Sunday, January 07, 2007 11:23 PM
Kevin Beares
The secret is out. Windows Home Server is announced!
I cannot tell you how exciting it is to now be able to talk about Windows Home Server. I am part of a team called the Windows Server Solutions Group (WSSG). This group is responsible for the development of SBS, Centro and Windows Home Server. I have been running and testing numerous builds of this product for over a year and have been amazed at what it can do. I am so excited to be at this stage in the development cycle. I know we are not a released product yet, but you have to check this thing out.
As I am running the betas for SBS and for Centro, I will also be running the beta for Windows Home Server. Stay tuned for further details on the Windows Home Server Beta. I cannot make promises that this beta will be like others, but hopefully we can make it fun for everyone and get a lot of valuable feedback from the community. I very much look forward to working with the community to get input to the product team. This team is amazing to work with and have been phenomenal in how involved they have been with working with the Microsoft Internal Beta testers who have been keeping Windows Home Server secret. I feel like we have a vibrant community built around this product already. We have had a large amount of people signed up internally at Microsoft testing Windows Home Server since December 05. The feedback and discussions have been passionate and insightful.
I look forward to talking to you all more about this later.
Check out Charlie Kindel's blog for even more information and this cool video with CJ at on10.net. Windows Home Server will live in your closet, simplify your life
Kevin Beares
WSSG Community Lead
About Kevin Beares
Kevin Beares joined Microsoft in July 2001 as a Product Support Team Manager and has been in the Community Lead role for over 5 years. Before joining Microsoft Kevin worked at Webridge, Inc based out of Portland, OR running their support operations. Kevin started out in 1991 as a Quality Assurance engineer for Micro Focus, Inc. providing technical assistant to VP of R&D coordinating and building testing programs for their DB2 compatible XDB Database Server product as well as running their beta program. Kevin quickly moved into a Customer Support role supporting the latest XDB Database Server product. In 1994, Kevin moved to Portland, OR to work with Serena Software, Inc as a support engineer and later as a Support Manager providing advanced technical support, on-site consulting and training for over 750,000 customers in the continental US, Canada & Europe with product support team of 40. Kevin then moved on to a start up, Webridge Inc. in 1999 to create a support team from ground up to support a new fully transactional Microsoft COM-based object application server for rapid development of Enterprise level intra and extranet Web Portal solutions called the Webridge Framework.
While at Microsoft, Kevin started as a Product Support Team Manager supporting the Visual Studio Data Access Components. Kevin then moved over to manage one of the five US Based Solution Integration Engineering (SIE) teams. SIE was an Elite Escalation Team dedicated to providing support to the most critical customer cross-product integration issues. In 2003, Kevin moved over to the Microsoft Operations Manager team as a community Lead and finally moved to the Windows Server Solutions (WSSG) team to be the community lead for the three products that they were developing, Windows Home Server, Small Business Server, and Essential Business Server. High Performance Computing was added in early 2008. As a community lead, Kevin drives the community engagement strategy for the WSSG Product teams, running the Feedback, Influencer, Online communities, and outbound communication plans.
Kevin graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1989 with a Bachelor's of Arts in Sociology.
