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Microsoft System Center Family


What is Microsoft System Center? What does it do? How much does System Center cost?

These, and more, are questions I get at work on a regular basis both from customers and our internal sales guys so I’m going to try and clear it up a little here if I can..

The System Center family helps you to manage physical and virtual environments across data centers, desktops and devices and includes:

Configuration Manager (SCCM)

Operations Manager (SCOM)

Data Protection Manager (DPM)

Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

System Center Essentials (SCE)

I was going to put together one post for the whole family, but it was turning into a huge, unwieldy beast so I’ve broken it down into separate posts for each family member, links are above..(not all the posts are available yet but please bear with me!)

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SQL 2010: Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2008


It’s the 2nd Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference and we’ve already got info on SQL 2010 (Killimanjaro) thanks to the wonderful Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet !!!

Despite SQL 2008 only just being in the price files for customers to buy, the SQL team are revealing details on the next incarnation, SQL 2010 codename Killimanjaro. Preview builds will be around in the first half of 2009, and then SQL Server 2010 will be available in the first of the following year.

“Kilimanjaro is set to include self-service analysis tools (codenamed “Gemini”) that Microsoft is saying will allow information workers to better “slice and dice data and create their own BI (business intelligence) applications and assets to share and collaborate on from within the familiar, everyday Microsoft Office productivity tools they already use.”” We will also see further add-ins to Excel as well as deeper Sharepoint integration, making it esaier for users to  share their own BI analyses.

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HTC Diamond vs iPhone


I’ve got an HTC Diamond,  which of course draws a number of comparisons to the iPhone. I have to say that I can’t think of any real reasons not to choose the HTC Diamond.

Yes, the iPhone come with 8/16GB compared to the Diamond’s 4GB, but really-when do you need more than that? I’ve got an old school 40GB iPod that I’ve still not filled to even 50% yet..and my music collection, if all digitized) would fill over twice that I reckon yet still I’m more than happy with the 4GB my Diamond offers me. I’ve got plenty of albums on there along with a crazy number of pictures of my son AND various documents for work (excel, word, pdf etc), still with GB’s of room!

The styling of the HTC Diamond with it’s big screen and sleek, shiny black casing make it at least as attractive as Apple’s alternative. We could get stuck in debating the variances of design for days and never get anywhere so let’s move on. Let’s move on to the “Things I can’t believe the iPhone doesn’t do” section; these are all major omissions but not always well known….

The iPhone doesn’t include/support:

Video camera
MMS (Picture Messaging)
Copying & pasting
SMS (text message) forwarding
File transfer via bluetooth
Being used as a modem, connecting to a laptop to give internet access.

Of these, certainly MMS and Bluetooth file transfer are available in even the most basic handsets these days..I reckon it must take more effort to NOT include these features! 🙂

The lack of copy & paste functionality and it’s inability to forward text messages also prevent it from making any real impact in the business world.

Another element I love which pits it against the iPhone, is the fact that you don’t really need to use the stylus. I can navigate menus, turn features on/off and even compose emails and text messages, all without the stylus 🙂

http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/05/htc_diamond_vs.html

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Microsoft OCS 2007 R2-New Version!


Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 is a great product..it really paves the way for a truly connected, more efficient, easier to live in world of business.

**Update** New features announced by Microsoft! See my post here

There will be a new version announced in November 2008 and released in January 2009, this will be Office Communications Server 2007 R2and one major difference will be it’s transition to a 64bit ONLY platform a la Exchange 2007. This version will transpose your voicemails to text so you can still access them even if in a meeting (or the quiet car of a train..) among other new features.

OCS 2007 R2 will also have more Telephony style features including the ability to hunt groups…

There will then be a completely new version-OCS 2009/2010 (probably 2010)-released to coincide with the availability of Office 14. This along with the expected release of Sharepoint 2010, will help bring a more unified feel to the Office family. It is also expected that this new version will contain inbuilt translation services so if you receive an email in say Spanish, Exchange can read it back to you in English 🙂

I’ve seen on The UC Guy’s blog via Mary Jo Foley’s post over at ZDNet that there are more new features expected in OCS 2007 R2 including:

“..a telephony queue system should be included, and will give people dialing in to the system, access to a touchtone menu to have their calls forwarded to the right department/person and so on.”

I can also say that there will be a Boss/Admin console..

Here are some links to my other OCS 2007 related posts:

Tanjay-OCS 2007 Phones

Unified Communications Demo

Video Demo of OCS 2007 R2 Features

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Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) 2008


This year’s PDC 2008 is going to bring with it a whole host of new things for the industry from Windows 7 advancements, cloud computing updates, new projects and more. I’m going to use this post as a central repository for the various different bits of information that we will see.

One of the new things that the PDC 2008 will reveal is “Project Velocity“, Microsoft’s main memory distributed caching framework which was “built to meet the performance, scale, latency, and availability requirements of large scale enterprise and web applications”.

“Oslo” is also present at the PDC 2008. There are 5 sessions around Oslo which is a family of new technologies to enable “data-driven development and execution of services and applications.” It “provides a language for creating schemas, queries, views, and values” and “uses schematized data stored in the “Oslo” repository to drive the development and execution of applications and services”.

A link that shows all the sessions is available here.

There’s a whole host of things being revealed at the PDC this year, here are links ot my other PDC 2008 related posts:

Silverlight for Mobile

Silverlight 2

What is a Bluehoo?

Microsoft Strata-Cloud OS?

Four Softies and a Pizza Guy

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Microsoft Windows 7-Parallel Processing


Windows 7 is Microsoft’s next hotly anticipated release and there is now information that changes will be made to help it support Parallel Processing.

Microsoft have already stated that deep-level changes between Vista & Windows 7 will be get to a minimum as a way to ensure driver and application compatibiity; and if they pull it off,  Windows 7 will have a much better start to life than poor old Vista 🙂

The downside to this is that they can’t play around with Win32 (Windows Core) too much, and that is going to limit what can be down with regards to Parallel Processing. However, at this year’s PDC (Professional Developers Conference), there is a session entitled “Parallel Symposium: Addressing the Hard Problems with Concurrency” and the session decription contains the phrase “Hear about the key architectural changes Microsoft is making to Windows to enable the efficient execution of parallel software.”, which shows the Redmond giant has clearly got something up it’s sleeve.

Many thanks to Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet for this info. She’s also got some words from Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer as to what’s on the drawing board.

Again, anyone attending the PDC please feel free to leave some comments if you hear anything blog worthy!

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Microsoft Viral Videos


Microsoft’s viral ad videos can be great fun..(and informative too) so I’m gonna try and collect as many as I can into this post…so we’ve all got a central place for them..

Let me know which is your favourite!

**New Video** for PDC 2008

Shoe Circus-Seinfeld Vista Ad 1

New Family-Seinfeld Vista Ad 2

I’m A PC 1

I’m A PC 2

I’m A PC – Steve Ballmer

Bill Gates-Last Day Video Diary – This one is truly brilliant! I think this is my fave video of the lot..

Microsoft UK did a set of 4 videos called “The Office Values” which featured Ricky Gervais as David Brent, here they are:

The Office Values 1

The Office Values 2

The Office Values 3

The Office Values 4

This video was taken 100% seriously by some people out there and used as another excuse to have a pop at Microsoft, but I’m pretty sure it’s tongue is very firmly in it’s cheek:

Vista SP1

This video is from the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2008, which was over in Houston.  I was there this year but I only thought to record this after it had happened (typical!) and this is the only clip I can find on Youtube:

Alison “A Fresh” Watson

Bit of trivia for you, I very nearly accidentally tripped up Alison Watson over in Houston at the expo! I wonder what I’d be doing now if that had happened?!

Thought I’d add the EBS Pimp My Infrastructure vid here too

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Microsoft EBS 2008-Big Pimpin’!


Microsoft Essential Business Server 2008 has got it’s own “cool” funny viral video, you can see it here.

This video is really good..funny, well made and gets the point across. Despite that, I think my favourite part is the completely serious (?) discalimer at the end!

There’s another great video about Office MLK’s that HP showed me, but I can’t get a copy of it or a link to it anywhere. I’ll keep trying but if there are any HP workers that can hook me up, drop a comment pleeaase!

Again, got this from Matt McSpirit

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Steve Ballmer is in love?


Steve Ballmer says “IT Pros, IT Pros IT Pros…..and I say I love IT Pros!”

In an attempt to show he isn’t just into Developers, The Ballmernator gave a rousing cry of the above at the London TechNet event yesterday. A video of his speech can be seen here. (Found via Curious George’s Blog).

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Microsoft Zune on Windows Mobile 7?!


Everyone’s favourite CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday confirmed that the Zune software will be available on Windows Mobile 🙂

This is the more likely conclusion to the “Zune Phone” rumours, so while we won’t be seeing a Microsoft branded handset, we will have the awesomeness of the Zune on our WinMo devices. Here in the UK, Zune’s are pretty much just a great sounding myth so this should give me a chance to leave the ipod at home once and for all!

Steve gave no word on timescale, but could this be the “new Media Player” expected in WinMo 7?!

I discovered this over at Engadget.

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