Sanger's WebLog

Virtualisation: Its not all about virtualisation

Sanger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:56:00 GMT

I've interviewed perhaps 30 people for senior virtualisation roles in the last few months and one theme keeps occuring; many virtualisation specialists either ignore the VM workloads or know little about the guest operating systems. This trend is a real worry, if you don't understand what the VM is doing, and have some idea how it works, how are you supposed to ensure it has the right resources, is located on the right cluster, has the right DR profile?

Sure, you can hide behind the "how many IOPS" or "how much RAM" questions, but thats equivalent to an arhictect asking you how many doors and what square footage does your building need without understanding whether its use is residential, office or industrial. OK, the analogy isn't perfect, but you get the point.

Now don't get me wrong, these people understand their particular vistualisation stack and its related software very well - and this is a good thing. But senior roles cannot be as narrow as this. I think the immaturity of the virtualisation industry is partly to blame here. Think back to the early days of Microsoft; very product focussed. Nowadays, Microsoft lead many conversations with customers at a business level. This brings up another bug bare; virtualisation is a technology like many others - its there to solve problems. Too many people are using it as the panacea, "virtualisation is the answer, now whats your problem?". Again, immaturity, and perhaps unbounded enthusiasm are major contributors.

So, a few words of advice for any who are going for a senior job as a virtualisation specialist (e.g. Virtualisation Architect);

Consider several alternative solutions to ensure you pick the right one. Its not always virtualisation
Understand the business and technical problem, before jumping to the solution
The guest OS and workload will impact how you configure and manage the VM - make sure you understand these
Get to know the three main virtualisation stacks, their strenghts, weaknesses, and tehnical differences so you can make an informed decision on which to use and where

Good luck, and I wish you success with you future virtualisation efforts.

Kevin

Implications of Software + Services Consumption for Enterprise IT

Sanger — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:06:00 GMT

Late last year, I wrote a paper on the challenges facing enterprise IT when they consider SaaS/S+S consumption. The full paper has now been published in The Architect Journal and is online at MSDN.

I summarise my points below, go take a look at the full paper to see why I draw these conclusions;

Consuming an external service reduces the operations issues you will face but introduces new challenges such as integration, contractual negotiation and reduced flexibility.

Impact ripples beyond IT: users are often given another set of credntials to access the service resulting in more complex provisioning/de-provisioning processes, the need to update helpdesk procedures. You also have to manage user training

You may be facing an EAI project: does the data to be held in the service need to be used by internal applications? Does the service provide the ETL capabilities your users need?

There may be infrastructure implications: do firewall rules need to be changed, are there certificate implications (e.g. smart-card authentication)

Operations will be impacted: as a minimum, you need to give your helpdesk team the new application escalation details however most organisations will need to perform some troubleshooting on access issues (e.g. is company firewall causing the problem, is it some change they've made to the client/browser etc) before a problem is escalated to the service provider.

There may need to be some deployment: even if the application is accessed through a browser, there are will be a minimum version required. It may be neeccessary to add the application domain to the Trusted Sites list, or deploy a JVM/ActiveX control which your users do not have rights to do.

Evaluate the legal implications: if your business is regulated, you need to work out if any regulations affect the data or service, and if so, how do you prove compliance? If you're not regulated, you still need to consider national laws e.g. data privacy.

In conclusion:

Consumption of an external service by an Enterprise has implications beyond "selection and subscription". As an absolute minimum the contract and any SLAs need to be evaluated, more likely you're facing some form of integration project.
SaaS/S+S as a delivery model is not yet mature enough to have a good enterprise integration story. Many SaaS/S+S apps are aimed at consumers or small businesses who have no integration requirements. Vertical soluitons fare much better but most still have a long way to go.
The more important the application to the business, the more integration and due diligence is needed. The converse is also true.

This is just a summary, I encourage you to read the whole thing. Enjoy the read.

Kevin

Mashups For The Rest Of Us

Sanger — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:32:00 GMT

I am not a developer; something I'm often at pains to point out. Sure, I understand the benefits of the .Net f/w, IDEs such as Visual Studio and have been involved with application architecture design on projects in the past. I've spent a lot of my time thinking about and presenting on SaaS for the last 9 months, inevitably I’ve learnt about Web 2.0 as a result. However most of this dev knowledge is on a theoretical level; sufficiently detailed for me to bridge the gap between application design/development, infrastructure and operations. Perhaps “sufficiently un-detailed” would be a better statement..

With this background, I’m quite interested in Popfly: the new Microsoft site/tool combo which makes it “easy to build and share mash-ups, gadgets and Web pages using pre-built “Blocks” that connect to online services” according to the blurb. The bit which is most appealing to me is the pre-built blocks; I’m kind of thinking drag-n-drop mashup.

I have an MSN Spaces site which details my rock climbing exploits that could benefit from being mashed up with things like Virtual Earth to show where I was climbing. I’ve long wanted an easy non-code way of doing this; Popfly may go far enough to stop me saying "I'm not a developer" (tongue firmly in cheek). I'm reminded of the time when GUI-based drag-n-drop products were released to enable business people construct complex SQL queries: these met with some success but produced horribly expensive SQL queries. Mind you, Web 2.0 and AJAX are a far cry from SQL queries..

I'm not sure I want to be known as a masher-up-er though.

Shedding some light on the aQuantive Acquisition

Sanger — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:01:00 GMT

I read the press release when news broke about the aQuantive acquisition last Friday. Like many press releases, if left a few questions in my mind. Fortunately there were some talking points in my inbox this morning which help clarify the objectives of the acquisition;

The deal is an extension of Microsoft’s big bet on the online advertising space. With a total value of over $500 billion, $40 billion of which is online, there is tremendous opportunity to not only drive future growth for the company, but also to provide this industry with tools and services that will help advertisers generate the highest possible return on their ad investments and will help publishers maximize their revenue.

Our merger with aQuantive will enable the new team to strengthen our relationships with advertisers, agencies and publishers by enhancing our current advertising platform with complementary technologies. For the first time, we’ll be offering display advertising solutions for all ad agencies and publishers on any websites; providing a choice while, growing the addressable market for Microsoft products and services.

With these new assets, we also increase our capabilities to build and support next generation advertising solutions and platforms such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV.

Interesting stuff.

Kevin

TechED ITForum Microsoft Virtualisation Presentation Videos now online

Sanger — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:53:00 GMT

A number of the Microsoft Virtualisation presentations at ITForum have been posted to TechNet Showtime. These provide a good overview of two virtualisation technologies (machine and application virtualisation);

An Overview of Microsoft's Vision for Virtualization
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=337
Rajiv Arunkundram, Product Manager, Windows Server Marketing, Microsoft

In this session we focus on virtualization technology and we offer an introduction to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. We also outline Microsoft's vision for the technology over the next few years. This session provides a high-level overview of the different solutions that you can implement with virtualization.

Transitioning to Windows Server Virtualization
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=343
Mark Kieffer, Group Product Manager, Windows Core OS Team, Microsoft Corporation

Join this session to learn more about Windows virtualization, a new technology in Microsoft Windows Server code-named 'Longhorn'. We introduce the key scenarios for Windows virtualization and new features and improvements in Microsoft Virtual Server, including better performance. Find out how you can start adopting Microsoft Virtual Server today and transition to Windows virtualization by leveraging the unified format.

How to Virtualize Infrastructure Workloads
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=348
Robert Larson, Architect,Microsoft Services

Join this session to learn about virtualization of infrastructure workloads such as Active Directory (AD), file and print, Web servers and the benefits of mixed workload virtualization. We discuss details, tips, and tricks for creating an effective virtualization environment. During this session, we walk you step by step through the process of planning, deploying, and managing a virtual environment for infrastructure workloads.

Using Application Virtualization to Decrease Your Application Management TCO
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=361
Bill Corrigan, Director of Project Management, System Center Marketing Team, Microsoft
Chad Jones, Group Product Manager, Windows Client Virtualization, Microsoft

This session will introduce the newly acquired SoftGrid, an exciting new technology that has proven to reduce customers' application management costs by upwards of 95%. This session will give the attendee a strong overview of the application virtualization and streaming technology and how it can be used to augment existing systems management infrastructure. We will share real-world case studies and demonstrate the Softricity products working in conjunction with other Microsoft technologies, including Active Directory, Terminal Services and Systems Management Server.

Event: Virtual Server - The Tip of the Iceberg

Sanger — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:40:00 GMT

On Tuesday 28th I delivered the 1st of my EMEA Virtual Server events, which will be touring to >25 countries across the EMEA region over the next 6 months. Sharing the presenting was Shai Ofek (Microsoft Corp, from Remdond) and David Miller (Avanade). I've posted the session titles and abstracts below, and linked to the PPT decks.

Microsoft Virtualisation: Today and Tomorrow

Virtual PC and Virtual Server have gained significant adoption in development and test environments, and are an important stepping stone to realising Microsofts vision of self-managing dynamic systems. Virtualisation technology is gaining a foothold in the data centre, enabling more efficient utilisation of hardware and helping IT react more quickly to changing demands. This session introduces the Microsoft Virtual Server technology, its capabilities, how its being deployed today and the benefits and challenges customers are seeing. We look at how Microsoft will evolve the technology with the introduction of Hypervisor in codename Longhorn Server. We’ll look at the steps Microsoft is taking to help customers and partners use Virtual Server effectively in heterogeneous environments. Finally, we’ll predict how virtualisation will change IT, from the data centre to the branch, servers to the desktop.

Managing a Mixed Virtual/Physical Environment: Tools and Techniques

Microsoft believes the management of physical and virtual machines should be largely transparent. The same tools and techniques should be used to deploy, monitor, maintain, and backup physical and virtual machines. For this to happen, tools need to understand the difference between physical and virtual, and automatically adjust the actions they undertake to accomplish the same task for physical and virtual. This session looks at System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsofts first product which bridges the gap between physical and virtual. We’ll look at the complete lifecycle, from provisioning, to backup, migration (physical to virtual and back) to monitoring, and how this fits into the management of the rest of the server infrastructure.

Microsoft Virtualisation Deep Dive

What is the Architecture of Virtual Server, and how will this change with the introduction of Hypervisor? How does host clustering work, what are enlightenments? This session starts with a look at the components which make up Virtual Server, covers the changes introduced with Windows Virtualisation (Hypervisor), and takes a detailed look how the virtualisation stack works. We cover the High Availability capabilities inherent in Virtual Server, investigate the benefits of AMD-V and Intel VT hardware virtualisation for non-Windows guests and cover some of the standards work Microsoft is pushing to improve the performance of disk and network for the virtualisation industry.

Avanade: Virtual Server notes from the field

If you believe the hype, you could be forgiven for thinking Virtualisation can solve most IT problems. In this session, Avanade will share the experience they have gained helping customers adopt, deploy and manage Virtual Server. We’ll look at typical workloads, why they’ve been virtualised, the challenges they needed to overcome to gain business benefits. And, of course what the business benefits were. Things like backup and recovery, load balancing and capacity management are all covered. In effect, the good, the bad and the ugly.

As usual, I welcome feedback.

Greece Architect Forum: Software as a Service

Sanger — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:18:00 GMT

A team of us have been researching the implications of SaaS on ISVs, Hosters, Enterprise customers and Microsoft for a few months.

On Wednesday 22nd November, Juergen Pfiefer and I delivered the Greek Architect forum on SaaS. Its the first time I've presented my thoughts on the SaaS Implications for Enterprise Infrastructures; the feedback I got re-enforced my findings;

LoB SaaS applications cannot be viewed like islands or treated as outsourced applications, or your infrastructure will quickly fragment, the user experience will drop and costs will increase.
Integration should be considered in four areas;

Identity
Operations
Data
Security

Enterprises who've not negotiated SLAs in the past will face a learning curve; those who have experience with outsourcing will be able to re-use their skills around contract negotiation and creation will be better positioned.

I welcome feedback either by email kevin.sangwell at microsoft com or via comments on this blog.

The Vista and Office 2007 Learning Curve

Sanger — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:24:00 GMT

Last Update: 09/11/06 16:18 GMT

With any new software, the user has to go through a learning curve. When the software UI has changed significantly from a previou version its easy to get frustrated as you can't find the features you're used to, resulting in lost time hunting them down. Is training or self discovery the answer? Is it both? Is the answer something I've not thought of?

Over the years I've worked on many projects where the limiting factor in rollout velocity is clasasroom-style user training. The technical solution to migration/deployment is often highly automated and could migrate 100s of users/desktops per day, if only training had the same capacitty. I've often wondered if this classroom style training was really needed. It costs a lot of time and money, lengthens the project and the results are never validated; how many projects migrate two pilot groups, one who receive training and one who don't, then compare the number of helpdesk calls, user productivity and user experience between them?

Microsoft IT (the internal IT department) take the "do it yourself" approach: users can visit various intranet sites to self learn if they want, there are some regional classroom style training courses available, but rearely for beta software. As far as I know, few people take advantage of either. Granted, Microsoft are a company of largely tech-savvy users who should pick things up more quickly than some others, however most people I know feel training gets in the way of doing the job, and I know many many business people outside the IT department in customers feel the same. So, why do we continue to force business people onto training courses as part of a rollout? Perhaps we should let staff choose whether to take training?

Having installed Office 2007 on my XP laptop 8 weeks ago, and then migrated to Vista a few weeks later, I've gone through (to be frank, I'm still going through) a learning curve which is frustrating at times. Do I want training? No. Why? Because most training is generic, and will teach me stuff I already know or have discovered for myself. Other people will feel differently, so training should be available if users want it.

When Microsoft product groups go through product design, they put a lot of effort into the user experience (UX as they call it). The public are engaged in this process resulting in a range of user experience levels providing feedback. So, why do Microsoft change the UI of Windows in every release, and why did the Office UI change in Office 2007 so radically, when they know this will result in a steeper learning curve, and slower deployment? Simple answer: productivity. The changes come from studying how people use computers, then optimising the UI to speed up tasks.

I'd say that I can already do tasks more quickly in Office 2007 than in Office 2003, and day to day tasks on Vista (finding documents, browsing the web, working remotely and wirelessly in Starbucks) is about the same as XP, but system tasks (anything to do with the control panel) is still taking me longer compared to XP. Why? Because stuff has moved, which brings me to the point of this post: a list of things that have changed. Everyone is going to go through a similar "voyage of discovery" (others would call it pain), listing where stuff has gone might save you a few minutes.. I'll add to this post over time, feel free to add comments and I'll consolidate when I get a moment.

XP Feature	Where is it?*	Vista Equivalent	Where is it?*
Add/Remove programs	Start -> Control Panel ->Add/Remove Programs	Programs and Features	Start ->Control Panel ->Programs and Features
My Documents	Start My Documents On the Desktop C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\My Documents	Documents	Start -> Documents C:\Users\<your username>\Documents
ActiveSync	Mobile	Sync Centre and/or Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC)	Start -> Control Panel (WMDC is not in betas or RC1 or RC2, so you can’t sync Windows Mobile phone contacts/inbox etc)
Run	Start -> Run Windows Key+R	Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Run Windows Key+R	Start -> enter program name in Start Search at bottom of Start menu -> hit enter
Performance Monitor	Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Performance	Reliability and Performance Monitor	Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Reliability and Performance Monitor

More to follow..

Kevin

DSI and Virtualisation at the Microsoft Technology Sumit 2006, Warsaw

Sanger — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:05:00 GMT

Microsoft Technology Summit is an annual Microsoft event held in Warsaw which this year attracted >2,500 IT Professionals and Developers. I was honoured to present two sessions in the Architecture track;

The DSI presentation was an updated version of the session I delivered several times earlier this year. Its been changed to reflect the fact that SDM has been renamed SML and has broad industry support.

The Virtualisation session was an overview of Microsoft's current technologies in this space (Virtual Server/PC, Terminal Services and SoftGrid). Both sessions had nearly full rooms and generated a lot of questions at the end. Application virtualisation had the most questions, two of which I couldn't answer on the day - so I promised to paste the questions and answers on the blog;

Q1) One Win2K3 Enterprise Edition license entitles you to run 4 guest copies of Win2K3 on the Enterprise Edition host. How does licensing work when you have an Active/Active Virtual Server cluster - do you get 8 licenses which can run on one machine in a failure situation?

A1) No, the licenses are tied to a physical machine. To run and Active/Active cluster with a total of 8 VMs, you'd need to buy an additional 4 licenses of Win2K3 Enterprise Edition or chose to use Win2K3 Data Center edition which allows an unlimited number of VMs. See this whitepaper which clarifies licensing with Virtualisation. This web page has additional information, including an FAQ.

Note: in the presentation I stated that Microsoft Licensing for our server applications needs to catch up with the OS licensing in terms of Virtualisation; the whitepaper shows this has already happened - for example a license for Exchange allows you to have multiple virtual Exchange machines on the physical host, but only 1 can run at any one time. See the whitepaper for all the details.

Q2) How do customers purchase / obtain SoftGrid?

A2) If you're a Microsoft Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreement customer, contact your account team. Other customers will be able to buy SoftGrid through the Microsoft Partner / reseller channel from January 1 2007. I'll update this post later on how you could buy/try SoftGrid before January 1.

Infrastructure Public enemies: 1, 2 and 3

Sanger — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:07:00 GMT

Thinking about the challenges I've faced on projects over the last few years, I've noticed they broadly fall into three problem areas;

Security
Identity Management
Operational Management

I doubt anyone is surprised by this list. Security is easily the most painful topic whilst its difficult to prioritise the other two. Initially, I thought the prioritised order would change throughout the lifecycle of a solution. Operational management isn't an issue during the design phase right? But when you think about it, you need to design operational management; you need to get the dev team instrument code appropriately, you need monitoring services, deployment services, configuration management services, reporting services etc. So whilst the activity related to each of the three areas above will vary across the lifecycle, I feel the areas are still the most prominent problems Infrastructure teams face. If you have a different view, drop a comment.

I find its quite useful to know these three areas are the biggest problems; you can focus extra effort and resources on them. You can look for best practices around them. For example, during design and implementation phases of my last project we set up teams broadly aligned with these problem areas and integrated them with teams focused on particular products. I think of these as horizontal teams focused on (primarily) non-functional areas and vertical teams aligned with functional areas, as shown in the diagram below (liked here, this image is stored on a public dogfood server, so it may not be available at all times).

Drop a comment on these trends; do you agree? Is something else causing you sleepless nights?

These trends help to focus my attention – is there a deficiency in a Microsoft product which is causing the issue, or is it a result of poor process, internal company politics or something else?

Architecture sessions @ IT Forum

Sanger — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:21:00 GMT

Infrastructure Architects are not very well served by the industry (including Microsoft), so I'm testing an Architecture track at IT Forum this year. I've allocated 5 session slots and will be watching carefully to see how well they are attended and how...(read more)

Infrastructure Architect Forums

Sanger — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:12:00 GMT

Between March and June '06, I had the pleasure to deliver an Infrastructure Architect Forum in many countries across Europe focused on the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).

DSI is not particularly well understood either across the industry, or among many Microsoft staff. The objective of the forum was to help customers and staff alike get a feel for DSI; the vision, where we're at in the roadmap and how it will affect products and employed by IT Operations teams.

Each Forum had a keynote presentation from one of the Partners at MWD Advisors, an analyst firm who focus on IT business alignment. MWD are somewhat unique not only because of their focus, but also because they provide their research for free.Their website is a great resource for subjects such Identity Management, Service Orientation and many others.

You can find their presentation, entitled "Rethinking Enterprise and Infrastructure Architecture" here.

The other three sessions were delivered at the Pakistan Developer Conference, detailed below. The only difference between these sessions and the Forum sessions is the PowerPoint template.

If you want to follow up on the Health Model concept or any of the large issues discussed in DSI, see here

Finally, I'd like to thank the many people I met in Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Pakistan for their insightful comments and excellent questions.

Pakistan Developer Conference '06 Sessions

Sanger — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:29:00 GMT

It was my pleasure and honour to present the 3 sessions below in both Lahore and Karachi this week at the Pakistan Developer Conference '06.

Being my first visit to the country, I was surprised not only by the passion and thirst for learning but also the great questions each session generated.

Session 1: Bridging the Gap between Development and Production

Integration and test are perhaps the most painful phases of the solution lifecycle for an Architect. Its the crunch point where application meets infrastructure; data centre constraints are first encountered and security policies are applied. Its also the phase where significant time and cost overrun often occurs. Taking an Infrastructure Architects perspective, this session will show how treating infrastructure with the same discipline as development results in a smoother transition from coding to deployment. We will see how today's tools are starting to bridge the gap between development and infrastructure, and look at what the future will bring.

Download PowerPoint Deck

Session 2: Model Based Management and the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI)

When starting a new project, Solution Architects agree a set of functional requirements with the business. These requirements are often used as the solution success criteria; delivering 100% of the functional requirements = complete success. And herein lays the problem. Without the successful deployment and operational management, the solution is next to useless. Analysts estimate on average 70% of the lifetime solution cost occurs in the deployment and operating phase, so why aren’t a set of non-functional requirements (e.g. manageability, availability and security) agreed with the functional requirements? The Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative will provide the tools which enable Architects to design-in management, security and more. This session will explain the DSI vision, look at model-based management and show you how you can build some of these concepts into your solutions today.

Download PowerPoint Deck

Session 3: Service Oriented Infrastructure, a new way of thinking

Most companies have grown their infrastructure organically; a new application here, a new service there. The result is a set of stove pipes, infrastructures within infrastructures, each with its own user directory, security policies, and operations teams. This makes identity management, end-to-end security and portfolio management difficult and costly. Many companies are looking at consolidation and virtualisation as the magic combination which will solve these problems, but these alone are not enough. You need to apply Service Orientated thinking to the enterprise infrastructure. In this session we look at what a Service Oriented Infrastructure might look like, the benefits it might bring and the challenges you'll face getting there.

Download PowerPoint Deck

Enjoy, and please comment if you have questions or simply disagree with some of the ideas.

Kevin

Its all about the content, and your feedback!

Sanger — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:38:00 GMT

IT Forum is now only a few days away, and its success is now largely in the hands of the speakers and onsite logistics team. The success is measured by you; through completing evaluations.

Let me give you an insight into the importance we all - speakers, events team and ultimately the event budget holders - place on the feedback;

The event is measured inside Microsoft based on the feedback. If the overall event score shows year-on-year improvement we have achieved our goal.

We award the highest scoring speakers with a prize to encourage the best performance.

The speakers are highly competitive, in the speaker room there is a large plasma showing the current top speakers and their score - this is automatically refreshed every 60 seconds. Its quite normal for a speaker to check their score immediately after the session (in fact, its possible for them to check their feedback whilst delivering a session) - and most read all the verbatim comments. Speakers who score highly usually get invited back to the next event. You can work out what happens to those who under perform. Performance at events like IT Forum is often a discussion at the speakers annual review with their manager.

Top track prizes are awarded to encourage the best content selection by the track owners.

A low-scoring session will immediately get flagged to the relevant track owner and I. We find out the reason for the low score and take action accordingly, whilst the event is running. For example, sessions which finish early typically score badly – and rightly so.

There are other reasons some sessions under perform; misleading abstract, poor speaker knowledge, noisy or uncomfortable room. Some of these can only be captured and fixed if you provide verbatim feedback; please be specific. If you’re not happy with anything, we want to know.

During the event, I typically spend 30% of my time looking at the scores to see if we’re going in the right direction or if we need to make some changes. In the past, we’ve cancelled poor-performing speakers outstanding sessions so you don't attend a bad session.

There is one thing you can do to help make the event meet your needs; provide feedback which is actionable.

Some good examples of actionable feedback:

Great session, the demo really helped show how to setup clustering
The speaker needs presentation-skills training
The room was too noisy

Conversely, here is feedback which isn’t actionable:

Great session J
Waste of time
Get a better speaker

We want to know why the session was great, why it was a waste of time and how the speaker failed.

I’m confident the event will be a great success and you’ll find it valuable, with your feedback we can make next year even better.

Cheers & enjoy IT Forum 2005

Kevin

Content Database is now online

Sanger — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:15:00 GMT

The session search tool (what we also call the content database) is now online with most tracks showing 75% of their break out sessions (BOS). This will be updated over the next few days as the remaining tracks fine-tune their 75% lists. Note that Chalk and Talks (CHT) are not at 75% yet.

Our 100% content complete deadline is 16th September, when Olga Londer (content co-owner) and I have reviewed each track, the complete list BOS will be uploaded. This means sometime w/c 23rd September you'll see all the breakout sessions we've got planned. Chalk and Talks will be included in this upload, but are subject to small changes.

Talking of CHTs; we've changed the format a bit this year. In the past we've not allowed the use of PowerPoint in chalk and talks (there have been a few situations where this was relaxed) - after all, thats what the breakout sessions are for. This year we're putting projectors into the CHT rooms and allowing presenters to have a small number of slides and take up to a maximum of 15 minutes setting the scene for the CHT. Just to be clear, we're not turning CHTs into mini breakout sessions. Putting a projector in each CHT room means the presenter can show demos or VMs to help answer your questions. I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Leave comments for all to see (I'm not moderating comments but will remove anything innapropriate).

New: This year we're introducing Lightning Demos. The idea behind this is simple; there are so many products being covered at IT Forum, its impossible for us all to know every one of them. A lightning demo will give you a 30 minute overview of what's possible with a certain product or technology. If you've little or no idea what Axapta does, attending a lightning demo will give you a good idea.

Wanted: Panel ideas. I've asked each track owner to give me suggestions on panels they think you'd like to see - getting ideas directly from you will help us make the best selection. Last year we ran the following;

Security Experts Forum
Directory Services Forum
Microsoft and Open Source
Are You Supportable?
SQL Server Roadmap
MS IT: Executives Panel
When Should I Worry about 64-bit?

What do you want to see this year? Leave comments for all to see.

Last, but most certainly not least, the list of pre-conference sessions has been updated with the addition of two Security-related sessions. The pre-cons are very strong this year with some great speakers. Places for them are limited and are allocated on a first-come first-served basis.