensing will work.
We should definitely watch this space!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
MMS Virtual Press Page
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mgmtsummit/default.mspx
Just found the above, it should have all the launches/announcements in case we miss them!
Just found the above, it should have all the launches/announcements in case we miss them!
The Dynamic Desktop
This keynote was presented by Brad Anderson who is one of Microsoft's general managers. He led into by talking about how the baby boomers are retiring and that by 2012, 30% of the workforce will be made up of Gen Y. The framing here was all about how Gen Y are tech savvy and will demand more flexible ways of working.
"The Dynamic Desktop provides a consistent experience for users independent of device or location".
Microsoft's belief is that now and in the future we should consider the client, the user not their device and we need to ask ourselves questions along the lines of how do we deliver applications and data to the user.
The next step was a quick demo of Application Virtualisation, so a .pptx was clicked on and Powerpoint was installed in the background in around 10 seconds. Pretty swish! They made an edit and saved it, they were then able to log in from another device and have the same file with the edit via VDI over Terminal Services gateway and so on. This works with the Vista Folder redirection I briefly mentioned in one of my earlier posts.
In Q3 the next version of the MDOP pack will be released and they highlighted that the product at launch was the fastest selling on Volume Licensing they have ever had. As Brian mentioned MDOP is only available via Software Assurance.
System Centre and it's add-ons were highlighted as the best way to provide and manage the dynamic desktop and Microsoft rightly argue that you should be able to use one tool to manage physical/virtual and client devices/servers. They claim to be providing this one stop shop.
Next up was a demonstration of Network Access Protection via Windows 2008, it showed how a device gets quarantined, remediation work is carried out (patch applied for example)and then the device is allowed to connect. The feature will allow you to set policies and do a check before implementation so you can understand the effect of any change. I guess this is much like the Resultant Set of Policy feature in AD GPO's.
Attached Knowledge Services was a good example of some innovative thinking. This is where all the System Centre suite report back to Microsoft (with no identifying info) the health of an environment, its make up and so on. This has then allowed Microsoft to create baselines to allow companies to see how they compare. Furthermore, if you are performing badly in some area you can query the data to find out what to change to help your environment. Taking this further, Microsoft have found that where one customer experiences specific problems, they can use this information to proactively warm others who may be getting to a similar situation, before the problem even arises. Whilst this has a tinge of big brother to it if i were a suspicious mind, the opportunity here is fantastic. This would clearly be a big reputational boost to Microsoft and its services, as well as a stability/reliability boost for its customers. Unless of course you are the customer that has to have the problem first ;-)
Finally, in a bit of a Columbo style "Just one more thing" moment a quick demo was performed using a USB stick to plug into a machine and from there he again managed to show his apps. This is similar to what Mars Office on a Stick is trying to do, but here it would be native to Microsoft. No further details were given but it was a slick show stopper demo.
One slight irritation was that they put up their roadmap of the System Centre suite, all the products are to go to the next version on 2010. Were they our replacement for Zenworks, we could face doing a rollout and a version upgrade as soon as the rollout completes. Having said that, we all know how their deadlines slip!
After this session, I am left feeling quite positive about where Microsoft see the future, they clearly recognise the problems Mars sees and are already looking to address them. It is like they have been stealing from my Client Architecture Framework document though!
"The Dynamic Desktop provides a consistent experience for users independent of device or location".
Microsoft's belief is that now and in the future we should consider the client, the user not their device and we need to ask ourselves questions along the lines of how do we deliver applications and data to the user.
The next step was a quick demo of Application Virtualisation, so a .pptx was clicked on and Powerpoint was installed in the background in around 10 seconds. Pretty swish! They made an edit and saved it, they were then able to log in from another device and have the same file with the edit via VDI over Terminal Services gateway and so on. This works with the Vista Folder redirection I briefly mentioned in one of my earlier posts.
In Q3 the next version of the MDOP pack will be released and they highlighted that the product at launch was the fastest selling on Volume Licensing they have ever had. As Brian mentioned MDOP is only available via Software Assurance.
System Centre and it's add-ons were highlighted as the best way to provide and manage the dynamic desktop and Microsoft rightly argue that you should be able to use one tool to manage physical/virtual and client devices/servers. They claim to be providing this one stop shop.
Next up was a demonstration of Network Access Protection via Windows 2008, it showed how a device gets quarantined, remediation work is carried out (patch applied for example)and then the device is allowed to connect. The feature will allow you to set policies and do a check before implementation so you can understand the effect of any change. I guess this is much like the Resultant Set of Policy feature in AD GPO's.
Attached Knowledge Services was a good example of some innovative thinking. This is where all the System Centre suite report back to Microsoft (with no identifying info) the health of an environment, its make up and so on. This has then allowed Microsoft to create baselines to allow companies to see how they compare. Furthermore, if you are performing badly in some area you can query the data to find out what to change to help your environment. Taking this further, Microsoft have found that where one customer experiences specific problems, they can use this information to proactively warm others who may be getting to a similar situation, before the problem even arises. Whilst this has a tinge of big brother to it if i were a suspicious mind, the opportunity here is fantastic. This would clearly be a big reputational boost to Microsoft and its services, as well as a stability/reliability boost for its customers. Unless of course you are the customer that has to have the problem first ;-)
Finally, in a bit of a Columbo style "Just one more thing" moment a quick demo was performed using a USB stick to plug into a machine and from there he again managed to show his apps. This is similar to what Mars Office on a Stick is trying to do, but here it would be native to Microsoft. No further details were given but it was a slick show stopper demo.
One slight irritation was that they put up their roadmap of the System Centre suite, all the products are to go to the next version on 2010. Were they our replacement for Zenworks, we could face doing a rollout and a version upgrade as soon as the rollout completes. Having said that, we all know how their deadlines slip!
After this session, I am left feeling quite positive about where Microsoft see the future, they clearly recognise the problems Mars sees and are already looking to address them. It is like they have been stealing from my Client Architecture Framework document though!
The 5 pieces of MDOP
This session was a quick runthrough of the 5 (soon to be 6) products that are available through MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack)
I guess the first thing to note is that MDOP is only available to customers that buy Software Assurance, which is Microsoft's version of the maintenance contract. It looks like relatively good value and seems to be the resting place of products that Microsoft have recently acquired
Desktop Error Monitoring is the first product, which allows a company to collect all the Dr. Watson error events from the desktops that are sent to Microsoft and analyse them. This works well with the second tool which is branded DaRT (Diagnostic and Recovery Tool) which you may have heard of as Winternals prior to Microsoft buying it. This allows centralised diagnosis of blue screen type events, and recovery in software related crashes. Useful where desksiders aren't available!
Advanced Group Policy Management isn't particularly relevant to us today, but when we start using Active Directory for our desktops this could well be critical, as it allows auditing and workflow for any policy changes. Seems to me that this should be in the core product though...
Asset Inventory Service (AIS) is a 'cloud based' inventory service that could be really useful for those hard to reach devices (salesforce laptops!), although when I spoke to the product manager he seemed a bit stumped on how you'd actually get the client onto the machines in the first place. Seems like a fairly large oversight to me! This product used to be known as AssetMetrics
Last and most interesting of all was Application Virtualisation (formerly SoftGrid), which is the application virtualisation technology. Loads more to discuss in up and coming sessions so I'll just say that this product is aimed at Application to Application isolation, and doesn't address Application to Operating System isolation, which is where the sixth product will come in (Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation, formerly Kidaro)
I guess the first thing to note is that MDOP is only available to customers that buy Software Assurance, which is Microsoft's version of the maintenance contract. It looks like relatively good value and seems to be the resting place of products that Microsoft have recently acquired
Desktop Error Monitoring is the first product, which allows a company to collect all the Dr. Watson error events from the desktops that are sent to Microsoft and analyse them. This works well with the second tool which is branded DaRT (Diagnostic and Recovery Tool) which you may have heard of as Winternals prior to Microsoft buying it. This allows centralised diagnosis of blue screen type events, and recovery in software related crashes. Useful where desksiders aren't available!
Advanced Group Policy Management isn't particularly relevant to us today, but when we start using Active Directory for our desktops this could well be critical, as it allows auditing and workflow for any policy changes. Seems to me that this should be in the core product though...
Asset Inventory Service (AIS) is a 'cloud based' inventory service that could be really useful for those hard to reach devices (salesforce laptops!), although when I spoke to the product manager he seemed a bit stumped on how you'd actually get the client onto the machines in the first place. Seems like a fairly large oversight to me! This product used to be known as AssetMetrics
Last and most interesting of all was Application Virtualisation (formerly SoftGrid), which is the application virtualisation technology. Loads more to discuss in up and coming sessions so I'll just say that this product is aimed at Application to Application isolation, and doesn't address Application to Operating System isolation, which is where the sixth product will come in (Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation, formerly Kidaro)
Content as a Service (CaaS)
Way behind on my blogging so I'll keep this one relatively brief
My first session of the week was all about the documentation that MS provides for the System Center suite. Pretty dry stuff, but some interesting nuggets could be found
"SuperFlows" offer a much more interactive way of understanding how the product should/could work, and is being integrated with the troubleshooting tools - If this type of documentation takes off then I see a lot of benefit for GTS style solutions here. Also nice is the ability to extract the documentation (e.g. visio docs) and annotate it with our own specific configuration information (server names etc).
see http://www.myITforum.com/absolutevc/?v=834 for more info and an interview with Mr. SuperFlow
I guess the only problem I see here is that this kind of in-depth documentation takes time, and we'll increasingly see product functionality released with limited (or no) documentation. I guess we may need to seek out the developer blogs more and more just to understand how to use products we've bought! The cynic in me is thinking about how this drives consultancy revenue
My first session of the week was all about the documentation that MS provides for the System Center suite. Pretty dry stuff, but some interesting nuggets could be found
"SuperFlows" offer a much more interactive way of understanding how the product should/could work, and is being integrated with the troubleshooting tools - If this type of documentation takes off then I see a lot of benefit for GTS style solutions here. Also nice is the ability to extract the documentation (e.g. visio docs) and annotate it with our own specific configuration information (server names etc).
see http://www.myITforum.com/absolutevc/?v=834 for more info and an interview with Mr. SuperFlow
I guess the only problem I see here is that this kind of in-depth documentation takes time, and we'll increasingly see product functionality released with limited (or no) documentation. I guess we may need to seek out the developer blogs more and more just to understand how to use products we've bought! The cynic in me is thinking about how this drives consultancy revenue
Users
It's been two days since we explored the strip and my feet still haven't forgiven me! One of the good things that came from our day of exploration was our discovery of one of the new 'chocolate lounges' here in Vegas. Naturally we decided to investigate!
We met the team of associates that run the Ethel chocolate lounge and asked them about the tools they used. As in our DOE session we found that IT is peripheral to their ways of working. The shop has a small workspace out back that is the office/storage area, and their we found a lonely looking SDS2000 laptop that the manager uses for email and MarsWeb access. Sametime was a novelty for them, as was the realisation that the GTS offered 24x7 support and could unlock their accounts!
On the non-IT side the store was fairly busy which was great to see - a fairly even mix of people buying chocolates to take away and groups enjoying chocolate drinks and fondue in store
Virtualisation 360
This session was all about what virtualisation is and Microsoft's view of the future. It had some great slides so I wont go into too much detail here.
Key points:
Key points:
- Prediction that in 5years time 75% of all servers will be virtual.
- The recent Kidaro acquisition allows MS to provide seamless windows for applications (like Citrix) whereas currently they can only provide full desktop sessions.
- System Centre Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) can do snapshots of virtual machines and restore to a different host in the event of failure. It will be possible to do the same with applications using SCDPM and MS Application Virtualisation.
- Heavy pushing of System Centre and its components as the one stop shop to manage physical and virtual as well as client and server, regardless of OS, Virtual host, hardware vendor etc.
- Different models of providing services to the end user (this could be part of my solution space for the Client Architecture Framework). Refer to the slides for further info.
- MS Assessment and Planning 3.0 - updated infrastructure tool to assess both server and client environments, it will tell you which servers could be virtualised and what applications for client devices. It generates a nice report with lots of graphs. It sounds like an interesting tool but they didn't go into how it makes those recommendations.
So that was all of my sessions for Tuesday, I'm now off to the keynote for Wednesday which is all about 'Managing the dynamic desktop'. Should be good!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Session Change
Next I was due to go to the Get IT Faster session, as soon as they got to the agenda I realised it was not relevant. The brief pitched it as enabling deployment and patch management, they key thing it missed off was using Dell's software for Dell Servers.
So I ducked out and went to the exhibition hall. i spent some time talking with Quest (Provision Networks division) which is all about their VDI solution and using it to make your corporation greener. They gave me a tshirt and if I wear it I can win a prize.
Yep, I wont be winning that prize!
I talked with some of the System Centre consultants and they confirmed that any existing MSI we have packaged for apps via Zenworks can be imported into SCCM no problem so that is good. They seemed iffy on whether OS builds for non-windows would be on the development path thought. This seemed surprising after Bob Muglia had pushed the products for managing a heterogeneous environment so much. I guess there is still a difference between managing your environment and creating it.
I noticed that some of the snacks provided were Mars ones and that this snickers had some alternative labelling:
I chatted to some of the Citrix guys to get an update on some things and got a nice sticker for my laptop from VMWare.
Real World System Centre Successes
This was a presentation by 1E and was largely a sales pitch for their products than a discussion of real world success.
key figures:
key figures:
- Dell saved $1.8m per year on 50k PCs using Nightwatchman to power down PCs and monitors
- Verizon saved $1.3m on energy and $9.5m using the zero touch deployment technologies for 85k machines. Their deployments went from 6hrs per machine for Cloned HDD to 0.8hr with 1E products integrated into System Centre.
- 1E stated that ROI is generally achieved on all their products within the first 3-6 months.
They are adding multicast with failover to their Nomad product in Q3.
Launched PXE Lite 1.6 via this session. this has better technology to deal with branch offices and for re imaging.
1E are concerned with global warming, they showed that IT is responsible for 2% of man made CO2 (4% in USA) which is equivalent to the airline industry. Of that 2%, 39% is due to PCs and monitors being left on unnecessarily. This ties into some of their power management products.
By this point I have to say I was more than a little underwhelmed, they they launched Shopping 3.0. This product is essentially a web portal that IT can publish to end users. It works similar to other online shopping sites and allows a self service approach to end user requests. For example, if I wanted a new application I would log in and select it, the web site has the ability to charge if a license is required, or offer a rental period (ideal for project teams who may need short term access but not a dedicated license - this allows the organisation to minimise license purchases). Shopping 3.0 will then either complete the request, or pass it on to an approver by a workflow email. The approver can then choose to deny or accept. If accepted, Shopping will deploy the application via SCCM. All without any interaction from IT. The user can even login and check the progress of their order.
Shopping 3.0 can also be used to give access to file shares, group memberships, Active Directory objects/permissions/resources and so on.
Furthermore, over time it will email the user to ensure they still need the application and if they do not can uninstall the application (via SCCM) and ensure the license is then available for other users. In our environment this would be a great assett as many people change roles, but rights are not removed and applications rarely uninstalled. We would have the potential to save license costs, GTS costs and effort and streamline the process for our end users.
I was amazed that they presented this product last, I had seen 20 or so people leave before then but this was clearly their show stopper.
Boozy Firemen
I noticed this in the fire hose connection cabinet outside my room...
Does this mean the fireman/woman will rush to my aid as they have been bribed with beer, or will I die whilst they have a quick drink?
I did try the cabinet to check if it was locked and it was, so no idea how it got in there.
Colin's Bag
Colin asked me to get him a bag if I could for his laptop. I managed to get you this one...it ties in with the company's sustainability theme too!
Only kidding, the conference bag is perhaps more your style...
Introduction to System Centre Mobile Device Manager
This was a pretty interesting lecture and gave me a great overview of the product. Microsoft only released this product at the beginning of April (in this guise). They had some research from MED Finance that predicts that from 2006-2011 mobile messaging will grow 2.3x, however mobile corporate data access is predicted to grow 5.4x it's existing user base. This is where they see the key driver for mobile devices.
System Centre Mobile Device Manager(SCMDM) enables Windows Mobile 6.1 (shortly to be released) devices to be managed much the same as a PC or laptop. They can join the domain and have GPO's enfoced and so on. This allows admins to do things like:
System Centre Mobile Device Manager(SCMDM) enables Windows Mobile 6.1 (shortly to be released) devices to be managed much the same as a PC or laptop. They can join the domain and have GPO's enfoced and so on. This allows admins to do things like:
- Disable the camera
- Prevent writing to external storage
- Full device encryption
- OTA provisioning and boot strapping (yes even fresh from the box the end user can do this with no IT staff input giving them a fully compliant corporate IT build still, all via a customisable self service webpage)
- OTA software distribution (based on WSUS)
- Mobile VPN with session persistence (great for when you go through a tunnel on the train!)
- Application control and denial
- Remote wipe or block (i.e. someone knows where they left their device and can retrieve it but needs it to be temporarily blocked to stop misuse)
This is again configured via a System Centre snap-in and the service is provided by 3 server roles: Enrollment Server, Device Management Server and Mobile VPN Server (in DMZ).
There is a dependency on having Active Directory in the organisation.
There is a plan to do other device OS's in the future (such as RIM/Palm/Symbian but no timescales as yet as they are having some licensing discussions with those relevant rights holders.
All in all SCMDM looks to be aninteresting project and certainly an area we may want to investigate further should we be using SCCM in the organisation.
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