For the last 3 years Microsoft has run a conference aimed at people who help design and build MS-based solutions in response to organisational needs.  Turnout is normally excellent (out of around 250 delegates, there were only 2 no-shows), and Microsoft invite some high-quality speakers to discuss topical events.  This year, the theme is "The Future of IT", obviously with a Microsoft slant.

Day 1

9:15 - decent venue, good turnout, keynote topic still to be determined.  The main auditorium is packed, with everybody rammed in like sardines, feels like an economy flight!

11:00 - interesting keynote, with Microsoft emphasizing the shift from software to services, and a big push towards Cloud computing - Live Mesh is going to be an important technology over the next few years!

11:30 - "Windows Server - Datacentre Ready?" gets off to a bad start with a non working remote connection, but improves rapidly with an introduction talking about providing IT services to the "Millennial Generation".  The conclusion I took from this is that it is a "Yes" - providing you buy into the Microsoft approach to Datacentre management - which is a large commitment, especially for smaller organisations.  Really surprised to hear that the "Server Core" configuration doesn't support the .Net Framework, which makes modern web services via IIS7 pretty much useless on the Core platform - seems like a missed opportunity. 

Another Microsoft technology, Hyper-V seems about 18 months behind the virtualisation leader VMware, but there are some very interesting integration possibilities for individual desktop apps, and the demonstration of 3 different versions of MS Word running side-by-side with no desktop footprint was impressive.

NB: at this stage, I give up trying to update this blog via an iPhone - updates will therefore depend on my laptop connection!

Lunch - Had an interesting talk with Paul Foster, Microsoft's robotics expert - his aim is to build a working robot (loosely based on an arachnid) during the two day conference, and demonstrate it at the closing keynote; so far, so good!

15:00 - Steve Lamb, an "IT Pro Evangelist" (who definitely seem to have the coolest jobs in MS) gives a very interesting talk on the inherent aspects of security, both good and bad, within virtualisation services. Also showed an excellent video, which I highly recommend you check out: ShiftHappens (YouTube Video).

16:00 - The CIO of Newham City Council gives his perspective on the 10 key principles which he is trying to instil into his organisation. Nothing particularly revolutionary, although it is refreshing to hear his attitude to the use of "social networking" services by staff, which seems to be - providing they meet their goals/objectives, and don't bring the Council into disrepute - they are welcome to get on with it.

Day 2

8:45 - Early start today for review of the "Changing Landscape of IT", which is it was proposed that the organisations that have shown the biggest growth over the past few years have been those that have embraced IT as a key part of the business, and not just as a cost centre.  It also highlighted the

9:30 - Keynote speech from Ben Ravani of Microsoft's Global Foundation Services division, which is responsible for delivering Microsoft's key web services, including Live ID (1 billion transactions per day), Live Mail (800 million messages per day) and Live Messenger (2 billion messages per day). He put forward a convincing case for building services as "Pods" capable of running on standardised hardware from multiple datacentres, thereby providing an inbuilt DR capability and removing the need for expensive power infrastructure support services.

10:30 - Next session is a lively and engaging presentation from Dave Coplin, an Enterprise Strategy Consultant with Microsoft, talking about Social Computing at Work. Highlighted the fact that most people have better IT provision (hardware and connectivity) at home than at work.  In making use of online services, most users don't care how services are delivered - just the results that are returned from them.  In a similar vein, the enterprise mindset will change from a requirement to train users in IT, to accepting that the majority of new users (or Millennials) will be technically proficient, and will be expecting to use technology and services they use at home.  A key idea is that you shouldn't think of Social Computing as MySpace and Facebook, but the principles that make them work; for example, your online reputation is an important factor in social networking, whether it is on LinkedIn, Xbox Live, or any other service.

In a related note on how "Social Networking" might evolve, Nova Spivack has done some interesting work that shows the journey from Information to Intelligence:

• Web 1.0: The Web - Connects Information
• Web 2.0: Social Software - Connects People
• Web 3.0: Semantic Web - Connects Knowledge
• Web 4.0: The Metaweb - Connects Intelligence

11:45 - The Data-aware Enterprise is the topic of the next presentation.  Whilst it is a competent from a technical point of view, most of the content is around the features and functionality that can be delivered within SQL 2005 and 2008, rather than a more strategic approach to data management within the enterprise.

14:00 - Another highly entertaining and informative presentation, Next Generation Datacentres looks at how Software + Services can be delivered, and the demands these services can place in infrastructure.  Outlined our current thinking that Datacentre operations is focused on Servers, rather than Services. For services such as Hotmail, the components are based on "rack-units", each of which is non fault-tolerant, and the applications are specifically designed to run within a distributed environment. Outside of a database, there is NO state recovery; if a server fails, it is reinstalled with no further analysis or recovery.

Dynamic Services Platform (DSP) Solution Approach is the (current) name for "Microsoft Service's view of a service-oriented datacentre operating model, providing an end-to-end view and approach to delivering services out of a datacentre."  Microsoft currently operate approximately 600,000 servers, and this number is growing at 10,000 per month.  In recent reports, Google, Amazon and MS were said to be responsible for 1/3 of ALL server CPUs delivered.

The DSP Solution Approach is based on knowledge of (and focus on) the service, encoded in software models (SML), which can be worked on across the IT Lifecycle, with end-to-end standardisation. SML is being developed via the Common Model Library (CML), which applies real-world examples to a theoretical model.  With this approach developers should NOT define the layout or configuration of an O/S, except within a limited scope (CPU/Memory), and users should only be allowed to define the features required, not technical issues that should be hidden from the customer.

At this stage, the discussion got into a level of technical detail that was beyond my (rusty) knowledge of MS management services, however (I believe) the gist of the message is that the DSP model, where possible, allow non-developers to define solutions within Systems Center software, in an object-orientated way.