Issue 24 of the Microsoft Architecture Journal focuses on virtualization. My paper, From Virtualization to Dynamic IT , has been published in this issue. My thesis: Virtualization is a critical infrastructure-architecture layer that is required for achieving higher IT-maturity levels, but several others...

Day 3 kicked off with a keynote by Ray Ozzie and several very cool demos on UI futures, what’s coming across some of the Bing features, and some stuff MSR is working on. There was also a good discussion of how concepts move from MSR, to Labs, then into the product groups. Next up was a very entertaining...

Day 2 at TechReady was packed with technical sessions, no keynotes. In the morning I attended a session on model driven development. Not yet an infrastructure architecture related technology but as I mentioned yesterday regarding System Center, Microsoft is investing in a big way in modeling. The “Oslo...

A new Security section has been added to the government site on Microsoft.com. The site consolidates a number of relevant tools, solutions, case studies, and links relevant to Public Sector organizations. Several of the solutions call for specific mentions here: Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC...

I’m liking this MS Press monthly free ebook program. Especially with my new Kindle DX! Last month it was the Terminal Services Resource Kit , this month it is two for OCS: Be sure to download these now, the offer only lasts for a short time (as in I waited too long to download last months and missed...

The Windows Server Division blog announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 is tracking with Windows 7 and both are planned to RTM in the second half of July with General Availability on Oct 22! That RTM date is earlier than I thought it would be, I was thinking late August. The more I dig into R2 the more...

The Terminal Services (now called Remote Desktop Virtualization) team has announced that the Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit eBook is available for free download for a limited time. You can register (LiveID required) here and download the eBook (~30MB). The 2008 resource kit books...

Today Microsoft made available the Microsoft SDL Process Template . This was announced over on the SDL Blog . Roger has some comments on it as well. The SDL Process Template is a free downloadable template for Visual Studio Team System that integrates the SDL directly into a customer’s software development...

Continuing the foray into social networking I started on a couple weeks ago, today’s topic is social bookmarking. For those who are even later to the game than I am, social bookmarking is basically a site or service that lets you tag and store your website bookmarks in a central location that is accessible...

Between MMS and TechEd there have been a lot of announcements on the virtualization and cloud computing front. First, over on the Virtualization Team Blog , Jeff provided the announcement and details around some new capabilities coming in Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 R2: 64 logical processor support...

So I’ve been using Seesmic Desktop as a Twitter and Facebook client for the last week or two. Very cool app built on Adobe Air. Today via @EverythingMS I heard about sobees , a .NET app that aggregates Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed (yeah!), and many other sources. I’ve only just started using it in the...

Microsoft has released Facebook for Windows Mobile . The application provides the following features: Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list. Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook. Send messages or call people in your Friends list. Manage your profile...

From the press release : “NASA and Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., released an interactive, 3-D photographic collection of internal and external views of the International Space Station and a model of the next Mars rover on Thursday, May 7. NASA and Microsoft's Live Labs team developed the online...

The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) have been updated for the Windows 7 RC build. I’ve been using a combination of the RSAT and the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Beta console on my Windows 7 machine to manage my Hyper-V lab machines and its been working very well so far. The main download...

There was a lot of buzz last week with Facebook’s Open Stream API announcement . There were many demos of applications leveraging the new API, one good one is Seesmic Desktop which I’ve been using as my Twitter client and now has Facebook integration. It's an Adobe AIR based application. On the home...

By now you’ve probably heard that the Windows 7 RC is available for download for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Unfortunately for me, my MSDN subscription expired in the last couple days #%$! and won’t be renewed for another day or two. Fortunately, with some help from a fellow subscriber, I will have...

MMS Day 1 Keynote: Bob Kelly, Microsoft corporate vice president, April 28, 2009, 8:30 am PT

Over on the Building Community One Brick at a Time blog, a new web site, TalkingAboutWindows.com was announced where senior Windows leadership and engineers (Jon Devaan, Mark Russinovich, many others) are interviewed. I just checked it out, looks like a pretty cool site.

There is updated desktop virtualization content at www.microsoft.com/vdi There are a couple of whitepapers and guides to help understand the various approaches and components of a virtualized desktop. Over the last few months VDI is an area I have been spending a lot of time in, particularly around the...

Two new books on Hyper-V have been released or coming soon. These are written by some of the most active members of the virtualization team and extended community inside Microsoft. Some of the authors I know personally and some I know by reputation from the hundreds of questions they answer every month...

Announced today over on the Virtualization Team Blog, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, the “stand-alone” version of Hyper-V will include Live Migration and host clustering capabilities. It will continue to be a free download. With support for the advanced feature set, this will open up a lot more...

Microsoft has created a new group within Microsoft Research called Cloud Computing Futures headed by Dan Reed , who has a long history in academia and is a former director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications . An interview with him about the new group was recently published here: ...

Microsoft Enterprise Search Goes Deep and Wide "Today at FAST forward’09 in Las Vegas, Microsoft provided a glimpse into the fruits of their efforts: FAST Search for SharePoint, a new search server that will add the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP to SharePoint. FAST Search for SharePoint...

Following up on yesterday's post, today an updated Azure Services Training Kit was released: The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform...

Two new documents were released recently that describe the new Hyper-V features in Windows Server 2008 R2 currently in Beta and how to implement them in a test environment. The first document details the much discussed Live Migration feature and the architecture behind it. The second is a step by step...