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| 03 Nov '08 - 16:07 | | news source ~ In-House Teched EMEA IT Pro 2008: Keynote
Teched EMEA IT Pro, the new name for EMEA's flagship event, previously called IT Forum, officially kicked off on Monday with a Keynote by Brad Anderson. A nice touch to the waiting time before the Keynote started, was that they had a DJ on stage mixing dance and hip hop music live, while a video stream was played on the big screen.Brad Anderson, general manager for the Management and Services division, started the Keynote called "Dynamic IT, Key to IT Efficiencies & Innovation". He emphasized that 2007 was a big year for Microsoft, releasing a lot of new significant products like System Center and the WS2008 platform.
In current IT practices, Microsoft recognizes these key priorities; Virtualization, Green IT, Cloud Services, Anywhere Access, Compliance and Business Intelligence. IT has to balance between driving down costs and delivering new business capabilities. Microsoft tries to deliver this both, under the "Do more with less" initiative.
Brad again noted that the Dynamic IT initiative is driving these solutions to deliver a dynamic datacenter, based on the four principles of "Unified and Virtualized", "Process-Led Model Driven", "Service-Enabled" and "User-Focused". This is wrapped in a IT maturity model called Infrastructure Optimization; a four stage model to describe the current status and ways of achieving a higher aspect of automation.
Alan Goodman, senior PM for VMM, was called to stage to demo Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008. He showed a System Center Operations Manager diagram view on a virtualized environment, running Hyper-V R2 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster, adding capabilities like Live Migration. Using VMM's feature called PRO Tips he showed that VMM can intelligently provide information on how to solve (upcoming) problems, and migrate a VM to another host, without any (user) downtime.
Brad continued about Microsoft's broad virtualization offerings. Server virtualization provided by Hyper-V, Desktop virtualization provided by Vista Centralized Desktop (formerly Kidaro -- now part of the MDOP offering), Application virtualization provided by App-V (formerly Softgrid) and Presentation virtualization provided by WS2008 terminal services.
Microsoft is confident that the virtualization "war" will be decided on by the management offering, and Microsoft is confident that System Center will make that difference.
The major announcements were that Windows Server 2008 R2 M3 (M3 milestone, beta) with live migration will be downloadable. Also announced was Hyper-V Server (which is free), System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is RTM, Application Virtualization (App-V, formerly Softgrid) 4.5 is RTM.
Brad compared VMware's offering against Microsoft solution, comparing what it costs to deploy and manage 5 hosts with multi-hypervisor management (not able to do with VMware), app management (not able to do with VMware), physical management, virtual management and hypervisor). In that case, Hyper-V and System Center will cost EUR 12.200,- while VMware VI3 and Virtual Center would cost EUR 38.700,- (VC 5.7K and VI3 33K).
The App-V team is working on the next version, which will include virtualization for server applications.
Brad talked about codename "Oslo" that will bring modelling to the management solution. A future was shown that you would define a model for a service/application and System Center would build the server (OS VHD, App-V application, etc) based on that model. More details will be disclosed on the Microsoft Management Summit next year, in Las Vegas.
Barry Shilmover, program manager for Cross Platform on the SCOM team, was invited to stage. He demo'd the new OpsMgr 2007 R2 which has cross platform extensions to manage Linux and Unix systems and appications. He also showed the new Service Level Reporting, displaying availability metrics on a DinnerNow application, which had components on both Windows and Ux platforms.
It was announced that System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 will have a public beta before the end of November.
Brad talked about Forefront. Forefront will build on System Center in te future, deploying SCOM or building on an existing SCOM infrastructure. He also talked about Windows Essentials Business Server 2008, which will be announced on November 12, 2008.
It was announced that Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 RC and Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 SP2 are available.
Brad continued on the next version of Windows Server 2008, the R2 version. The M3 beta build is available now. It has the following new features: Hyper-V R2, Live Migration and new RDP servcices. It will support ASP.NET on IIS on Server Core. Powershell 2.0 will be included and a Best Practices Analyzer will be integrated. Three other features: DirectAccess, BranchCache and Bitlocker to Go (for removable drives).
Justin Graham, senior PM for Windows Server/Win 7 team, was invited to stage. He demo'd the new R2 Branch Cache solution, to reduce bandwith between branch offices. Windows 7, build 6801 (PDC version) was used in conjunction with a build 6801 of Windows Server 7 Enterprise to show the caching principles.
Christian Petculescu, principal architect for the SQL team, was invited to stage. He demo'd SQL "gemini", loading million of rows into the "Gemini" GUI (looking like an Excel variant). It was lightning fast, on a regular PC. It seems to be something similar to using SQL analysis in Excel currently, but with a more intuitive and faster experience for the business user. The "gemini" engine handles the data, models and relationships, without the user to worry about it. Christian also demo'd using SQL analysis services and the Solution Accelerator for System Center Operations Manager -- utilizing PerformancePoint -- to drill down on operational data, and conclude where the root problem lies.
Brad continued about Microsoft's online proposition. Ranging from customer hosted, partner hosted to Microsoft hosted; MS online services, Windows Live and Live Mesh. Microsoft would like to enable the customers a choice where to host their applications, built by tools like .NET and Visual Studio.
Kayvaan Ghassemieh, senior PM for Exchange Online, was invited to stage to demo Exchange Online. A service provided by Microsoft in the cloud. The scenario he showed was moving mailbox and mailbox data to the cloud. Kayvaan took steps to sync the local Active Directory to the cloud, then starting a local Migration Tool on the customer premise, and moving the mailbox out.
Brad then talked about the new Windows Azure platform, as announced last week at the PDC. Building blocks like Live Services, .NET services, SQL Services, Sharepoint Services and Dynamics CRM Services are part of Windows Azure, giving IT pro's and developers a choice of hosting their applications on-premise or online, building them with the tools they already know; .NET and Visual Studio.