Ian Hameroff

Day 5 - München mag Dich!

ianhamer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:36 GMT

Our Wednesday was spent in beautiful Munich, Germany and included getting some much needed post-bus ride rest before our event at the Campus.

The drive to Munich was good fun, as we kicked back in the main lounge area of “The Bus”, including watching “In Bruges” - a DVD Bob brought along.

Here’s my next installment of my video fun (note: it is a bit more random than the others):

-- hama

Random Musings from Aboard a Bus to Vienna

ianhamer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:13:40 GMT

It’s almost 1am, and I am relaxing in the forward lounge of the second deck of the Career Express.

Based on the Live Bus Tracker, we’re a little under 2 hours away from Vienna:

I finally got my rented air card working again, and now have “screaming” Internet access, so I briefly checked my e-mail and caught on the news.

Everyone else is already sleeping in their bunks, except for the driver <g>, and I’m about to make my way to mine.

Here’s a random shot from my “Jumbocruiser” perch:

Good night from “The Bus”.

-- hama

Day 4 – If it’s Tuesday, it must be Frankfurt

ianhamer — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:52:05 GMT

Gutten Tag!

Day 4 of the European adventure takes us to Frankfurt, Germany. The journey has been a lot of fun, albeit tiring. Once more here’s some video evidence of what’s been happening on the road:

And, thanks to everyone who has watched the videos and provided the feedback about the volume levels!

-- hama

Day 3 – Giggin’ in Amsterdam

ianhamer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:25:01 GMT

Today, I officially kicked off my participation as a crew member of “The Bus Tour” (exciting, eh?)!

We started the day bidding farewell to contest winner Christopher, who was heading back to France ahead of TechEd. And, then Ken, Stephen, and I headed over to Compu’Train-BvO to do our first presentations of the day (and my first of the Tour). Following the training, the team at Compu’Train-BvO gave each us an awesome gift pack of treats from all around the Netherlands. A very appreciated present!

What ensued was an action packed, multi-location day of “The Bus” gigs across the greater Amsterdam area, including Dell and Info Support.

Once more, I’ll leave the rest to my third video:

There was a moment of panic as I briefly lost my business card case (a nice present from me misses). Luckily, it was just hidden beneath the presentation podium at Info Support.

The road brings many, many adventures!

I think I need to pick-up a copy of “On the Road”. My copy of this favorite Kerouac book is sitting a few thousand miles away.

-- hama

Day 2 – Boarding the Bus

ianhamer — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:10:44 GMT

After having a nice stroll around the city of Amsterdam on Saturday, and then a relaxing boat ride through the famous canals on Sunday, I boarded “The Bus” for the very first time!

At approximately 830p on Sunday evening, eight members of “The Crew” (not the motley kind) left the Golden Tulip Hotel in Amsterdam for a short bus ride to Utrecht. During my brief bus test flight, I got a chance to get to know our two contest winners: Bob Simms and Christopher Maneu. The three of us, chillin’ in one of the two upstairs lounges were regaled with stories of previous famous bus tenants by one of the two drivers (both of whom are named David – talk about HA/DR for drivers!).

After about 30 minutes or so, Ken Rosen, Stephen Rose, and I (clearly lacking a flowery surname) were dropped off at one hotel, so we can support a gig at Compu’Train-BVO (one of two events happening simultaneously on Monday morning). The rest of the bus gang continued on to another hotel so they can staff the other event at iSential.

We’ll regroup in the afternoon for an exclusive (“By Private Invitation Only”) event at the local Dell offices in Amsterdam. [Cue Ian’s inner monologue: “Speaking of Dell in Amsterdam, I wonder if the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” guy is now based here (wink, wink)”]

After that, we hit up one more event at Info Support before I make my inaugural overnight journey on “The Bus”. Then it’s off to Frankfurt for a few events on Tuesday.

Luckily (I think), I’ve been challenge by a bit of jetlag, so hopefully the gentle/bumpy movements of the bus will rock me to sleep.

Ah, once more I compiled a brief video montage of the day’s experience:

Okay, it’s fairly early and I need to reboot my laptop in Windows Server 2008 R2 to prep my demo VHDs for my first talk on Exchange 2010.

Should be good fun!

-- hama

Upcoming Analyst Webcast on Exchange 2010 Archiving

ianhamer — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:33:08 GMT

And now, a quick “commercial break” from my planned daily blathering about “Ian’s European Workation” (NOTE: The previous was a lame attempt to parody National Lampoon's European Vacation):

On Wednesday, November 4th, David Ferris of Ferris Research will be conducting a 30 minute webcast on our integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities introduced in Exchange Server 2010.

Here’s what the folks from Ferris have to say about the webcast:

Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Archiving: The Complementary Role of Third-Party Solutions
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
8:30 a.m. Pacific, 11:30 a.m. Eastern, 4:30 p.m. U.K., 5:30 p.m. CET. One-half hour.

On April 15, 2009, Microsoft announced that Exchange 2010 will have built-in support for archiving. Though Microsoft has been slow to reveal details about the new offering, its announcement is shaking the archiving market and the adjacent markets for e-discovery and compliance.

Customers are considering whether to adopt Microsoft’s solution and, if appropriate, whether to migrate away from currently deployed solutions. They are deferring purchases of archiving solutions until Microsoft clarifies its offering. And archiving, e-discovery, and compliance vendors are reevaluating their technology and sales messages.

In this webcast and its companion white paper, David Ferris cuts through the confusion about Exchange 2010 and explains what the product’s archiving features do, what they don’t do, and how the technology is likely to evolve. A Q&A session will give attendees the opportunity to ask questions.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft is a sponsor of both the webcast and the white paper (as are metalogix, smarsh, and Waterford Technologies).

To register, visit here.

-- hama

Day 1 – The Trip to Amsterdam

ianhamer — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:26:53 GMT

The morning after watching a really exciting, albeit frustrating nil-nil result, Sounders FC MLS playoff match at Qwest Field, I boarded a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

This is the first of many stages of travel I’ll embark on over the next two weeks. And, instead of using the “written word” to describe the experience, here’s a short video I pieced together using my Flip Mino HD and Windows Live Movie Maker:

Since editing this video, I have had a nap and showered off the 9+ hours of air travel. Now, it’s time to do a little exploring around the city, and try and link up with my fellow Bus Tour Crew.

Stay tune for more!

-- hama

What? A Bus Tour Across Central Europe?

ianhamer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:49:28 GMT

Hello world!

I’m being serious.

I’ve just resurfaced after spending nearly two weeks in a “executive keynote demo bunker”, building out a cool demo rig for a big upcoming event (wink, wink). Man, I had a beard and everything, and mostly sustained myself with Starbucks coffee, good humor, and the thousand degree temperatures that come with stuffing a bunch of demo hardware gear in a Building 31 office (READ: no fancy server room HVAC).

Luckily, we were able to squat in our GM’s office (who’s currently on leave), to construct a wicked 3 server, 2 client environment featuring the RTM code of every fan’s favorite, Exchange Server 2010.

But, before we get to that, I think it’s worth bringing you up-to-date on my next pending adventure (and I did choose the word “adventure” on purpose).

Starting November 2nd, from they wonderful Dutch city of Amsterdam, I will be “Getting on the Bus”.

To be clear, I’m not heralding the fact I plan to use the public transportation system in Holland.

I still might, but that’s neither here nor there.

What I am doing, is joining the second week of the two week, 11-city European road show featuring Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010.

This is being driven (no pun intended) by our pals over in Microsoft Learning, as part of the whole “Born to Learn” program.

But, wait!

There’s more!

When I say I’m “getting on the bus”, I literally mean I’ll be living on a bus for 5 straight days.

That’s right.

Me, and a team of heavy hitters across Windows, Windows Server, the Certification Program, and (yes!) Exchange, will be doing events during the day, and like any good rock tour of the IT kind, we’ll be boarding the bus that evening to make it to the next city before dawn.

I think there’s a Grateful Dead song that comes to mind here.

“So, what kind of bus is this?” you ask.

This is no mere mortal bus, or even an R.V.

Instead, it comes from the cats over in the U.K. called Jumbocruiser.

We get to spend our travel timing on a Premium Double Decker, model T300, bus, which sleeps up to 16, and offers such amenities as “especially spacious downstairs” featuring “deep and comfortable seats”, and our own personal bunk complete with curtain, video game system, and snappy sheets.

While the video I linked above gives one perspective, fear not.

I’ve just received my new Flip Video camera, which I intend using to provide as close to daily vblogs of “life on the bus”. I also just ordered a cellular aircard for some data link capacity for the times I’ll be starring out the window, watching the German country side go by, and checking e-mail.

Wow, eh?

As I will be terminating my bus journey in Berlin, I feel bit like the Olympic Torch relay for our grand launch at TechEd Europe 2009.

To that end, here’s my tour of scheduled appearance cities (in case you want swing by):

Monday, November 2nd – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tuesday, November 3rd – Frankfurt, Germany
Wednesday, November 4th – Munich, Germany
Thursday, November 5th – Vienna, Austria
Friday, November 6th – Prague, Czech Republic

More details on the actual events and locations of can be found by visiting http://thebustour.com/thebus/tour-dates.

You can even track our progress through the Live Bus Tracker (powered by Glympse). As I write this post, the bus (a/k/a Career Express) is en route across France, traveling at 60 MPH:

The gang has even recorded a short video of me for their blog, to give you a sense on what the heck I’ll be doing throughout the 2nd week of the tour:

After all of this, I’ll be settling in Berlin for the week of TechEd Europe, and looking forward to getting a chance to catch up with folks over there (especially after the big keynote).

Well, in those immortal words utter for seemingly a million years at the conclusion of every Saturday Night Live guest hosts monologue:

“We’ve got a great show…er…bus tour! Exchange 2010, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are here. So, stick around, and we’ll be right back!”

Cue music.

-- hama

Get Into the “New Efficiency”. I Did!

ianhamer — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:10:16 GMT

Wow!

What a crazy run it has been, as we’ve been ramping for a number of milestones for the big launch.

For example, I’ve spent this week building out a real killer Exchange Server 2010 demo rig for some important, upcoming events. In addition to that, I have been conducting briefings with top tier tech press reviewers, showing off the Exchange 2010 RTM experiences.

Before that, it was all about The New Efficiency, and helping deliver content, presentations, and yes, even a demo or two, as part of this virtual launch event.

What?

You haven’t been up to thenewefficiency.com yet?

If you need some motivation to visit a pretty cool “virtual launch experience” (that’s what the all the Web 2.0 cats call these things) featuring the line up of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010, well, check this out:

That’s right: it’s me!

Among the Exchange 2010 sessions I deliver on such things our integrated e-mail archiving, retention and discovery capabilities, I’m doing the Exchange demo in Chris Capossela’s keynote.

To check out my online performance, in my Microsoft “dress blues”, just go up to http://www.thenewefficiency.com and click on the “Watch the Keynotes” icon:

And, select the “Technologies for the New Efficiency" with Chris Capossela” option. You can watch the whole thing (which I do recommend), or just fast forward to 35:10 to see Chris hand things over to me.

In the demo, I highlight:

Outlook Web App
Integrated IM and Presence
Conversation View and the Ignore Conversation
Voice Mail Preview
Outlook 2010
Personal Archive
Transport Protection Rules, and
Multi-Mailbox Search

It’s a good line up, and I hope you enjoy it. I also hope you’ll explore the rest of the Exchange 2010 content (including my two other sessions).

One fun fact: the Microsoft Studios set used to recorded this demo, once served as set for the MSNBC talk show, the Ron Regan Show. And, they used a bunch of gel in my hair…I swear, it could have stopped a bullet.

More to come on the fun…wait till I tell you about my bus tour of Europe the first week of November!

-- hama

So, Why Add an Archive to Exchange?

ianhamer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:36:27 GMT

Last Wednesday I started with a brief overview of the integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities we’re launching with Exchange Server 2010.

Good, right?

Well, a common question I get from customers, partners, analysts, our field and the like is:

“So, why are you adding an archive to Exchange?”

Great question…glad you asked!

This is the purpose of today’s post: what’s our motivation.

The Background

For some time now, we’ve been hearing a bunch from customers about how increased regulatory and compliance pressures are driving the need for better preservation (a/k/a retention) and discovery (a/k/a search) of e-mail data.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that e-mail is considered a valuable source corporate data, and is often sort after in legal, compliance, and personnel matters. Even the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were amended in 2006 to up the ante regarding the “disclosure or discovery of electronically stored information” (READ: e-mail). On top of the rule changes, a quick search with your favorite Internet search engine reveals that e-Discovery of e-mail is on the rise. I think the Enterprise Strategy Group has a stunning (albeit a little dated) stat regarding this trend:

“A survey by Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 91% of organizations with more than 20,000 employees have experienced an electronic discovery involving e-mail in the past 12 months.”

And, that’s just the discovery side of things.

What about adhering to regulations around data retention?

We all have our “favorites” here, like the internal controls required with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or 3-6 year retention period that comes with SEC Rule 17a-4.

One of the most interesting retention policies I’ve heard comes from a conversation I had with a European-based health care provider. They stated that they need to retain patient records (which includes e-mails between doctors and those they treat) for a period of 6 months before the patient’s birth and 10 years after their death, or 125 years (which ever comes first).

Yikes, right?

Well, it’s pretty clear that every business, agency, and organization is held to fairly stringent e-mail preservation and discovery rules. That said, when we took a look at the adoption of adequate e-mail archiving and discovery procedures and tools, we found that only ~20% of Exchange customers have taken these steps (based on both internal Microsoft research and findings from the leading industry analyst firms).

To quote a U.S.-based customer I spoke with on Thursday, “why am I not surprised?”

So, that means 4 out of 5 are doing nothing, relying on backup tapes, or even prayer. For some, the latter is just a matter of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” before they can get the attention and funding necessary to affect a positive change.

As you would expect, we dug a little deeper to find out why this may be the case. What we found was it really came down to two things: 1) Experience and 2) Costs.

The Experience at a Cost

Many e-mail archiving approaches introduce an environment that can be unfamiliar to your users. For example, we’ve heard that it’s not uncommon that your users experience a disruption of their normal Inbox management workflow when archiving product add-ons are, well, added to Outlook or OWA. Search is another common scenario that exemplifies this concern. Your users may have one experience when searching their live e-mail, and yet another, outside of their familiar e-mail clients when they need to search within their archive.

And, it’s worth mentioning that when e-mail is removed from Exchange (a method oft employed by archiving solutions), your users can no longer benefit from the full fidelity of either new or existing Exchange features, like the enhanced conversation view we’ve introduced in Exchange Server 2010 or the mailbox resiliency features (like Database Availability Groups and online mailbox moves).

When it comes to administrative tasks, there could be a range of challenges from difficultly in deploying those add-ons I just mentioned, to having separate tools for conducting multi-mailbox searches across archived and live e-mail for e-discovery, or even having to learn and implement yet another infrastructure that needs to be reliable and easy to access.

Lastly, is cost. Licensing and deploying yet another critical piece of infrastructure risks both increased costs and administrative overhead. This includes the costs around the end-user training required to teach new e-mail habits and practices (or the extra helpdesk calls when someone needs to find something that’s not in Outlook).

This may just be a summary of our findings, but certainly would appreciate hearing what other barriers you may have come across in evaluating such a solution (READ: how about some comments? <g>).

The Eco-System?

Let me stop here for one second and address a question that may be coming to mind:

“What about 3rd party solutions?”

Well, it’s simple: Exchange has and shall continue to benefit from an eco-system of solutions that add great value to the platform (cue marketing fanfare).

No seriously, it’s true.

In fact, we’re already working with many of these very same e-mail archiving partners, helping to map out how they can utilize our extensibility features to add to the capabilities we’re shipping in Exchange 2010, all while delivering the user and IT Pro experiences our Exchange customers come to expect from us by keeping the e-mail in Exchange (more on that later!).

The Exchange 2010 Difference

No matter what your organization’s motivation is for adopting an e-mail archiving solution (e.g., rid yourself of PST files, mailbox management, e-Discovery or even regulatory compliance), I think you’ll find our approach of interest. As I said back in my last post, a key differentiator about what we’re doing here is the fact you get to preserve the user and the IT Pro experience while you’re preserving and enabling easy discovery of your e-mail data. And, that is a big reason why we’ve added these features. If we can help drive up adoption of proper e-mail retention and discovery, everyone wins.

And, this may be something of a paradigm shift for many of you, i.e., keeping e-mail in Exchange to archive it.

To be clear, we’re not shipping a stand alone e-mail archiving product here, but instead are adding integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities right into our e-mail server (and a market leading one at that!).

This means not only do you get the benefits from these e-mail retention and discovery features, you also gain from all of the new mailbox resiliency (read: HA and DR) and storage platform advancements we continue to deliver in every release of Exchange.

There’s still a lot more to talk about in this space, and that will be kicked off in my next post about the Personal Archive bit.

Blog Reader Poll or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Add Comments to Ian’s Blog…

This week’s question: so, what’s your motivation for archiving your e-mail?

-- hama

Back in Bla…er…Blog! And, a little Exchange Archiving too.

ianhamer — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:05:06 GMT

I must admit, that after nearly a four month hiatus, I’m feeling a bit like my blog has just been reawaken, like Han Solo was released from being frozen in Carbonite: can’t really see that well, and I’m hoping that I don’t need to stare down a Sarlacc in the process.

Wow, that’s a lot Star Wars for one blog posting!

While I can offer up a long list of excuses, such as I been working with the team to ramp up for the upcoming launch of Exchange Server 2010 , or trying to get all of my PCs upgraded to the Windows 7 RTM bits, I won’t bore you with any of them, except to say: “I’m back!” (Seriously).

I’ll give you a moment to take that all in, and hopefully not switch channels.

Moving on…

Exchange Archiving (or is it, Archiving in Exchange)

Over the last several months, since we’ve publicly disclosed Exchange Server 2010, I’ve been spending a ton of time chatting with customers, our partners, and the Microsoft field about one of the big, new areas of this release: the integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities.

Even though this feature set is joined by a long list of Exchange 2010 innovations and product enhancements, Exchange archiving has certainly garnered a great deal of attention…not that I’m complaining, ‘cuz this is fantastic!

Having stepped into the role of (cue:fanfare) “Senior Technical Product Manager for the Exchange Archiving Workload” in April, following my year long stint as a product planner for the then code named Exchange “14”, I thought it appropriate to start blogging a bit more about what this archiving thing is all about.

Sound good?

I also felt there was an opportunity to drive some great Internetterwebs discussion around e-mail archiving, in general. I’ve learned a ton about how you are thinking about e-mail archiving, and by bringing a fresh(er) perspective to it, I think there are some areas worth taking a closer look at.

To start with, how about just a clear description of what Exchange archiving is?

Here’s the “marketing speak” one-liner I put together to describe what we’re doing:

“Exchange Server 2010 introduces integrated e-mail archiving capabilities offering customers out-of-the-box tools to preserve and discover e-mail data, without changing the user or IT Pro experience”

What does that all mean?

Simply put: as an e-mail server, we’ve added capabilities to Exchange aimed at helping you get a better handle on all of your e-mail data, by delivering a great, full fidelity experience, through utilizing the end-user (e.g., Outlook) and admin (e.g. Exchange Management Console) tools that are the most familiar to your folks and your IT dept.

What?

Yup!

Beneath these fancy words are a set of features that I think are best represented by this graphic:

So, what we’re talking about, first, is a personal archive that seamlessly surfaces in both Outlook and Outlook Web Access. This is a secondary mailbox that appears, like a set of folders or opened .PST file, allowing your users to use familiar tools and actions to manage both live and archived e-mail data. For the admins out there, the very same tools used to manage other aspects of Exchange, like EMC or PowerShell, can be used to configure and enable this personal archive.

Next, are a set of retention policies that enables the IT staff to define, deploy, and automate the expiry and archiving of e-mail data. These new policies are both granular and flexible (that’s right!), and can be set at either the folder or item level. A brand new policy in Exchange 2010 is a legal hold. When switched on for a user’s mailbox, Exchange retains any edits or deletions made by the user under hold. These messages are stored in the Recoverable Items Store (a/k/a the “dumpster”), in a folder not accessible to or changeable by the user.

Lastly, is a new and easy to use web-based multi-mailbox search. Thanks to the new Role Based Access Control goodness we added to Exchange 2010, this capability can be delegated to specialist users -- like your compliance officer or a human resources manager -- to conduct e-Discovery tasks without having to generate additional overhead for you folks in the IT department.

In future postings, I’ll go into more details about these various features, as well as provide you some context around our motivation and what this could all mean for you!

Until then, I look forward to hearing from everyone and getting your thoughts around this space and what Exchange is delivering.

-- hama

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Switch On Your Internet…

ianhamer — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:53:48 GMT

What a long post title to basically share a link to a recent video I recorded with Microsoft U.K.’s very own Eileen Brown (leading IT Pro evangelist, and social media expert) about our recent unveiling of Exchange 2010:

This video was shot just minutes after spending nearly seven hours presenting and facilitating the Exchange sessions, with fellow Redmond Exchange team’er Ed Banti, at the Reading, U.K. edition of INTERACT 2009.

Eileen even has a blog about that: Interact 2009 and Exchange 2010

Well, enjoy the video.

And, don’t forget to check out all the Exchange 2010 resources (and the beta download) available at microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

-- hama

World, Meet Exchange 2010

ianhamer — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:57:32 GMT

After spending more than year working on the Exchange product management team, I can finally start talking about all the cool stuff the Exchange team has been building over the last several years. That’s right, today we took the wraps off, dispensed with all the secrecy, and publicly announced Exchange 2010 (Woo-hoo!):

Microsoft Unveils Exchange 2010 With Public Beta

As the title of the announcement spells out, we also released a downloadable beta of the on-premises server product. And, to complete the “unveilment” hat trick, there are a series of new Exchange 2010 websites up and running across Microsoft’s various web properties. You can best reach them all from microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

Another thing you may have noticed, is the new(ish) look and feel around the Exchange brand. We call this the Dynamic Grid, and you should recognize it from the other Microsoft server products like SQL, System Center, and Forefront. Not necessarily the coolest feature of Exchange 2010, but again something we can finally start using more widely as we talk to the release.

So, what’s so special about this release? There’s a ton…no seriously, we’ve packed a lot of great new features and enhancements into Exchange 2010. In fact, one of the biggest and newest elements introduced in this release is now my primary area of focus: Archiving and Retention.

There’ll be plenty more about this space, and the rest of the features that we’re bring to market.

For now, I’d rather share some links to a number of great review articles that have started to publish now that the curtain has been lifted.

Fellow technical product manager and Outlook Live video star, Jim Lucey and I went on the road a few weeks back to brief these various technical reviewers, and I’m really pleased with the results:

InfoWorld: First Look: Exchange 2010 beta shines by Martin Heller.
eWeek: Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud by Jim Rapoza
Windows IT Pro: Exchange 2010 Beta Launched: Come and Get It! by B.K. Winstead (with pointers to Tony Redmond’s full review)
PC Mag: Hands on with Exchange 2010 Beta by Mario Morejon

One of my personal favorite lines comes from the Windows IT Pro piece:

“I had a conversation with Microsoft senior product managers, Jim Lucey and Ian Hameroff and asked them if it should be pronounced "Twenty-Ten" or "Two Thousand and Ten." In keeping with their mantra of flexibility and choice, they said it's up to you.”

Goofy?

Yes.

But, that’s how Jim and I roll.

And, yes, flexibility and choice is more than just a marketing buzz phrase around this release. I hope that by downloading the beta bits, reading up on the details on Microsoft.com, and watching the great TechNet Edge videos (like this one on Voice Mail by Ankur Kothari) you’ll see that too.

Programming Note: Tonight, Ed Banti and I will be talking about Exchange 2010 at the “Vista Squad” user group meeting here in London. If you happen to be in London, come check it out.

-- hama

PS: As mentioned previously, I’m over in the U.K. (now in London) for the week, and I think I just saw Ray Parker, Jr. doing a parody version of his (in)famous Theme from Ghostbusters, dressed as a double-decker bus conductor, in a 118 118 T.V. advert. Oh, my.

Now Available on Twitter...Watch Out Web 2.0!

ianhamer — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:42:00 GMT

Well...in keeping with the spirit of my long blogosphere absences, I'm back (once again) to let you know that I'm now rightsizing my blogging to micro-blog levels.

That's right, I've gone off and started Twitting.

Or, is it Tweeting.

Ugh.

Nevertheless, I welcome you to follow not just my random acts of blogging on this TechNet blog, but also learn fun facts about such nonesense as "I'm at Qwest Field, having a few beers in the club before first kick. Go Sounders!", or more aligned with my work in the Exchange product management team, "Just spent part of the morning playing with MS Mail 3.5 with ankbomb". (NOTE: "ankbomb" is a fellow product manager, focused on our voice mail workload made possible by Exchange)

So, go ahead and follow me at twitter.com/hameroff.

-- hama

PS: Oh, yeah. I'm off to the U.K. tonight for this year's installment of INTERACT, INTERACT2009 (if you were following me on Twitter, you'd already know that by now <g>).

A New Recorded Video on Outlook Live

ianhamer — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:12:00 GMT

I’m writing this post following a day on the slopes, so while my spirit remains strong and purposeful, my body does not.

(NOTE: No broken limbs or missing teeth, but I did “accidently” wonder onto a black diamond trail, and cruised my good pal and Exchange team colleague Jim for telling me to “meet him up there.” My quasi-intermediate skiing skills enabled me to get down the hill, albeit with several falls and bruised ego.)

Luckily, KC and I had pre-recorded this new TechNet Edge video we posted yesterday to outline our latest news around ~~Exchange Labs~~ Outlook Live (a service we are running to deliver Exchange “14” powered e-mail to schools and universities via our http://get.liveatedu.com/).

Take a look at the video and let’s us know what you think!

My demo section was shot in my humble building 31 office, and thanks to Adam Bomb’s camera work, he was able to hide most of the clutter I attempted to stash out of shot.

And, if you really dug the desktop picture I had on my Windows laptop, you can download it from my Flickr site (NOTE: a shameless self-promotional plug):

So, what’s with the “shameless self-promotional plug”?

Well, I thought it was fitting since we announced that the Government of the state of São Paulo, Brazil will be offering Live@EDU to “more than 6 million students of the state", I’d share a picture I took in the city of Sao Paulo back in December (while visiting family).

That’s all for now, time to hit the ibuprofen!

-- hama