I've interviewed perhaps 30 people for senior virtualisation roles in the last few months and one theme keeps occuring; many virtualisation specialists either ignore the VM workloads or know little about the guest operating systems. This trend is a real...

Late last year, I wrote a paper on the challenges facing enterprise IT when they consider SaaS/S+S consumption. The full paper has now been published in The Architect Journal and is online at MSDN. I summarise my points below, go take a look at the full...

I am not a developer; something I'm often at pains to point out. Sure, I understand the benefits of the .Net f/w, IDEs such as Visual Studio and have been involved with application architecture design on projects in the past. I've spent a lot of my time...

I read the press release when news broke about the aQuantive acquisition last Friday. Like many press releases, if left a few questions in my mind. Fortunately there were some talking points in my inbox this morning which help clarify the objectives of...

A number of the Microsoft Virtualisation presentations at ITForum have been posted to TechNet Showtime. These provide a good overview of two virtualisation technologies (machine and application virtualisation); An Overview of Microsoft's Vision for Virtualization...

On Tuesday 28th I delivered the 1st of my EMEA Virtual Server events, which will be touring to >25 countries across the EMEA region over the next 6 months. Sharing the presenting was Shai Ofek (Microsoft Corp, from Remdond) and David Miller (Avanade...

A team of us have been researching the implications of SaaS on ISVs, Hosters, Enterprise customers and Microsoft for a few months. On Wednesday 22nd November, Juergen Pfiefer and I delivered the Greek Architect forum on SaaS. Its the first time I've presented...

Last Update: 09/11/06 16:18 GMT With any new software, the user has to go through a learning curve. When the software UI has changed significantly from a previou version its easy to get frustrated as you can't find the features you're used to, resulting...

Microsoft Technology Summit is an annual Microsoft event held in Warsaw which this year attracted >2,500 IT Professionals and Developers. I was honoured to present two sessions in the Architecture track; DSI: Model-based Management Microsoft Virtualisation...

Thinking about the challenges I've faced on projects over the last few years, I've noticed they broadly fall into three problem areas; Security Identity Management Operational Management I doubt anyone is surprised by this list. Security is easily the...

Infrastructure Architects are not very well served by the industry (including Microsoft), so I'm testing an Architecture track at IT Forum this year. I've allocated 5 session slots and will be watching carefully to see how well they are attended and how...

Between March and June '06, I had the pleasure to deliver an Infrastructure Architect Forum in many countries across Europe focused on the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). DSI is not particularly well understood either across the industry,...

It was my pleasure and honour to present the 3 sessions below in both Lahore and Karachi this week at the Pakistan Developer Conference '06 . Being my first visit to the country, I was surprised not only by the passion and thirst for learning but also...

IT Forum is now only a few days away, and its success is now largely in the hands of the speakers and onsite logistics team. The success is measured by you; through completing evaluations. Let me give you an insight into the importance we all - speakers...

The session search tool (what we also call the content database) is now online with most tracks showing 75% of their break out sessions (BOS). This will be updated over the next few days as the remaining tracks fine-tune their 75% lists. Note that Chalk...

So here's the list of blogs I promised last week; Connected Systems Infrastructure, Sascha Corti: http://www.corti.com/weblogsascha/ Core Infrastructure, John Howard: http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward Data Management, Gunther Beersaerts: http://blogs.msdn...

With TechEd 2005 Europe now a fading memory, we're well into the planning for IT Forum 2005 which runs 14th to 17th November. For the first time, we're in Barcelona at the Centre Convencions Internacional. November in the sun certainly sounds good to...

Its been a while since my initial post, but lots has been going on behind the scenes. Firstly, the TechEd US team have got their complete list of sessions sown up - so I've had a lot of great content from which to select the EMEA sessions. Too much in...

This year, TechEd is 50% developer and 50% infrastructure, a significant change from the last few years where the focus has been predominantly Developer. Planning is already under way for the content, as Server Infrastructure track owner I need your help...