NorthEast Technology Landscape

Product\Beta releases – Office & Sharepoint 2010 betas revealed and more!

mfiorina — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:31:26 GMT

It’s been a busy November from Redmond so far, with the TechEd Europe conference at the beginning of the month, and the Professional Developers Conference 2009 held this past week. Even being a Microsoft employee whose job it is to keep track of our enterprise product portfolio, it can be hard to keep track of all of the activity! As such, here’s your summary.

The biggest news for most folks is the public availability of both the Office 2010 client and Sharepoint 2010 betas.

http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2009/11/16/announcing-office-2010-beta-availability.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/11/18/sharepoint-2010-public-beta-is-now-available-for-download.aspx

So go on out and get them whenever you’re ready!

Additionally, in case you missed it, Exchange Server 2010 reached public availability a few weeks back: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453096.aspx

On the security side, Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (the rebranded next-generation of ISA Server) was released: http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2009/11/17/forefront-threat-management-gateway-2010-release.aspx, as well as Forefront Protection for Exchange 2010: http://blogs.technet.com/forefront/archive/2009/11/09/forefront-protection-2010-for-exchange-server-launches.aspx

Cloud computing is all the rage (rightly so), and we announced the immediate availability of the Windows Azure CTP (use it free for a couple of months before launch on February 1st, 2010). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ . For mail security in the cloud, we have the latest version of Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (formerly EHS and Frontbridge before that): http://blogs.technet.com/forefront/archive/2009/11/20/new-release-of-forefront-online-protection-for-exchange.aspx

Obviously a flurry of activity, but lots of good stuff – I encourage you to at least scan the blog posts linked so that you can see what is new.

Interoperability at Microsoft

mfiorina — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:55:38 GMT

I find that, in most of my conversations with customers, there still exists the prevailing notion that Microsoft offers a closed system and doesn’t offer much value with respect to interoperability. While I won’t argue that this may once have been the case, I would like to call attention to the work that we’re doing in a number of areas that could change many minds. Within the past few years, I have seen tremendous efforts being put forth by the product teams in Redmond to ensure that Microsoft customers have a wealth of options with respect to interoperating with existing or future third-party systems. While I am not privy to intent (and will leave speculation to others), it is my own personal view that the message has gotten through: Microsoft, while a significant player in enterprise environments, is not the *only* option. We owe it to our customers to ensure that the products we deliver can interoperate effectively in order to maximize their value. This provides the maximum flexibility and choice, two pillars of Microsoft’s value proposition these days, whether you’re talking about PC hardware or Software + Services.

To learn more about our stance and our resources with respect to Interoperability, the best place to start is here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/

You’ll notice a link to the official blog on the topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability

if you start to list all of the significant efforts and announcements over the past few years, you’ll notice a pattern emerging:

-Microsoft\Novell partnership involving shared IP and solution development across Suse Linux\Windows, the virtualization stack, and Silverlight

-Licensing Active Sync to third parties for Exchange messaging interoperability, of which significant competitors have taken advantage (Apple & Google)

-Microsoft & Red Hat joint technical support agreement with respect to virtualization platforms

-Opening up the PST specification for third party development

-Windows Azure supporting third party application development

-Investment in the Apache Software Foundation

-Microsoft acquired TeamPrise today, strengthening our story with respect to Java & Visual Studio integration

-Ratification of the Open XML file format as an international standard

-Save as PDF functionality in Office 2007

The list goes on…

Overall, I hope that this post will provide some insight and prompt some thought as to our efforts and the traditional view of Microsoft as a close-minded and closed-source giant. We still protect our intellectual property, but strive to develop solutions that ‘play nicely’ with those other products and technologies that exist in the marketplace.

Lest you thinking that I’m alone in this line of thinking, please refer to this well known blogger’s post on the topic: http://www.winsupersite.com/server/interop.asp

If you read Paul with any consistency, you’ll know that while he focuses his attention on Microsoft, he doesn’t pull any punches when he believes that we’re headed down the wrong path.

Windows 7 Information, Server 2008 R2, Office 2010 Tech Preview, and other goings on at Microsoft

mfiorina — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:33:00 GMT

So, as you have probably heard, the code for Windows 7 went gold last week. I am enjoying it in its full glory on my 2 year old laptop (membership has its privileges, as they say), and while the general public won’t see it until October 22nd, our business customers have a number of avenues of distribution available very soon. See this post from the Windows Team Blog for all of the details: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx

I encourage everyone to give it a test drive as soon as you can get your hands on it, I think that you’ll be impressed! If you still haven’t had the chance to try out the beta or Release Candidate, then have a look at our Windows site, you’ll get the full rundown on why you want to get on Windows 7! http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

In conjunction with the client operating system, Server 2008 R2 also RTM’d (Release to Manufacturing). You’ll be able to get your hands on the full bits (via TechNet, MSDN, or Volume Licensing) in a few weeks, shortly after Windows 7 hits: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/07/22/when-to-expect-windows-server-2008-r2-rtm.aspx . While this is technically a minor release, from a marketing and licensing perspective, I think that you’ll find the feature enhancements very close to what you’d expect from a major release of our software. For those of you who haven’t gotten moving on Server 2008 yet, then I fully advocate moving forward with R2 directly. Which is not to say that there’s anything wrong with 2008, it is a great OS that has garnered terrific reviews…but the new features and solutions that are unlocked in R2 are worth an extended look! Of course, there’s the one significant caveat: R2 is our first 64-bit only OS release. As in, we’re leaving 32-bit in the rearview mirror. 4 GB of addressable memory is so 2002 – especially in a server! I also want to call particular attention to Hyper-V in R2 – it now includes Live Migration support, better scalability, VDI enhancements, and more. The Virtualization Team Blog has all of the dirty details: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/ . Our free Hyper-V Server product will have a new R2 iteration, as well, that will include Live Migration and HA features – also free.

Office 2010 is still a ways away – we’re targeting the end of Q2 in 2010 for release. But we’re starting to hand out access to the Technical Preview of Office 2010. I’m using it today as my primary productivity suite, and even being the non-power user (of Office, anyway) type guy that I am, I don’t see myself going back to 2007. Integration points with Office server applications, refined UI, performance improvements…some great stuff! Have a look at our site: http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/ and let your salesperson know if you would like to get access to the bits.

On some other fronts, you’ll likely be seeing Exchange 2010 sometime this fall, and our next generation of security products is being rolled out in waves starting soon and continuing into 2010. You’ll want to note that we’re also rebranding a number of those solutions: http://blogs.technet.com/forefront/archive/2009/07/13/business-ready-security-news-at-wpc.aspx . SQL Server 2008 R2 has been announced, as well, and you’re welcome to apply to get access to the CTP release when it ships this summer: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/r2.aspx . Our online services portfolio is growing with the maturation of the Business Productivity Online Suite, upcoming release of Windows Azure, and more.

All in all, it will be a very busy 12 months at the ranch in Redmond. I’ve really only scratched the surface of what’s coming, keep an eye out for more updates as products release to the public!

Browsers, Search, etc. – Enterprise Considerations

mfiorina — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:53:00 GMT

With all of the recent buzz around this week’s launch of Bing.com – Microsoft’s new consumer oriented search (or ‘decision’) engine, I feel that this is a good time to bring up the topic of the internet browsing, search, and the enterprise. i.e. What, as an IT organization, should you be thinking about?

Firstly, if you haven’t had the opportunity to have a look at Bing, then I encourage you to do so. The early commentary from users and reviewers has been largely positive. But, there’s a staggering amount of critique out there. As with anything in this era of information overload, you can find wide ranging opinions on any topic, so you’ll undoubtedly find some folks that are not terribly impressed. But then, search relevance is one of the problems that we’re trying to fight with our new engine. In any case, here’s one prominent publication’s take: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124398438264979107.html . If you don’t like the portal\engine for whatever reason, then the site is still worth visiting for the cool background pictures (and clickable areas if you like to know what you’re looking at and why it’s cool).

So, why, as an IT Pro, should you care about a search engine on the internet? Well, this should not be a newsflash, but users, be they business or consumer, spend a ton of time searching for information. And you should be aware of what they’re looking at, how it works, what it means to them as business users, security implications, and the like! For instance, right after Bing’s launch there was a bit of a stir about the video preview feature, and what that means to content filtering engines that you might be using in your environment (blocking certain sites and, um, questionable content). Read this for our position on that topic.

In an enterprise environment, having a good search experience makes your users more productive, whether it be crawling the corporate file server infrastructure, or the public internet. Do you provide them with tools and recommendations, or are they on their own? I find the latter to be more prevalent in my travels. Just now, enterprise search is coming to the forefront of corporate awareness, and the tools to empower users are either already there, or are just around the corner. From an end-user perspective, the search experience in Windows 7 will make a huge difference. Simply being able to start typing program names or control panel settings in my search box makes it significantly easier to perform the steps that I require in my work. In the same vein, I now have the ability to search Sharepoint sites, file servers, and the public internet without leaving my Explorer window. These have legitimately changed (and improved) the way I work. If you can offer this to your users (through technology, training, and awareness), then shouldn’t you? Saving business users time means saving money (or making more). And it’s not all about the future that Windows 7 will bring – Sharepoint 2007 can be your enterprise search centerpiece today, whether it be to help users find data on Sharepoint sites, file servers, or business data connections. Windows Desktop Search can also be your user interface for local system searches. Don’t wait for Windows 7 to turn these features on! In many cases, you either own the technology or it will not cost you anything to implement (or both). We also have other offerings in Search Server Express 2008, or FAST – these products are for the low and high end of the enterprise search spectrum, respectively. Going forward, the Windows operating system and Sharepoint are going to be the pillars of Microsoft’s enterprise search strategy. Search is being introduced across our product set, wherever data or reporting is involved. What we learn from the consumer side will be used to improve the search algorithms in the enterprise, and vice versa.

As for browser choices, a lot probably depends on whether or not you have a ‘managed’ desktop (a euphemism for ‘locked down’ that always makes me smile). In my travels, the standard browser in most organizations remains Internet Explorer (what users use on their home computers is another matter). Over the years, the reason for this revolved around what people were used to, whether Windows Integrated Authentication was an issue for folks who used some of our web technologies, and considerations for centralized patch management and customization. While the core features, rendering speed, etc., of Internet Explorer may not be head and shoulders above other browsers, the enterprise manageability of IE is where it truly stands out. The Internet Explorer Administration Kit and Group Policy are fantastic tools for branding and customization, while WSUS or SCCM are great for patch management. Other browsers definitely have their strong points and their supporters, but I think that most would agree that they are generally not as strong in the area of manageability. This should matter to you as an IT Pro – if users are using a browser that you can’t control and don’t sanction, then it’s a potential security risk. On that front, I am well aware of the security reputation of IE, but you will find that the number of vulnerabilities discovered in the latest two revisions of IE are in line with other browsers in the same time frame. The question isn’t whether or not a browser will need updates for security issues, but how you will handle it as an IT organization when they arise?

Internet Explorer 8 has been available publicly for almost three months now…and why should enterprises care about that? Security and search, primarily. With every browser revision, we learn from the development lifecycle of the previous version, introducing new security features and tightening existing ones. The SmartScreen Filter, Cross Site Scripting, click jacking prevention, Domain name highlighting, and more features are designed to safeguard users from attacks that may jeopardize information, company assets, or confidential data. As malicious website builders are more and more common, IT organizations need to take every step to ensure user safety. Like it or not, many users will surf for non-business purposes using company assets, and even if they are searching for business reasons, the likelihood of them clicking a dangerous link is high. Additionally, we provide expanded search providers to make it easier to find information. And while we have made some changes to our rendering to ensure that we are standards compliant, there is a Compatibility Mode option to ensure positive user experience in viewing pages coded to our ‘old ways’. Again, don’t wait for Windows 7 to get IE 8 out to your users. It’s entirely possible and understandable that many organizations will run into some roadblocks on third party (or developed in-house) web applications, but it’s better to identify those now than waiting.

Hopefully some will find this topic enlightening, or at least thought provoking. Until later…

Lots of News

mfiorina — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:25:00 GMT

So, it’s been a busy few weeks out in Redmond (and Las Vegas), so I thought that I would consolidate and pass along a list of the most recent updates in Microsoft-land. If nothing else, read the info at the bottom and have a little fun.

First and foremost, the Windows 7 Release Candidate has been released to the public! Head over here for some instructions and download links. It should be available for another two months, at least, so there’s no rush – though I encourage you to give it a whirl. If you have any systems still running the Win7 Beta, then note that they expire on July 1st, so you’ll want to upgrade or rebuild with the RC before then (otherwise you’ll have to deal with some really irritating ‘shutdown every 2 hours’ behavior).

While on the topic of Windows 7, I want to call attention to a recent post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Solid State Drives represent the biggest development in hardware in years (in my humble opinion). If you’re looking to get some more life out of existing hardware (particularly laptops), then SSD’s will give those old systems a new lease on life. Replacing a traditional spinning disk with one of the more modern consumer\enterprise SSD’s (think Intel’s X25-M or OCZ Vertex) and users will think that they have a new machine. Windows 7 is the first Windows OS designed specifically to accommodate and leverage SSD’s, and the blog post describes all that we’ve done to optimize that experience. With XP and Vista, you’ll find that a lot of tweaking and tinkering was necessary for SSD’s – 7 is out-of-the-box ready for them.

XP Mode, one of the most talked about new features of Windows 7, has also gone to beta. In order to use it, you’ll have to install the Windows 7 RC, then Windows Virtual PC, then XP Mode. I’ve started using it myself so that I can tinker with an early build of Office 2010 but still have 2007 available if I get myself into trouble. It works as advertised!

While Windows 7 is the one getting most of the press, Windows Server 2008 R2 has also gone to Release Candidate. There are lots of great enhancements to Terminal Services (now called Remote Desktop Services), Hyper-V (like Live Migration!), power savings, and more! Go to the site linked above for more information on the new features, or just give me a shout. Along with Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V Server R2 is in RC, as well. For all of the virtualization freaks out there (and I mean that in the most positive light), I also wanted to mention a new site that we’ve created, comparing & contrasting VMWare and Hyper-V. Head over here – there’s a lot of misinformation out in the blogosphere regarding features, costs, and the like, and we want to make sure that the story is clear. We (and I) feel very strongly that our server virtualization platform is the best in the business, and want to make sure that you do, too –( legitimately, of course, without any Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt spread by our competitors).

Windows Vista and Server 2008 Service Pack 2 have both Released to Manufacturing – they are available now on the MVLS site, as well as to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers. Expect to see them posted to the public website later this month. Head here for details on the enhancements in the service packs. Note that while this is labeled SP2 for Windows Server 2008, it is the first released SP for 2008. It shipped *with* SP1 – the details on this versioning decision, if you’re curious, can be read about here.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 was also released last week. If you've either already deployed Office, or are in the planning & testing process, you'll want to check it out.

The Exchange Server 2010 beta was released several weeks back. Lots of very cool new features, such as voice mail transcriptions, MailTips, better archiving features and storage performance, Conversation View, and more!

Our annual Microsoft Management Summit was held in Las Vegas last week, with some significant announcements. It should come as no surprise that, on the heels of our Business Productivity Online Suite release (Exchange, OCS, and Sharepoint in the cloud – hosted and managed by Microsoft), we are extending our management and security platforms in a similar fashion. You will see System Center and Forefront steadily becoming onsite or hosted offerings, headlined by an upcoming solution titled System Center Online Desktop Manager. Service Manager (IT service management) will be hitting preview and beta soon, with the final product due some time in 2010. We’ve been talking about it for a while now, so it’s great to see it coming to fruition. For full details on the key MMS announcements, read the Press Releases here and here. The keynotes are available for on-demand viewing here.

We published a new website recently called Talking about Windows. It represents an effort on our part to give IT Pros an inside look at Windows 7, from the perspective of both Microsoft engineers and IT Pros who have been involved in early adoption of Windows7 . I encourage everyone to have a look and watch a few of the videos when you have a moment.

Lastly, for a bit of fun, we have released Server Quest 2, a deviation for IT Pros who are looking a few moments of levity (and a not-too-serious look at datacenter\cubicle life in IT). Note that we use the term ‘geek’ with great endearment. It reminds me of the old Sierra games that I played back in my much younger days (like King’s Quest). Note that you need Silverlight to play (but you have that installed already, right?) Take a peek!

Windows 7 Release Candidate Availability and XP Mode!

mfiorina — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:42:26 GMT

On Friday afternoon, the Windows Team Blog made two announcements: the availability of the Release Candidate for Windows 7, and the introduction of a brand new feature coming in Win7: XP Mode ! The RC will be available for download for MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers on this Thursday, April 30th. General availability of the RC will open on Tuesday, May 5th - check back here for an update then!

For those of you who have been running the Windows 7 Beta for a while, it will be possible to upgrade from the Beta to the RC - you'll want to read the post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog here for guidance on that scenario.

XP Mode is a significant enhancement that will allow owners and users of the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate SKU's of Windows 7 to install and run applications in a virtual Windows XP environment that will appear to the end user as native applications. For those familiar with our Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), this is akin to a standalone, unmanaged version of that technology. Either of these solutions will provide direct avenues for the enterprises that wish to upgrade to Windows 7 soon after release, without some of the headaches and cost that come with ensuring all existing business applications have no compatibility issues. More to come on this from us in the near term, but Paul Thurrott up at WinSuperSite.com has cracked the feature open to some extent, and has some unofficial information, if you care to check it out.

Cost Cutting, Environmental Sustainability, and Green IT

mfiorina — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:37:00 GMT

Join us for a discussion about environmental sustainability and the role of technology in reducing carbon emissions, energy consumption, and operating costs.

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Please join Microsoft and other enterprise business leaders for an interactive discussion on the best practices in delivering environmental sustainability solutions, including:

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· Managing energy efficiency and your environmental footprint

· Rethinking business practices to positively impact the environment

External sustainability experts will join us to share their expert insights on the importance of delivering environmental sustainability.

Amid the awareness of global climate change and the scarcity of affordable resources, businesses worldwide are looking for new ways to advance their commercial interests while simultaneously reducing their environmental footprints and operating costs. Businesses that leverage technology to achieve these objectives not only optimize for the future, they also deliver better business results today. Green solutions aren't just good for the planet, they're good for your business, too.

As the world's largest software company, Microsoft is committed to reducing our own corporate environmental impact, as well as delivering environmentally sensible solutions. With solutions that cover your desktop, datacenter, and cloud based computing needs, Microsoft is leading the way in helping businesses "go green" in ways that benefit your bottom line.

We hope that you will join us for this in-depth discussion about sustainability best practices and problem solving.

· DATE: Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

· LOCATION: Microsoft Office, 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA 02451 - Directions

· REGISTRATION from 8:30am

AGENDA OVERVIEW - 9am - 1pm

· The Environmental Sustainability Business Imperative

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· Environmental sustainability panel discussion: Hear from other local business leaders

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To Register please email Microsoft Northeast VIP Registration

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Green IT\Environmental Sustainability with Microsoft Solutions

mfiorina — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:33:00 GMT

Environmental Sustainability in business has garnered a great deal of attention over the past year. Initially, this rise was for reasons of morality and social responsibility. More recently, the focus has shifted to cost reduction implications. Consumers, like businesses, are becoming more and more aware of their impact on the environment. 'Going green' is a term with positive implications across the board, for employees and customers alike. Of late, Corporate responsibility and the impact that business has on the environment has come to the forefront for consumers and governments. As such, most corporate leadership groups are examining ways in which they can reduce the environmental impact of their operations to benefit their reputation, meet current and futureregulatory guidelines, and, at the same time, reduce costs. Microsoft strives to take a leadership role in the business community on these topics, with respect to our internal practices, as well as with our technology solutions.

Many IT organizations have started down the path of becoming more 'Green'. Generally, this focus is on a single area - power usage reduction. Without a doubt, this is a significant element of environmental sustainability. That being said, it is not necessarily the only one that businesses should be investigating. I have taken the time to gather some high level information about Microsoft solutions that impact the environment and provide ways to reduce costs. Additionally, I have taken the liberty of classifying them as Easy, Medium, and Hard, with respect to the level of effort taken to implement these solutions.

Our main portal for Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft is located at http://www.microsoft.com/environment . You can visit if you want to learn more about these features, solutions, and Microsoft's own internal efforts to improve our own environmental 'footprint'.

Easy

Windows Power Management

Whether you're running Windows XP, Windows Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, or all of the above, you have opportunities to implement power saving policies in your environment. Say what you will about Windows Vista (and much has been said), but it introduced some significantly enhanced power management features. The enterprises that have deployed Vista widely have been able to measure significant cost savings from power management alone. See here for an example. Windows 7 will do more of the same. Windows XP, which still represents the majority of the deployed systems in business today, is not as strong in that department. However, Group Policy Preferences, which are available as a free download here, provide IT administrators with many more options to manage default power plan options in XP. On the server side, Windows Server 2008, by default, consumes 10% less power than Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2008 R2 will also introduce new power savings features when used with compatible hardware, such as core parking and P-states. All in all, IT admins have tremendous opportunity to save cost and reduce power consumption in their environment, simply by taking a harder look at the management options in the Windows operating system and supporting tools. See the "'Managing Power with Group Policy" series of blog postings here to get started. We estimate that you can very easily save $65 per PC, per year.

Virtualization

I place this in the 'Easy' category because almost everyone out there that I speak with is already headed down the path, and the tools one can use to virtualize systems are very mature. Obviously, Microsoft advocates Hyper-V as the hypervisor of choice for the datacenter and branch office, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage Hyper-V (and VMWare ESX) environments. http://www.hyper-green.com provides calculators, informational resources, and case studies for customers who have been extremely successful in leveraging Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Both of these technologies are rock solid and have been receiving rave reviews. On the horizon in Windows Server 2008 R2, we'll also have the latest release of Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008 R2. The bottom line is, whatever your hypervisor and management tools of choice are (and there are *lots* of choices out there these days), maximize their usage and virtualize whatever you can. Done right, you'll receive benefits in manageability, power savings, rackspace\floorspace reduction, and more.

SCCM DCM Energy Star Configuration Pack

Desired Configuration Management is a tremendously powerful, though underutilized (in my experience) feature of System Center Configuration Manager 2007. For those SCCM customers who haven't yet taken advantage of DCM, this represents a tremendous big bang opportunity to get started. For those SCCM customers who are already invested in the feature, it is an easy extension. To get started, download the CP here . This pack, endorsed by the EPA, provides IT administrators with a tool that can assess your client systems against Energy Star efficiency levels, and track the compliance of your entire fleet against these guidelines. If you're not an SCCM user today, I hope that options like this make you take a second look.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

The MAP toolkit (available here), is a free download that provides agent-less assessments of your environment, targeting key scenarios (Windows Vista, Office 2007 readiness, Windows Server 2008, and Power Savings opportunity). MAP will provide a report that outlines the power savings opportunity in your environment, based on a set of assumptions. This information would be used in conjunction with some other options\information to help create a detailed picture of power usage and potential savings. While it's not an end-all reporting solution, it's free, so have a look!

Medium

Wake-on-LAN

Wake-on-LAN is a technology that's been around for a while, and while our operating systems have included support for it for some time, SCCM 2007 introduced native capability for the first time in our management stack. While Wake-on-LAN has many dependencies on the network infrastructure (hence it's inclusion in the 'Medium' category), it provides a great tool in the arsenal that enhances power savings while not sacrificing manageability. Other third party management tools also have support for Wake-on-LAN, so ensure that you use it where possible.

Sharepoint

Here is where we break somewhat from the traditional thinking of Green IT being all about power savings. Paper is still the predominant media of choice for forms in enterprise environments. Combined with built-in workflow capability, this represents a huge opportunity for most customers to improve both efficiency and process performance. And you get to save trees! One could also make the argument that MOSS helps customers with storage usage (moving away from email attachments, better archiving, search capabilities, etc.), and when combined with some of our other communications and collaboration solutions (see below), makes telework that much more possible and efficient. See this post for more information on the 'green' elements of Sharepoint.

Hard

Unified Communications

With the advent of Office Communications Server 2007 (and, in a supporting role, Exchange Server 2007), Microsoft has been steadily rolling out Unified Communications functionality to its employees in the form of soft phones, RoundTable devices for video conferencing, Live Meeting, voicemail integration with Exchange, and more. This is tremendously powerful technology that looses users from the shackles of cubicles and office phones, legacy PBX voice mail, and the like. Airline travel represents 3.5% of global carbon emissions. Car commuting produces upwards of 800 Mt of carbon emissions per year. Since widely deploying Unified Communications solutions, Microsoft has saved millions of dollars on telecom costs and telecommute benefits (reduced travel). Analysts estimate that companies can reduce travel by 10-30% by implementing Unified Communications solutions. Take all of that into consideration, and UC has the potential to hugely impact global carbon emissions, while driving massive cost out of enterprise environments. It's not as easy as flicking a switch, but more and more customers are going this route. Go here to read about some of their experiences.

Analytics\Performance Management

With our Business Intelligence tools, it is possible to proactively plan, measure, and monitor the environmental impact of business and IT projects through dashboards and KPI's. Dynamics AX recently added functionality to track and measure carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions in an enterprise environment - The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard.

All in all, we have a lot to offer enterprise customers that are looking for ways to improve their Environmental Sustainability story. Next time you get a chance, grab a Microsoft person and ask them about ours!

Additional resources

EZ GPO from the EPA - A free utility to manage GPO power management settings for Windows 2000 and XP

1E - A great longtime Microsoft partner that has some awesome power management utilities

Verdiem's Edison - A free tool that monitors energy usage that can be configured to provide guidance and feedback on proposed power management settings changes. Verdiem also has an enterprise tool for centralized management.

Windows XP, Vista, 7…what should my desktop strategy be?

mfiorina — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:47:00 GMT

So, the past several years have seen some interesting developments in the Windows client lifecycle. Many customers are taking a hard look at their current environment, the overall technology landscape, and the Windows roadmap. Now is a good time to try to determine what the best course of action is with respect to the Windows platform. To that end, I thought that it would be prudent to put some thoughts in writing – some of them the official corporate stance, some of them my own personal spin. Here we go…

Windows 2000 has largely gone by the wayside on the client – thankfully so, as support for 2000 ends on July 13, 2010. Anyone who is convinced that we’ll extend that date is playing with fire. Yes, we did so with NT4, but that shouldn’t be considered a precedent setting event. Retire those machines this year so you don’t have a firedrill in 2010 – especially if your company is subject to SOX, PCI, etc.

Windows XP is still going strong – the most popular version of Windows from a deployment perspective, with extensions to the OEM licensing deadlines and introduction of lower cost netbooks having an impact. That being said, there’s definitely a level of comfort out there in the enterprise for Windows XP. It’s been around for over 7 years now. ISV’s and OEM’s have been developing applications and drivers on this platform for a long time, and business users & consumers alike are familiar with the interface. At the same time, let’s think back to what was happening in or around 2001: Apple introduced the iPod and OSX, Google had just 8 employees two years earlier (they have almost 17,000 now, if you were wondering), 3G cell service was first launched (in Japan), a 1 Ghz processor was very fast, and you almost undoubtedly used the modem in your laptop with great frequency (and maddening slowness). Times have changed, but you’re probably still running the same version of Windows that became available back then. Imagine if you were still using a first generation iPod or had a 1 Ghz Celeron under your desk! Of course, moving music to a new device is different than upgrading an operating system, but you get the idea.

Service Pack 3 was released last spring, and as a consequence, SP2 support will be retired on July 13, 2010. Windows XP overall leaves Mainstream Support and enters Extended Support in just a few months - on April 14, 2009. For the full breakdown on what this means, I encourage you to speak with your Technical Account Manager, if applicable, and\or visit the front page of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle site: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

Windows XP with SP3 will be supported until April 8, 2014. So that gives XP environments some breathing room, but not necessarily as much as you might think (more on that in a minute).

Windows Vista is a loaded topic. No one that I’ve met feels ambivalently about it, for one reason or another. Admittedly, the launch did not go as well as we would have hoped. We made huge changes ‘under the hood’ that made it difficult for driver and application developers to ramp up – as a result, the Windows ‘ecosystem’ was not prepared. Vista itself had some problems with performance and stability that were fairly well publicized (and the Mac vs PC ads definitely didn’t help)…so 2007 was a rough year for adoption. The beginning of 2008 saw the release of Service Pack 1, and a years time had given our partners a chance to get their hardware, drivers, and applications updated for the latest operating system release. So, the folks who have seen and used Vista over the past twelve months probably have had a good experience with it. We’re finding that the major problem out there today is public perception. Go to http://mojaveexperiment.com/ if you don’t believe me. All that being said, enterprise adoption is about what we saw with Windows XP 2 years after it’s release. The one recurring theme in discussions with corporate customers is that application compatibility is a problem. Applications may not run in Vista, or maybe they can, but it’s not supported by the vendor. Remediation will be costly and time consuming. We get it. Many of the acquisitions and investments we’ve made in the past few years are targeting that problem specifically (Application Virtualization – SoftGrid, Enterprise Desktop Virtualization – Kidaro, etc.) Operating systems are traditionally tied to hardware, user data, and applications. We want to decouple them so that it is feasible and relatively easy to perform an in-place OS migration. Our Desktop Optimization Pack technologies are a must have for those considering an upgrade any time soon.

On the positive side, there should be no one out there that can deny the security enhancements Vista brings to the table. It’s far and away the most secure OS we’ve released to date (the first time that we’ve gone from drawing board to release with security as priority #1). Mobility functions and power savings features are also prime examples of the benefits that you can reap from Vista. The 64-bit release is very solid, and people should be looking in that direction, as memory grows cheaper and cheaper. Any modern hardware (2-3 years old) with 2 GB of RAM or more should run Vista quite happily.

The hot topic. The Windows 7 beta release several weeks ago was met with overwhelming interest (we couldn’t handle the initial flood of download requests). The reviews are almost all positive – even Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal had good things to say. And he’s not, ahem, usually all that much of a Microsoft fan. Millions of people are out there running it on thousands of different hardware configurations, and I’ve been running it myself on laptops, desktops, and server class machines with minimal hiccups. The caveat to this early success is that we’re hearing from a lot of folks ‘Why should I upgrade to Vista when Windows 7 is right around the corner?’ Well, the answer to that is what I’ve been building up to. If we look at it from the perspective of an enterprise with fairly unaggressive adoption cycles, then you’ll see that you may be putting yourself in an untenable situation a few years down the road. For the sake of argument, make these assumptions:

Company A doesn’t deploy new operating systems or major applications until Service Pack 1 (or a similar bug-fix milestone) has been provided by the vendor
Company A probably won’t even begin testing their application footprint against the new OS until said SP1 is available
Windows 7 ships in the fourth quarter of 2009
Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 would likely not be final until the first half of 2011, if not later (going by our historical timelines for SP1 releases)

So, Company A would begin testing migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 SP1 in 2011 sometime. How long would it take to perform adequate testing of your application suite to certify\remediate it for Windows 7? For most, this is at least a 6 to 12 month process…so, now we’re in mid-2012. At that point, you’re ready to start building an image (hopefully using the MDT to make your lives easier). Maybe the image is ready to go in early 2013. Then you have a little over a year to get it out company-wide until Windows XP hits end-of-life. Is that enough time? Perhaps…but is it worth backing yourself into a corner?

A few points to make in conclusion. Thanks for sticking with me this long. :)

While Windows 7 is a major release from our perspective, it does not involve any huge architectural changes, so I personally feel that the ‘waiting for SP1’ methodology is unnecessary. Given how aggressively that we’ve been working with the partner ecosystem, I would expect that they will be much more ready to support Windows 7 at the time of availability than any prior release of Windows. Based on the timelines that I described above, I would also argue that it’s a greater risk to sit on XP and wait for Win7 SP1 than it is to go to Vista and\or Win7 RTM.
One of the primary tenets of Windows 7 development is maintaining compatibility with Windows Vista applications and drivers.
Starting to test against Vista now will bear fruit in the long run – you won’t have to perform two runs of testing on Vista and Win7
Deploying Vista now to at least some subset of systems, will provide you with experience that will be valuable for Windows 7, and take advantage of the much improved security, mobility, and power-saving features in Windows Vista today
The UI change going from XP to Win 7 will be greater than going from Vista to Win7. I know that user training is a very important topic to a lot of folks.
Start to investigate desktop virtualization now. If you have a significant portion of desktops (as opposed to mobile PC’s), then a VDI scenario warrants serious consideration. We have partners such as Quest and Citrix that have solutions in this arena that make it a reality *today*. I’ll be writing up a Windows VDI post soon to cover technology and licensing requirements.
Analysts such as Forrester and Gartner are already on the record as saying that customers should not plan to skip Windows Vista
The Desktop Optimization Pack technologies are going to make OS migrations much, much easier than what was dealt with in the past
The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (Formerly the BDD) provides the tools necessary to build and customize images very easily, with simultaneous administrator ease-of-use and handling of complex scenarios

All in all, please remember that Microsoft is here to assist with your OS migration and testing. Whether you would like someone to help get your organization going with the MDT, application compatibility testing, Windows Vista or 7 readiness – we have resources that can help (at no cost). Give me a shout to get the process started.

Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2 Betas and More!

mfiorina — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:09:00 GMT

Last night, in the keynote for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the immediate availability of the betas for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2! Needless to say, these are significant milestones – we are all very excited to share our latest operating system releases with the public. As of 10:30 p.m. EST on 1/7, TechNet and MSDN subscribers had access to download both OS betas, and tomorrow, 1/9, the full public beta will launch here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

What are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and why should you care? Windows 7 is the next major release of our client operating system. For consumers and business users alike, Windows 7 will provide significant performance improvements, reliability, security, compatibility, and battery life. The UI has been updated to improve the user experience, making the tasks we all do every day faster and easier. Consumers will also benefit from a new feature called ‘Home Groups’, wherein multiple PC’s in the home can be connected easily to share resources, media files, and the like. A new hardware compatibility technology named Device Stage will improve the hardware connection and management experience. Enterprise users will see immediate benefit from new features like BranchCache, DirectConnect, BitLocker to Go, AppLocker, PowerShell 2.0, VDI\RDP enhancements, and more. Windows Server 2008 R2 will unlock a number of these features when combined with Windows 7 clients, but offers its own unrestricted enhancements, as well – Hyper-V 2 (which includes Live Migration), Power savings enhancements such as Core Parking, Remote Desktop Services, VDI, improved scalability and performance, GPO enhancements and the list goes on.

For more information on Windows 7 and the IT Professional, hit our Springboard site: http://blogs.technet.com/springboard/

Windows Server 2008 R2 reading is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2.aspx

Additionally, we announced the release of Windows Live Essentials, a suite of client side consumer-focused applications that represent an evolution of our popular Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery and Live Writer applications. www.windowslive.com/explore

For a full breakdown of CES, videos, and more, go here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/default.mspx