Introducing Tech.Days Live 2011, 23-25 May
Nine events (and counting), two locations, one week. The main attraction will be three one-day events at the London Vue Cinema, Fulham Broadway, London. In addition, there will be evening activities across town in Victoria at Microsoft's offices in Cardinal Place. We'll be releasing registration details on Twitter as they become available, so follow us to stay informed.
What’s on?
Just like last year, we’ll be running two tracks during the event, one aimed at IT professionals and one at developers. Here’s a taster of the content we’ll be covering:
IT Professional
- Deploying Windows 7 and Office 2010
- Virtualisation, Hyper-V and the private cloud
- Moving infrastructure and platforms to the public cloud
Developer
- Building and deploying applications onto the Azure cloud computing platform
- The latest features and futures for Windows Phone 7
- Building rich applications with Silverlight 5
- Deep dives on the web platform, IE 9 and the HTML5
Save the date in your diary now and keep your eyes peeled for more details coming here soon.
Not only can you now evaluate Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 Standard, but the team have updated the Windows SBS website with new resources materials to help you find out how Windows SBS 2011 can assist your business.
To help you deploy commercial private and public clouds based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System Center, and related products, Microsoft offers a set of programs and initiatives called Hyper-V Cloud. These programs can help you:
· Build your own private cloud with help from the Hyper-V Cloud Deployment Guides and Hyper-V Cloud partners.
· Get a pre-validated private cloud configuration from Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track OEM partners. Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track partners have worked with Microsoft to combine hardware and software offerings based on a reference architecture for building private clouds.
· Find a service provider in the Hyper-V Cloud Service Provider Program who can host a dedicated private cloud for you.
Deploying Microsoft’s private cloud infrastructure also positions you to take advantage of the Windows Azure public cloud platform through powerful identity, development, and management tools. These tools span across private and public cloud environments so that you can more easily build, migrate, or extend out to the public cloud and benefit from virtually unlimited scale and even greater efficiencies whenever you need it.
What are you waiting for?!
Updated with new resources.
Tech.Days online will be bringing you IT insights and debates most Tuesdays from February to June, between 2 and 3pm. Watch the teaser video from presenters Simon May and Andrew Fryer here. They’ll cover the topics of desktop, private cloud and public cloud; and each webinar will contain clues revealing how you could win a Samsung 42inch plasma TV, Canon EOS 1000D camera and an LG DVD home cinema system. The links below take you directly to the sessions and the website will host on demand sessions for those of you who can’t make it on the day.
08 February The Modern Desktop
15 February Microsoft cloud for the IT Professional
22 February What is Hyper-V cloud
08 March Practical Deployment
15 March Creating Your Own Private Cloud
22 March Security integration with the cloud using Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS)
05 April Desktop Virtualisation
12 April Automation and the Private Cloud
19 April Managing the cloud
03 May Deployment with the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP)
10 May Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
17 May Office 365 for the IT Professional
07 June The Dynamic Duo, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7
14 June Mixing and moving services between the private and public cloud
21 June Governance Risk & Compliance in the cloud
Get more info on TechNet.
Thanks to John Donnelly for this post. John worked in the psychometrics, ERP, sports and consultancy fields with roles in systems management, software development, architecture and team leadership before finding a place here with us as an Architect Evangelist in the Microsoft Technology Centre. Follow John on Twitter and find him on LinkedIn.
Lazy comedians pick up New Year resolutions every year as something self-centered (I will …) and boring (… give up alcohol) with a life expectancy in days (off the wagon by the end of Jan). This year we should all do something that will benefit both ourselves and our co-workers, and that you can pick up again throughout the year.
In the last year I’ve seen a couple of organisations with the same ‘best practice’ based architecture. They had layered their application into storage system/data access layer/business model layer/presentation layer. They had also applied service oriented architecture, exposing the data access layer as a service with an http endpoint. Asked why, both eventually came down to ‘it is best practice’.
The net effect of these two architectures used together in this way was to reduce security (minimally secured http endpoint for the database), increase latency (additional http hop for the data access), increase infrastructure costs (more servers, each with their own headroom) and to increase management complexity (harder to tell which element of the system is overloading).
An involved development manager could have stopped this. An involved IT Pro could have stopped this.
This year we should start treating best practice as any other design pattern. Design patterns are typified by Intent, Motivation, Applicability and Consequences.
Next time you’re doing something because it is best practice, ask what is the intent of the practice, what motivated it, is it applicable here, and what are the consequences?
Wishing you a really inquisitive New Year.
John Donnelly
Welcome to the first in our new series, A Day in the Life. We’ll be talking to a variety of techy Microsofties about what they get up to during the old 9-5. We’d love to hear your suggestions for upcoming interviewees, so please post your suggestions in the comments box below.
We kick off with David Lynch, Senior Support Engineer in the EMEA Global Technical Support Centre UK. David, it’s over to you…(anyone remember Through the Keyhole?)
I specialise in supporting Microsoft Internet Explorer, or IE, as it’s more commonly referred to. This is my primary support area and although it may sound like a small topic to focus on, it’s really not. IE is actually quite a large area to support because you have to cover every angle. It’s not just knowing about the product’s functionality inside out, it’s about knowing how to deploy it with IEAK, how to manage it with policy and also how to troubleshoot it with the appropriate tools. It requires a rock solid understanding of its architecture – the binaries that make up IE, how it integrates with Windows, how it communicates over TCP/IP to web servers and proxy servers and how they communicate back, and it doesn’t stop there. You need to know how to code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, .net, XML, AJAX, C/C++, provide advice on streamlining performance, debugging hangs and crashes and leaks etc., and of course, know a bit about the opposition! We also have an on-site offering in the service catalogue - an IE8 workshop which we typically deliver in one day, covering the new features in IE8, its settings, management, connections, tips on troubleshooting, ActiveX controls and, if the customer wants, some information about IE9. The workshop is becoming increasingly popular and can be utilised by organisations looking at migrations or ramping up on specific areas.
As well as IE, I cover the Windows Shell and I’ve recently added MSI to my troubleshooting skillset.
Today is a typical Tuesday for me, my busiest day of the week. It starts like any other, checking if any incidents have happened over night that might affect the team, looking through email communication and briefly triaging my cases and checking through my calendar to see what work I have to do today. What makes Tuesday different is that it’s triage day for IE in the Global Technical Support Centre (GTSC), for which I am responsible. I start by compiling a list of Premier and Professional customer support cases that are currently with our frontline engineers in Bangalore before emailing it out to the team. This is followed up with a scheduled conference call between the UK and India teams, addressing each case to make sure it’s on track, to highlight any issues, mark any that are due for escalation to the UK team and make sure both teams are aware of all the current cases. After the meeting, I report back with a summary of the current actions for these cases which are then logged against them. Typically we would triage 25-35 cases depending on how busy it is. Triage is a very important part of the week – aside from the fact that our customers benefit from having their support cases regularly discussed, the team as a whole has the chance to speak to each other by voice, instead of typing in an IM conversation, so it helps to build those team relations.
Around the triage activities, I need to focus on my own support cases which are all escalations from our front-line team in India or, from other front-line teams around Europe where volumes are particularly high or, from other escalation teams who need collaboration from an IE support specialist. A case load of around 15 is average but when it gets busy, or when colleagues go on holiday, I have gone up to 21-22 cases which can get pretty manic!
At the end of the day, it’s good to do something different. I like going down to the on-site gym to relax my mind and revitalise my body to help keep a balance to the day.
Apart from triage, meetings and case load, on a weekly basis, a typical engineer spends time mentoring the front-line engineers or colleagues in the UK team to help bring them on, keep up to date with what’s going on in the business and around their areas, look for opportunities to further develop their own skills or identify areas where we can help develop others or our products to increase market share. Being able to respond to high priority issues around security, cumulative updates and high severity issues is also required. It’s all very customer focused, there’s rarely any free-time, but always time to develop.
David Lynch EMEA GTSC UK Core IE Shell Support Engineer Microsoft Customer Service & Support
Coming next week: Microsoft Technology Centre intern and loveable geek, Jon Lickiss tells us about a typical day in the MTC. Let us know if you have a burning question for Jon – post it in the comments box below.
Save a space in your diary for the upcoming Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011, taking place on 2 March. Here’s an overview – if you’d like to know more you’ll find the full agenda and registration details here.
Overview
Business Intelligence enables your organisation to turn facts and information hidden in your data into valuable insight. Companies that use BI perform and compete better than those relying only on instinct or casual analysis. Microsoft provides a mature and complete platform for building BI solutions that empower every knowledge worker in your organisation to make better business decisions.
Our BI workshop has been designed to give you a good understanding of Microsoft's BI strategy and its platform consisting of Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and SQL Server 2008 R2. You will also hear about future direction for BI that takes advantage of Cloud Computing, the emergence of BI Appliances, and the newest innovation in powerful, advanced, yet easy to use analytics.
Are you a decision maker in your business? If so, Bing Maps and The Ridgian Group would like to invite you to join them on 1st February for a Live Meeting about Corporate Business Intelligence using Bing Maps. Come and find out how you can use Business Intelligence to address your key business priorities, such as:
Products discussed include Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft SQL Server, among others.
The agenda is as follows:
Register here
The Springboard Series for Windows 7 has become a large part of TechNet, and you can now get it on your Windows Phone 7 with the free Springboard Series for Windows 7 app. The Springboard Series on TechNet is your destination for technical resources, free tools, and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows client infrastructure. To give you better access to these key resources, no matter where you are, we created the Springboard Series App for Windows Phone 7.
The app gives you access to key Windows 7 content, no matter where you are in the lifecycle phase you are in. From Discover and Explore, to Pilot and Deploy and Manage, it’s all here; including videos, ‘how to’ pieces, FAQs, whitepapers and error code - even the step-by-step implementation and deployment guides - all on your mobile phone.
Download your app now via Zune marketplace – just search for Springboard.
To ensure we continue to provide the most relevant resources to you, TechNet has put together a short survey on Cloud Computing to find out where you are on your journey (if at all) and what kind of cloud you are thinking of or already using. All respondents will be entered into a prize draw to win an Xbox and Kinect with 12 months Gold membership to cloud based-service Xbox LIVE. Please complete the survey here for your chance to win!
Terms and conditions here.