Apr 3, 2007 | blog
Probably the longest day of the conference, the middle day starts early and ends late! The main party is still going on outside, and I just got back from a pretty good walk around the Grand Cypress resort. Lets see, what was today…
Starting with a nice continental breakfast, with Florida’s excellent fresh Orange juice, it got me ready for the keynote of the day – Attacker Trends and Techniques: An Update with presenter Steve Riley of Microsoft. Steve’s reputation on security & Microsoft is well deserved.
The first session (there were 5 today!), was New Features in PKI and Certificates for Longhorn and Vista by Brian Komar of IdentIT. I’ve been to many sessions presented by Brian, and he never fails to bring the complexities of PKI, Certificates, and Security into sharp focus that’s easy to understand. Vista/Longhorn has significant improvements in the handling of certificates that address many user requests.
Session two was Reimaging the File Share: Automating and Provisioning Secure Business Data Shares with Dan Holme of Intelliem. Both Jon and I got a lot of ideas that we want to bring back and have worked into the project plan for next year (if we can’t squeak it in this year). Mainly to go back and pick up the user/group/permissions provisioning that we left on the table after our Windows Server 2003 upgrade & Active Directory implementation project in 2004. Lots of ideas for role-based scripted processes and procedures. One of the best sessions for practical application so far!
After a quick break, session three was lead by the ever-lively Mark Minasi of Minasi Research and Development. Titled Windows Vista Security: The Hidden Truth, Mark really dove into a number of reasons for Vista’s User Account Control and why it should be left in place. Also, demonstrated was how to automate legacy software compatibility.
Lunch was a buffet style of Italian classics, with a nice hour afterward to catch up on email and such before getting back into the sessions.
For Session four, attended the Using SharePoint Designer as a Workflow Tool hosted by David Gerhardt of 3Sharp. A fascinating tool, the usefulness was quickly demonstrated, and I am certain that this tool will be in my solution arsenal in the near future.
Last session (number five) was again with the irrepressible Mark Minasi. This time the topic was Name Resolution: DNS, WINS, and NetBIOS in Longhorn. True to his word, the mysteries of WINS and NetBT were unraveled. Another great entertaining, informative session. No wonder why Mark gets the rave reviews he does – he earns it.
Finally, the day was wrapped up with a fantastic Western theme (in Florida?) party with grilled steak, beans, and the whole works. They need a better beer selection (bring on the Sam Adams), but that’s the only thing I could find wrong with it all! Good music and fun networking with peers from around the US and the world. Any IT Pro (Windows OR Unix) should plan on attending one of the bi-annual Connections conferences if they can make it.
Two more days – one main conference day tomorrow, and one post-con course on Thursday. Then back home to the snow!
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, Office Connections, Exchange Connections, Mark Minasi, Brian Komar, Dan Holme, Steve Riley, David Gerhardt, IdentIT, 3Sharp, Intelliem, Minasi Research and Development
Apr 2, 2007 | blog
Another great day at the Windows Connections 2007 conference in Orlando, FL, at least for me. Got to a keynote, three interesting sessions and some time with Microsoft, just to chat.
This morning’s keynote was Exchange 2007: Getting to Know You presented by Tony Redmond of HP. Pretty good information, though it was kind of tilted to Exchange geeks (of which I’m not). It did set the stage for a session later in the morning.
Next was the Imaging Windows Vista session presented by Chris Henley of Microsoft. Talking through the progression of Microsoft imaging methods and technologies from MS-DOS 6.22 through Windows Vista (yes they had deployment tools for DOS). Creating and maintaining Windows Vista images will be much easier than it is today with Windows XP. Pretty cool too!
Mid-morning found me in The Unified Communications Technical Vision & Strategy session with Bob Williams of Microsoft. Bob walked us through Microsoft’s vision of what fully unified communications is and will be. I’d seen portions of this roadmap about two weeks ago at a local Microsoft IT Leadership Summit in Minneapolis. Very interesting… it’ll be fun to watch what happens in the telephony market later this year and in 2008. Big changes afoot.
After lunch I had a chance to sit down with some folks and provide some feedback on Office, Exchange, Windows, SharePoint, and Systems Management Server (I’m a big believer in SMS). It was fun, fast paced and lead to interesting discussions that never seemed to get finished in the time we had.
For the last session of the day, I choose What’s New in the 2007 Microsoft Office System? Client Feature Walkthrough hosted by Chris Avis, again of Microsoft. While Chris is a pretty good speaker, his enthusiasm of the product, and the unstructured nature of his presentation did not allow him to get as much info demonstrated in the time we had. He did cover a number of neat features of Outlook, Excel, OneNote, and a few Word features as well. Nifty stuff in Office 2007 for those that have not seen or worked with it yet.
Overall, a good experience; if you want a full list of the sessions available at the spring Connections 2007 conference, look here.
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, WinConnections, Chris Henley, Chris Avis, Bob Williams, Tony Redmond, Unified Communications, Unified Messaging
Apr 1, 2007 | blog
Good session so far! There are more features available in Windows SharePoint Service (WSS) 3.0 than I had realized. Lots of really neat things that you can do that I had previously believed was only available in the Office SharePoint Server 2007.
I had planned on setting up a virtual machine in the near future. This conference session only reinforces that plan. WSS is the basic glue for any real Microsoft based integrated productivity solution. Of course, that assumes that you buy into the entire Microsoft productivity strategy. That means, databases, messaging, office apps, client OS, server OS, backup, portal, web, etc… If one does buy in, it does work, and will impress.
At any rate, I’m looking forward to lunch in 30 minutes. Should be interesting, we’ll be eating at Hemingway’s here at the Hyatt Grand Cypress Resort. Nice place.
Technorati tags: Windows SharePoint Services, WSS 3.0
Mar 30, 2007 | blog
Well, I’ll be at the Connections 2007 conference next week. Hosted by Microsoft, Windows IT Pro magazine and Tech Conferences, Connections is a great networking resource for Windows, Exchange and Office technology professionals.
This particular event is being held at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, FL. Should be a good time, as well as a great event. If you were interested in learning more about the conference, it’s three main focused specialities are Windows, Exchange, and Office. There’s also a developer based conference held separately a week earlier.
I’ll be blogging the conference while there, and of course, Twittering about things all week. All Twitters going should give a shout-out for a meetup at the conference one evening.
Technorati tags: Windows Connections, Windows IT Pro
Mar 15, 2007 | blog
So why “D2” you ask? It stands for “Desktop 2.0”, which is of course, a play on Web 2.0. While there have been many predictions and suggestions, I want to take this opportunity and posit my opinion of where the corporate or enterprise desktop solutions should be heading. My poor coworkers have got to be tired of hearing my pitches and ideas on this by now!
In a nutshell, I believe Window Vista to be the last large-scale revision and release of the operating system. As such, corporations need to figure out whether they want to continue the upgrade cycle of Microsoft’s high-maintenance operating system. Or, choose to go a different path to secure their data, lower management costs of their client systems, and bring more areas of the business under the business continuity (disaster recovery) umbrella.
To accomplish this, businesses need to look at the pros and cons of both options and take a hard look at their computing needs. The solution for a manufacturing company that merely needs to track production, finance and sales does not have the computing requirements of, say an engineering firm where most of the employees require high-powered CAD/CAM software solutions.
The problem with the traditional desktop is not the initial cost for the hardware, installation, software licensing and so on. Its obviously the ongoing support costs, hardware replacement, service calls, and much more depending on how skilled your technical staff is.
In another world with the proper use of terminal services or Citrix server farms, data replication, thin clients, system virtualization, and load balancing, a company could eliminate or significantly reduce the reliance in traditional desktops and laptops. The key thing to focus on is not reducing cost so much as realizing that you can take control and secure your data. You can create an environment where all data is backed up at your central hub and backup locations that you currently use. (Just think of all those unsecured hard drives that aren’t backed up storing, in some cases, critical business data!) You can also reduce or eliminate the complexity of supporting the Windows operating system.
Yes, Microsoft has made great strides in managing and deploying the operating system, but you do know that you will need to deploy yet another server system to manage the licensing of Windows Vista – right? Did you know that the methods for deploying Vista is different than deploying Windows 2000 & XP? Yep, start planning a big upgrade budget, even if you choose to slipstream the OS, you’ll need to plan the deployment infrastructure out properly. (*Shameless plug* Contact me if you want some consulting done on this – its what I do as an Infrastructure Architect and Analyst 
).
There is a better way, and it doesn’t need to be the standard Windows desktop – also think about what Apple has been doing with the Mac lately, or Linux – several distributions have really made huge usability strides in the last few years. Do I have a chip on my shoulder regarding Vista – not really, but I think there are more solutions today than when Windows XP was fresh and new and the focus of everyone’s attention. I just think that the proliferation of web-based applications, increased bandwidth, robustness of terminal services, and the flexibility of virtualization, that there can be a simpler corporate environment than we have today.
Probably the longest day of the conference, the middle day starts early and ends late! The main party is still going on outside, and I just got back from a pretty good walk around the Grand Cypress resort. Lets see, what was today…
After a quick break, session three was lead by the ever-lively Mark Minasi of Minasi Research and Development. Titled Windows Vista Security: The Hidden Truth, Mark really dove into a number of reasons for Vista’s User Account Control and why it should be left in place. Also, demonstrated was how to automate legacy software compatibility.
