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:

• 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:

• 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.

Mat's thoughts on the keynote with Bob Muglia

Today the first session was the keynote with Bob Muglia one of MS's Senior VPs.
The key things I took away are:

• Demo of System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) that showed its ability to do pre-OS (what we tend to call bare metal) install by configuring both the BIOS (to enable virtualisation) and RAID. Both core functionality for server distributions.
• SCCM will soon have the ability to multicast, better aiding network distribution without clogging the pipes.
• Early benchmarking of Hyper-V shows it to be pretty competitive with a v1 release with VMWare ESX which has had a couple of years headstart. Obviously they didn't state who paid for the benchmarking and it's independence or not, but interesting all the same.
• System Centre Virtual Machine Manager was released as a Beta. A very interesting product that can manage both Hyper-V and VMWare virtual environments from the one console. The only product current available to do this on the market now.
• Whilst Hyper-V can move virtual machines, it does require downtime albeit brief. VMWare today can do this with none. Microsoft have a live migration working in the lab and will be introducing it in the future.
• Next up, Cross Platform extensions for SCCM were announced that allow for the management of SUSE/Red Hat/Solaris/HPUX etc. Again allowing for an investment in one product (SCCM) to enable companies to manage their entire infrastructure environment.
• Finally, that we are all heroes for doing the jobs we do, tying into the Windows 2008 launch in Feb and the use of David Bowie's song. I for one have always known I'm a legend ;-)