Before we get to VMworld Vegas

My ears are still ringing from Monday's virtualization event in Bellevue. Not necessarily from the keynotes or demos, but mainly from being 10 feet away from the stage as the band Live played a 60+ minute set during the party. Here's a photo I snapped with my T-Mobile Dash.

I was fortunate enough to meet and speak with several customers and partners (and the members of Live). It was great to meet Matt at MLS Network of New England (who requested greater coordination with OEMs around NIC teaming for Hyper-V), Michael from Heidelberg in Germany (who's using Windows mobile phones and MS Dynamics to provide mobile access to internal data), and Howard from Heidelberg ... who has more PIMs than goals in his adult hockey league ;-)

Next week many of us will be in Vegas. I'm looking forward to my 4th straight year attending VMworld (despite having to go to Vegas). It appears this year's conference will be much larger than last year, and I'm looking forward to hear Paul Maritiz speak. Who knows, maybe Paul will mention Microsoft in his keynote and create greater interest to visit our booth.

For those of you who will be there, stop by our booth (#1120) to see demos of WS08 Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008, Windows Server terminal services, MS Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (from the Kidaro acquisition) and VDI using Vista/Citrix XenDesktop. And I think there's a customized laptop and "Gears of War 2" XBox giveaway.

You might also be interested to know that Microsoft is participating in a couple sessions. On Thursday (9/18) at 9am, we'll co-present a breakout session (EA4460) with VMware on Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). On the same day, but at 2pm, several folks will present our strategy and demo Microsoft's desktop and server products.

A few other things to know:

• Read Mike Sterling's post about the Linux ICs for WS08 Hyper-V. They're now available on MS Connect [note: you may need to browse the Connection directory, then log in to Connect and then find the Linux Integration Components program.
• For those readers in Western Europe, you should consider attending the Virtualization Congress in mid-October in London. Alessandro has assembled quite a lineup of speakers from around the industry, to include our own Mark Russinovich. The coolest thing ... no slides from them, just technology. And several noteworthy bloggers and independent voices will attend.
• Rand Morimoto and Jeff Guillet, consultants with Convergent Computing, just published a book titled, "Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Unleashed." List price is $39.99 for 430 pages. You can see the Table of Contents at the link provided. They also cover SCVMM 2008.

Hope to see you next week at Microsoft's booth at VMworld.

Patrick