TechEd 09 - All over for another year!

We came, we saw, we geeked. TechEd 09, on the Gold Coast, has been run and won.


It's a hard life, but someone's got to do it. After our accommodation people stuffed up and double-booked us, they upgraded us to their sister hotel. It was a little further away, but a lot flasher. That's a shot from our room on the 27th floor.

We still were pretty close to the convention centre - only a 5 mins walk. You could easily see it from our balcony - it's the white-roofed building (centre-left) next to the Casino in this photo:


As far as the conference itself went, well, there's not much to say that hasn't already been said. I found it tremendously useful.The thing I like most about TechEd is the ability most times to hang around after a session finishes, and talk to the (very knowledgable) presenters and get some real one-on-one advice and questions. There were three areas in particular - Hyper-V, DirectAccess and TMG - where I was able to have a quick chat to the respective presenters, lay out an idea of our organisation, and get recommendations and ideas directly from them, which are specific to our environment. In a lot of cases, the presenters are either people who've worked on building the technology, or have a lot of experience in installing and configuring it in customer sites. In other words, they're the people who know it inside out. And the ability to tap directly into that knowledge for answers to our specific issues is a great opportunity.

SO - what were the main take-home points for me?

• Hyper-V Server. We're an ESX shop, and very happily so. However, ESX is very expensive. Hyper-V now offers the features that we care about, and does so for free. Sure, it can't do everything that ESX does. And ESX is better if you've got different VM guests (IE, linux, solaris, etc). But for us, a Microsoft shop with relatively low requirements, it looks like it can save us a considerable amount of money straight away, as well as continuing into the future. I want to seriously investigate what it would take for us to migrate from our current platform to Hyper-V as a priority.
• DirectAccess. I truly believe that this is going to change the way people think about remote access and corporate connectivity. I think it's going to challenge a lot of current mindsets, especially about corporate-vs-private, and the concept of "Work is something you do, not somewhere you go.". Sounds a bit philisophical? Maybe, but currently you might have a laptop. It's provided for you buy your employer. Therefore, it's a work laptop. You don't use it at home - it's for work. If you need to work from home, you connect it to your internet and fire up a VPN. Then you're working. With DirectAccess, whenever the laptop is turned on and can get an internet connection, you're connected to your corporate environment. So there's no longer that hard divide between work and personal. It becomes just a laptop - something you can use to access all your corp data whenever you want, from wherever. But it's also something that you can use for your own ends if you want. The concept of "connecting to the vpn, thus I'm in work mode" no longer implies. And I think those conceptual benefits far outweigh the technological benefits, actually.
• TMG / ISA. We were planning on installing an ISA firewall into our organisation soon, and then upgrading to a TMG server later in the peace. However, after seeing TMG beta3 working at TechEd, we've decided to go straight onto TMG instead of touching ISA at all. This means that we'll be running on beta software for a little while, but the presenter and everyone I spoke to about it certainly had no qualms about that. Indeed, Microsoft themselves have been using the beta code in their production environment now for some time, and have nothign bad to say. So that's an example of one area where we've changed our plans based on being able to talk directly to the people involved in the development of the software. And it's going to result in us being able to deliver a better service to the business, quicker, and more cost-effectively.
• Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2. Having been using Win7 RTM on my main computer for a couple of months now, I was already pretty sold on the benefits it can bring to the organisation. What surprised me was how much extra capability you unlock by having Server 2008 R2 at the back end. Technologies like BrancheCache have the ability to both reduce WAN utilisation, as well as increase performance for users in branch offices at the same time. It's easy to configure, seamless to the users, and it just works. And it's "free", all as part of Server 2008 R2. We'll be looking to upgrade our laptop fleet to Win7 as a priority, to take advantage of abilities such as BitLocker/BitLockerToGo and other security enhancements. Following that, our plan is to roll Win7 to all our desktops office-by-office, and perform rolling upgrades of our remote servers at the same time.
  

The remainder of the time was taken up by Sharepoint sessions (we're currently implementing Sharepoint, and they were valuable for gaining insight into the architecture of the platform, as well as how easily it can be enhanced through software like InfoPath to provide electronic form routing and workflow, and PerformancePoint to give integrated BI reporting), ForeFront Client Security, Windows Mobile, Office 2007/2010, Exchange and a large variety of others! Often Jeremy and I would find ourselves attending different sessions, and meeting up for lunch and afternoon tea to discuss what we'd just been going through.

All in all, another very successful 3 days. We've come away with a better understanding of the Microsoft roadmap and their overall vision on how their seperate systems all work together. We've come away with ideas on how to increase our assistance to the business, and how to allow our staff to be as productive as they can be by giving them the tools that they need to do their jobs. And we've come away with a solid set of ideas that will see us through the next 12 months, and probably beyond.

When you look at what we took away from last year's TechEd, and how we have either implemented already, or are most of the way through implementing the platforms that we identified as important to us, it's easy to see how much of an impact this event has on the firm. I look forward to looking back on this year's event in 12 month's time, and seeing where we are then!

TechEd 09 - Locked and Loaded

This morning we received the green light for our TechEd registrations from our HR Dept. So I jumped straight onto the site, and completed my registration! I can assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with THIS :). Now it's all locked in and paid for. Can't wait. If it's anywhere near as good as last year's conference, it'll be well worth our time.

For instance, our experiences at last year's conference led directly to our current OCS implementation, which has been very well received by the staff, and is starting to transform the way we deliver our internal training sessions. Not only is the LiveMeeting functionality saving us real money in reducing the need for travel between our 20 sites (and growing!) spread across Oz, but it's allowing us to improve the quality and consistency of our training by being able to record the LiveMeeting sessions. This gives the presenters a chance go back through their sessions and evaluate their performance and improve their presenting skills. It saves us further money and time by allowing that recorded session to be made available across our intranet, so that new staff or staff who missed the original training session can replay the session at their leisure. Not only does this improve the consistency of the training that is being delivered, but it saves the presenters time as they only need to present the training once or twice, and it can be recorded and replayed as many times as necessary. Initial cost savings in reduced travel expenditure, ongoing cost and time savings for re-delivering the training, and improved quality of the training material - quite a win for the firm right there!

Later this year we will be looking to build on this success by upgrading our OCS implementation to the latest R2 version, and are even investigating the possibility of using it as our firm-wide VoIP solution. That last step is still a fair way off, but it speaks of the impact that this single platform is having within the firm, and it all started for us at TechEd 08.

This year I'll be putting a lot of focus into the Windows Client/Server track, as I believe that the Windows 7 / Server 2008R2 combination is possible of delivering real benefits to our firm that will equal hard dollar savings. Office System, UC and Mobility tracks will also get a fair workout, as they did last year. Technology like BranchCache and the more efficient file copy mechanisms will help us to make better use of our WAN links. DirectAccess will reduce complexity for our users, and give them access to all their data wherever they are. We have budgeted in the coming 12 months for projects around Exchange and Forefront, Forefront Client Security, and ISA server - all platforms that I'm hoping to delve into at TechEd and get the inside scoop on. Not to mention already-planned upgrades to Office 2007 across the firm, and other little tricks like that that should serve to show how busy our next 12 months is going to be!

In fact, I was very tempted by the pre-conference seminar on Sharepoint Workflow, and tried to stretch our budget to cover that day as well. Unfortunately our training budget has been somewhat pruned over late, and I had to give that a miss. Which is a shame, since we are rapidly approaching our Go! date for our current Sharepoint implementation project, and I believe that one of the real big impacts it will have within the firm is the capability to drive workflow processes. Even for simple things such as absence leave requests and accounts reimbursement forms, the ability to run those processes via a standardised workflow within Sharepoint will massively improve the service that various departments in the firm can provide. And I think that pre-conf seminar would have given us a great grounding in what we could do with the platform when we launch it. So if anyone wants to shout me a free ticket to that day, feel free to get in touch!!! :)

Tech Ed 09 - 2 months to go, and counting down!

Coolest. Bribe. Ever.

Well, Microsoft have today announced that all paying attendees of Tech.Ed 09 will receive a free HP Mini 2140 netbook as part of their registration. More info, as always, at Jeff Alexander's blog , as well as at ZDNet.

Unsurprisingly, I think this is a great idea! Not only does it give attendees another great reason to go, but it will let Microsoft possibly cut down on the amount of physical media that they need to provide, as a lot of content can be pre-loaded onto the netbooks. So not only will attendees gain instant access to content from the conference, but it gives us all a chance to go a bit green.

Microsoft will be including a copy of Windows 7 on the device, which will hopefully be the final, RTM code. Again, this will be another great opportunity to get under the hood of the band new OS, which most, if not all, conference attendees will be eagerly awaiting. I've been running both the Beta and RC versions of Win7 for 6 months now, and have been very impressed.

All I have to do now is chase up the Powers That Be to ensure that, hell or high water, my registeration gets paid and confirmed!!! :) Roll on September!