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Hello again. I'm posting this from San Francisco where I'm attending the VMworld 2010 U.S. conference. It may surprise some but Microsoft has been exhibiting at this conference since 2005, talking virtualization with customers and partners who are running Microsoft servers, desktops and applications...

Hello again! I know it's been a while since I've written a blog, but since my last post I have spent time taking care of a new baby and blogging (and everything else ☺) takes a back seat to that. What I did want to talk about today is a great technical conversation which is happening on the...

Hey everyone, I wanted to make you aware of a new Architecture Guide now available for the Azure platform.  How do you build applications to be scalable and have high availability? Along with developing the applications, you must also have an infrastructure that can support them. You may need to...

Barbara Imbert at Seagate recently blogged about Symantec’s 2010 SMB information security survey . As a summary of the findings: 74% are Somewhat/Extremely concerned about information protection 42% lost confidential/proprietary information in the past 12 months 100% saw losses...

When heading down to New Orleans for TechEd North America a couple weeks ago, my mind wandered back to the TechEd three years ago In Orlando where we launched SCE 2007, the very first System Center IT management solution Microsoft specifically built for midsize businesses. Yes, I got a bit teary-eyed...

I have been an attendee at many a Trade Show, and have seen the good and the bad, but I never knew how much work went into putting one of these things on, until coming over here to Microsoft. These past 6 months, I have been involved with both MMS 2010 and TechEd North America 2010 from the inside...

If you’re coming to the “Big Easy” ( New Orleans ), for TechEd North America , and you work in a midsize business, be sure to come see us at the Microsoft Demo Station Stations for SCE 2010 and DPM 2010 , to see how we’re making virtualization and IT management “Big Easy” for midsize businesses! We also...

As I've written many times in this blog , virtualization is much more about how and why you use the technology than what it can do. Desktop Virtualization is a great example of the promise (and the potential pitfalls) that virtualization offers customers. I'm sure for many of you, when it comes...

Last Tuesday saw the announcement of the eagerly awaited RTM of Service Manager 2010 (build 5826) with the immediate availability of the product trial .  The announcement was highlighted in Brad Anderson’s blog that covered the opening of MMS as well as in the Service Manager team blog … and now...

With the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day upon us, today, we are very pleased to announce the release of ConfigMgr 2007 R3 Beta.  Power management is at the core of the ConfigMgr 2007 R3 release, and addresses the need that many organizations have to monitor and reduce both power consumption and CO2...

If you’re like most people, you’ve faced a maintenance or repair job that was bigger than the tools in your toolbox. Maybe your in-sink disposal got jammed when one of your kids decided it would be a fun place to “blend” their sibling’s favorite miniature stuffed animal? So, you needed a basket wrench...

It is widely known that companies have become more conscious about their impact on the environment, and with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day approaching, I wanted to provide a lens on how some of us in Redmond think about the green implications of technology, efficiency and the  environment ....

For those that don't know, I came to Microsoft a few years ago as part of the Softricity acquisition . While adding many talented people to Microsoft, the acquisition also brought application virtualization technology. At the time that technology was called SoftGrid, but the product name has since...

A while ago, my colleague Jeff Wettlaufer posted a blog that presented a post on CIO.com that presented the “ 5 Must-have IT Management Technologies for 2010 .” Of the areas Jeff presented, it was great to see how System Center is already forging ahead to enable the delivery of those technologies and...

To help our customers accelerate their testing and deployment of Windows 7, we are really pleased to announce an update to the ACT Connector for Configuration Manager.  The Application Compatibility Toolkit Connector (ACT Connector) assists administrators with collecting the necessary computer and...

We are pleased to announce the Beta release of our Dashboard Solution Accelerator.  The System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard lets customers utilize a browser based graphically rich reporting experience that showcases the robust reporting capabilities of the world’s leading system management...

Hi everyone, recently Microsoft announced a joint investment agreement with HP to deliver the industry’s most comprehensive integration of a technology stack to date, from infrastructure to applications, through sales and services. It is exciting to think about how this will substantially improve customer...

As an old-school backup guy, one of my favorite sayings is: “ If you are putting all your eggs in one basket, it better be a good basket ” It’s true for Virtualization (which I will talk about in a future post) and it’s true for collaboration platforms like Exchange or SharePoint. And when I refer to...

I originally posted this on my Virtualization Planet blog but I wanted to post it again here because of the importance of the message. Recently, there have been a number of articles and blog posts that I feel are overly critical of Hyper-V and System Center to a fault. While it’s within anyone’s right...

Hi all - Today Microsoft and HP announced a $250 million engineering, sales and services partnership to advance cloud computing and help customers better use IT for business success. You can read the press release and watch videos of executives commenting on the agreement here . This is a...

I am delighted to announce that Opalis Software -- the leader in IT process automation software -- is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft. This acquisition will deliver great new functionality to the Microsoft System Center family. Opalis Software brings capabilities that deliver...

Today, I wanted to take a look back at 2009. It is simply amazing when you look at where Microsoft® System Center and Microsoft Virtualization were at the beginning of the year and where we are today. When we started 2009, we were really still promoting the new releases of Windows Server® 2008 Hyper...

Looking back at 2009, the first thought that comes to mind is the old phrase, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Wondering where this quote came from, I decided to “ Bing ” it. Of course, the results led me to lots of websites with quotations about change. Here are some other “change...

I just had a fantastic conversation with some analysts about Systems Management, and the increasing world of complexity on the client, and in the datacenter. I crossed back through campus on a rare sunny Redmond morning, and found one of the latest CIO.com newsletters had arrived, and there was a link...

December is a great time to look back at the year as a whole: Most things are winding down, so it is nice to appreciate what happened so far And yet, there are some projects that we are in the home stretch for. So with all of my travelling obligations over, it is a time to buckle down for four weeks...