Microsoft Tech.Ed 2010 Kicks Off

I’ll be running around Tech.Ed this week in New Orleans to gather information about virtualization and Windows Server. Over the next coming months, you will see many tutorials and topics appearing from what I will learn this week. I just finished listening to the keynote delivered by Bob Muglia, President, Server Tools & Business. I can summarize this keynote is two words. Any guesses?  The cloud.  Everything about this mornings keynote surrounded cloud computing.

Microsoft’s journey into the cloud was a 10 year vision that started in 2003 with Dynamic IT.  According to Microsoft, Dynamic IT was their precursor to the cloud and that IT as a whole is entering into a major shift in how information is delivered.

Muglia goes on to say that there are 5 dimensions to the cloud. Examples include:

1. The cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities.
2. The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide, and take action.
3. The cloud enhances your professional and social interaction
4. The cloud wants smarter devices.
5. The cloud drives server advances that drive The Cloud.

The demo show was intertwined between various dimensions of the cloud. Let me summarize what is ahead:

• Beta release of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (July 2010)
• Windows 7 Sp 1 (July 2010)
• Updated Windows Azure SDK with .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 support
• Increased limit to 50 GB of space for Windows Azure (Microsoft’s cloud platform)
• Ability to develop map applications for Bing
• Microsoft Communications 14

The important thing to takeaway is how Microsoft is going to move to the cloud. Microsoft has Windows and SQL Server on the server platform. The cloud platform is going to be Windows Azure and SQL Server Azure. What we are seeing now is Microsoft planting deep roots from their new cloud platform into their server platform. For example, with SQL Server 2008 R2, you can open Management Studio and perform DBA tasks on local network databases and Azure cloud databases. As this year progresses, we will see more and more hooks into all of Microsoft’s product line to the cloud.

Towards the end of the keynote, we got to see Windows Phone 7 and how it fully integrates into Sharepoint. The interface was strikingly similar to the Zune HD with the ability to have custom workspaces and more than one Exchange Server for multiple email accounts. Nobody seemed overly exuberant about the phone.

Overall, I think this keynote was a pitch to get going and develop cloud applications on Windows Azure. They showed us the tools, the integration, the future and then like any good parent, encouraged us to get going.

Stay tuned!

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