Martin Buckley - on systems management

Now posting on Nexus SC

2009-06-30T20:01:04Z

I’m now posting on the System Center team blog - http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/default.aspx...(read more)

Partner press releases from Microsoft Management Summit

2009-05-20T01:27:21Z

Microsoft Management Summit was a week or so ago in Las Vegas – we had dozens of partners put out Press Releases detailing their integrations and extensions to the System Center platform. 1E www.1e.com 1E LOWERS THE COST ON MANAGING WINDOWS ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH AUTOMATION, REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE AND POWER MANAGEMENT http://www.1e.com/Downloads/Articles/PressRelease/PressReleaseMMS_ReleaseFinal.pdf Acresso www.acresso.com AdminStudio Delivers First to Market Direct Conversion to Microsoft App-V Format,...(read more)

System Center Partner Solutions Guide – April 2009

2009-04-21T01:42:26Z

Finally the team got the Partner Solutions Guide to print. Here is a proof copy (right) next to the 2007 partner guide on the left. This will be printed and shipped to Las Vegas - in time for the Microsoft Management Summit. A big thanks to all of the System Center partners who provided their information, proofed and re-proofed their submissions. I hope you all find this guide useful – and another benefit of being in the System Center Alliance....(read more)

Growing a partner eco-system

2009-04-17T18:08:12Z

When I started in this role – just over a year ago – there were around 25 partners in the Microsoft System Center Alliance. Most of those were founder members of the Alliance which was announced at TechEd/IT Forum in Barcelona in November 2007. The original members of the Alliance were a mix of the big, strategic hardware OEMs, a couple of larger ISVs with integration and then some smaller, focused ISVs who had been working with Operations Manager and Configuration Manager since the MOM and SMS days....(read more)

System Center and Power Management

2009-03-28T06:57:54Z

There has been a lot of talk recently about ‘Green IT’ and how power management can safe significant money for an IT organisation. Just this last week there was and article in InfoWorld reporting that $2.8B per year is spent on keeping PCs powered on. Microsoft have a whole site of Green IT resources - http://www.microsoft.com/environment/greenit/ – and Windows Vista, Windows 2008 server have many power management features. Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 build on these. For those running with System...(read more)

Silect - CP Studio

2009-02-24T08:03:46Z

I'm in Ottawa, ON, Canada - just about to visit with a small, really focused System Center partner Silect . Silect have a couple of great products focused on consulting and deployment teams as well as the IT Pro tasked with creating knowledge. Of real interest is CP Studio - which dramatically simplifies the task of building Configuration Packs for System Center Configuration Manager Desired Configuration Management. I'm meeting with Harold Dyck - the CEO and one of the founders of Silect - I'll...(read more)

System Center Configuration Manager - differentiation whitepaper

2009-02-20T23:27:08Z

Here is a partner and customer facing whitepaper describing the benefits and market differentiators for System Center Configuration Management. Executive Summary This document is designed to provide an overview of the benefits and market differentiators of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 R2. This paper outlines technology enhancements and clarifies understandings of simplicity, scale, ease of use and setup. In addition, this paper addresses some common misconceptions in the market today...(read more)

Blogging

2009-02-20T23:23:23Z

I came to the realisation that I’d not blogged about technology for weeks on my personal site - and for months here on TechNet. The problem I’ve got is that most of the work with partners is still not released and is under NDA. That really makes for a slow blogging period. We’re approaching Microsoft Management Summit and some of the partner work is now in beta. I’ll make sure to blog on the System Center Operations Manager R2 Cross Platform Management extensions and the partners...(read more)

System Center Configuration Manager installation

2009-02-20T23:22:19Z

Ying Li wrote a great article on installing SCCM on Windows Server 2008. Saved me a lot of time scrubbing my docs. You can read the blog post here with a follow up from Don Hite on updating to SCCM R2 here ....(read more)

Collecting the pieces for a single server installation

2008-09-12T18:23:55Z

Ok – after a long delay here is the first part of the article on installing a single server SCCM demo server. Collect your pieces first: Hardware A suitable server for Windows Server 2008. I’m installing Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition on a 32 bit server with 4GB RAM. I’d recommend a good quality server here; a laptop with 1GB isn’t going to make the grade; neither is that Pentium 3 server that’s gathering dust. Here is a link to the Windows Server Catalog – which lists hardware solutions...(read more)

Single server install

2008-08-18T18:55:16Z

Apologies – this is taking longer than expected to get the content and videos together. Hopefully this week,...(read more)

System Center partner readiness training

2008-08-06T00:36:37Z

Here’s an exclusive. A new series of partner readiness training is coming next month. Starting with a series of training webcasts and moving to a partner bootcamp across the globe – this set of training will assist development, integration and deployment partners in their work with System Center products. I’ll post more details – including links – in the coming weeks....(read more)

Microsoft System Center Alliance – requirements and behind the scenes

2008-07-17T02:26:46Z

I’m back in the rhythm of things after a week or so of pure ITIL v3. Today I’ve been looking at very different processes – the back office pieces that make up the System Center Alliance. I blogged earlier about the high level aims of the System Center Alliance – namely: The goal of this program is simple. To create, nurture and grow a strong partner eco-system around System Center products. Our intent is that this Microsoft and partner community will deliver the best set of management solutions in...(read more)

Microsoft Operations Framework

2008-07-16T20:51:15Z

Oh joy. I’ve been digging into the mapping between ITIL v3 and the new Microsoft Operations Framework v4. There are a lot of white papers from Microsoft: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc506049.aspx There is also a good MOF v4 overview from Rob van den Burg here ....(read more)

ITIL v3 Manager Bridge

2008-07-11T10:34:21Z

I’ve been out of the office all week taking training. One of my areas of specialty is ITIL – I’ve been in Brisbane, Australia taking the ITIL v3 Managers Bridge training and exam with The Art of Service . One of my future blog posts will most likely cover the mapping between ITIL and good old MOF v4. Lots of reading and revision:...(read more)