Windows Server Solutions Ponderings

Fun photo from an event where some of my team and some of our small business product managers in Microsoft's Central and Eastern Europe team got together to talk about SBS 2003 R2. (In my best Homer Simpson...) "Hmmmm - Green Check Cupcakes of Software Health"

Announcing the Infrastructure Assessment Framework:

Frustrated that we couldn't find the right Microsoft tools to give to partners with sales opportunities, my team developed the "Infrastructure Assessment Framework" and launched it at the Worldwide Partner Conference in July. IAF is designed for partners that sell Infrastructure solutions to small & midsize customers. It provides a consolidated & holistic view of all existing Microsoft tools along with guidance on what to use when with small & midsize prospects. It's really cool and I encourage you to give it a try and send us feedback on how we can make it better.

The direct link to the IAF: http://www.assessmentframework.com

What if a server held the secrets that would change small businesses forever? Click the photo and find the code. 

Movie "Trailer" presented at the Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 launch event in Boston, July 2006. Created by my team - Enjoy!

Following up my first post to thank the SBS MVP community in their support of our recent R2 recall announcement. Recalling a product is a very tough thing to do, but in the case of looking at all of our options and discussing it with the team, it became very clear that it was the RIGHT thing to do for partners and customers - and that made the recall decision a very easy one. MVPs have been very supportive in direct words to us and in their blogs on this decision, and I thank you all for this.  

Vlad Mazek even created a nice video about the R2 recall - thanks Vlad!

We will be publishing some technical documents soon for those few of you who have the original R2 installed, and what you can do to get it up-to-date. Expect those from us in the next day or so - I will post them here on my blog first.

Welcome to my new blog - My name is Steven VanRoekel, I am the director of the Windows Server Solutions team at Microsoft. We are the team that takes the complex and makes it easy for small and midsized businesses (businesses with fewer than 500 employees or so). We are the team that brings you Windows Small Business Server ("SBS") and are working on a similar product for midmarket, codenamed "Centro" (similar to SBS, but spread across more than one machine, and we assume there is a local IT person onsite to manage it).

I have been at Microsoft for 13 years, and have had a number of different jobs throughout my Microsoft career. I started in the Premier Support team down in Las Colinas, Texas - focused on servers and networking technologies. From there, I moved to the sales team in Houston as a technical sales specialist, and then to the same job in Dallas. While in Dallas, I started doing a more PR and marketing, even appearing on the local Fox TV station and a local talk radio show. In 1999, I moved to Redmond to work as Bill Gates' speech manager (a fun job to say the least), and after working for Bill for almost three years, went on to lead the marketing efforts around Microsoft's efforts with Advanced Web Services. In 2004, I joined the Windows Server team to start the Midmarket/Centro effort and to move to the job I have now directing the Windows Server Solutions team.   

Through this blog, I hope to create an informal connection to the Windows Server Solutions team. I want to discuss topics that may be of interest to you or bring new things to light about SBS, Centro and Microsoft. If you want to send me any questions, my email is stevenv@microsoft.com. I will do my best to get you an answer as soon as I can.

Here's a photo of me in case you see me at a conference and want to say "hello"...

I look forward to interacting with all of you.

- Steve