Microsoft’s premier and flagship IT event, Teched North America 2011, kicked off today with they “day 1 keynote”. Around 15 minutes before the keynote started, two DJ’s were on stage playing ‘Daft Punk / Tron’ alike music. Quite a change for Microsoft to start off their keynote this way, but the crowd loved it!

Microsoft executive Robert Wahbe started the keynote by noting that over 10,000 attendees are here representing 84 countries and that Teched this year offers 551 sessions and over 250 hands-on labs. The general theme for the keynote is about the consumerization of IT, where people carry multiple devices and expect to be connected everywhere, having their data available (through the cloud).

Robert rolled a video about a new solution under development from a partner where a medical device is connected to a Windows 7 tablet to perform ultrasounds. Images are stored in Windows Azure, and easily accessible. Due to the lower costs, ultrasound could come available in countries where today they wouldn’t have that. (more)

While Teched North America 2011 officially starts tomorrow, day zero or better known as the pre-conference day is done. Several hundreds of people attended these technical one-day workshops which varied on subject from System Center Configuration Manager 2012 previews to Windows Phone 7 development. The Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) is a massive venue, which has been colored blue to the Teched NA theme this year. Somewhere between around 10,000 attendees are expected to fill up the GWCC in the next 4 days.

Attendees who registered today found a flyer in their conference bag telling them that Teched North America 2012 will be held in Orlando, Florida next year in June. In the meanwhile crews were working on setting up the keynote (behind the scenes) for tomorrow morning, and ofcourse the expo floor. Just in time Microsoft released the official Teched app for Windows Phone 7 to guide the attendees to their sessions and rooms during the week. While everything seems to be perfectly organized, their might be a delay in the bus transport in the coming hours.

Teched NA 2011 is no doubt -the- year of the social media. Quite some people are already fiercely tweeting using the #msteched hashtag and this will probably increase even more in the next days (and might even become a trending topic on Twitter?). There are some talks on what to expect tomorrow and the days after, but one thing is sure: it’s going to be cloud, cloud, cloud! This is going to be an exciting week even if you can’t physically join!

Can’t get enough of all the Teched NA 2011 gossip? Follow us on Twitter for realtime updates!

We pretty much saw that one coming, or were we just hoping for it? In this year’s Teched North America 2011 conference bag, Microsoft posted a “Save the Date” flyer where they are announcing that Teched North America 2012 will be held in Orlando, Florida!

Teched North America has been in Orlando a few times, the last two times during 2007 and 2008. People that visited Teched Orlando in 2007 still remember the “budget” that Microsoft had before the ‘recession’ came; in 2007 Microsoft exclusively rented Universal’s Islands of Adventure for the thursday night for all the Teched attendees. Although the rain was pouring in the beginning of that evening, it was one of the best attendee parties up to date.

Or did we remember Teched Orlando because of the big announcements? Windows Server 2008! and Hyper-V! The keynote in 2007 was as much cool as the attendee party, because it featured a really cool Back to the Future movie with Christopher Lloyd live on stage.

Teched North America 2011 officially starts tomorrow. This year Microsoft is organizing their flagship IT event in Atlanta. But what if you couldn’t be onsite this year? Not a problem! Here’s a list of resources for you to stay virtually connected during the event.

Teched North America 2011 kicks off Monday morning in Atlanta, Georgia with a keynote from Corporate Vice Presidents Robert Wahbe and Jason Zander.  Watch it streaming online at 9 a.m. EDT, Monday, May 16.

Additionally, be sure to check the Virtual Press Room Monday morning for the press release and fact sheet. TechEd Online will feature all-day streaming coverage and live exec interviews throughout the event.

If you want the pre-event TechEd low-down, visit the TechNet Edge TechEd Countdown videos. Follow what the attendees are saying on Twitter by following the #MSTechEd hashtag. Ofcourse, you could also follow our analyst friends Mary Jo Foley and Steven Bink. And lust but not least, Techlog will be here to report live from the show floor. Be sure to follow our blog and twitter account for realtime updates!

Teched North America 2011 started off today with the pre-conference sessions. These full-day workshop offers in-depth study on a particular topic, which has been specifically developed to address the most relevant needs of today’s technology experts. Tech·Ed attendees pay an extra fee to attend these workshops - and receive seven hours of dedicated class time with a noted industry expert, lunch, and breaks.

Teched North America 2011 is being held at the Georgia Convention Center this year, in Atlanta. Microsoft is expecting thousands of IT professionals and developers for Microsoft’s flagship IT conference. Together with industry analyst like Mary Jo Foley, Steven Bink and others, Techlog will be reporting live from the conference — starting with the Keynote tomorrow.

What can we expect this week? Well, Mary Jo Foley has her predictions which you can read here. Personally I expect a lot of “Cloud” and strong focus on areas where Microsoft is in heavy competition; virtualization and phones. Robert Wahbe — Corporate Vice President of Server and Tools Marketing, which handles marketing for Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and Forefront security and identity products — is one of the keynote speakers so we also expect updates on SQL codename “Denali” and upcoming Cloud management tools such as System Center codename “Concero”. Stay tuned for our live keynote coverage tomorrow for the exact details.

In october to announce the availability of the Release Candidate (RC) of the Monitoring Management Pack (MP) for Windows Azure Applications (version 6.1.7686.0), which can be immediately deployed by customers running System Center Operations Manager 2007 and Operations Manager 2007 R2. As more customers adopt Windows Azure to develop and deploy application, Microsoft understands that integrating the management of those applications into their existing console is an important requirement. This management pack enables Operations Manager customers to monitor the availability and performance of applications that are running on Windows Azure.

Customers should head to the MP page on Microsoft Pinpoint to find more information on the MP, as well as download the bits. Customers who download the MP will be supported by Microsoft in their production deployments.To answer some immediate questions on the management pack and its capabilities:

Q. What does the Windows Azure Application MP do?
A. The Windows Azure Application MP includes the following capabilities:

• Discovery of Windows Azure applications.
• Status of each role instance.
• Collection and monitoring performance information.
• Collection and monitoring of Windows events.
• Collection and monitoring of the .NET Framework trace messages from each role instance.
• Grooming of performance, event, and the .NET Framework trace data from Windows Azure storage account.
• Change the number of role instances.

Q. Why is the Windows Azure Application Management Pack a Release Candidate (RC) and not RTW?
A. Microsoft has released this as an RC as they work to implement new monitoring scenarios in the cloud.

Q. When will the RTW version of the Azure Application Management Pack be available?
A. Microsoft expects to make it available in H1 CY2011

Q. Is this MP supported in production deployments?
A. Yes the Release Candidate of the Azure Application Management Pack will be supported for customers using it in production deployments.

It’s been a hell of ride, as they say. We started out early 2004 in dutch with only a few hits a month and a handful of RSS subscribers. Seven years later Techlog grew to a whopping 10.000+ unique visitors returning every month, more than 1000+ RSS subscribers and one of the premier places for news on Cloud, Virtualization and Management on the web — covering industry events like Teched and the Microsoft Management Summit live from the ground!

Today, we’re pleased to announce that we are changing our foundation. We’re switching to WordPress as the blog platform and moving to another hosting provider. This allows us to handle more traffic, add long awaited features to our site (fi: social media integration) and thereby serve you, our reader, better. As with every “makeover”; it’s going to take a few weeks to complete.

Stay tuned for a grand return in May 2011! We’ll launch just in time to cover Teched North America 2011 live from Atlanta..