Innovative Technology Weblog

As one of the buit.org folk attending TechEd, let me first introduce myself:

Jelle Waringa, 36, working as technical consultant for Getronics Consulting Innovotive Technology since 1 October 2008. Key interests: Information Worker products (OCS, Exchange, Groove) and trends.   

Main product focus this week: Office Communications Server R2 and oh Lord…so many peops are going to be happy. A quick overview of this morning’s session called “Story so far…or what we’ve learned from OCS Customers”:

• Planning workbook – Educational framework which is not a replacement of a detailed design, but it gives overview of considerations and planning tactics. Downloadable from http://communicationsserverteam.com and search for planning workbook
• X64 OCS 2007 R2 will only be available in x64 architecture. This is also the case for edge- and mediation servers.
• New applications: Hunt Groups, Attendant functionality and PSTN call-in to hosted meetings!
• Consolidated Enterprise deplyments in consolidated topology are now recommended. The expanded config is now done through command line only.
• Planning tool R2 is just GREAT. It will give you an graphical overview of all the server roles, topology, port numbers and hardware reqs. It’s all wizard-driven, so just enter your specific parameters and off you go!
• Edge Planning Tool – Same for the Edge Planning tool which is already availble for download. Please check http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/08/29/248.aspx for more details and the download itself.
• Virtualisation – After the RTM of OCS2007 R2 (3 Feb 2009), more announcements will be made about virtualisation support. It looks like MS is going to support some level of virtualisation, as long as media (audio/video) is not involved on that server.
• Direct SIP trunking! The mediation server will be able to connect directly to a SIP carier, which eliminated the need for a PSTN gateway if you choose to use a SIP provider such as budgetphone.nl or one of many others.
• Single Number Reach – For Communicator mobile users. Optional when making a mobile outbound call: SIP signaling to the OCS server initiates the call being made from the OCS server back to the user and than setting up the call to the other party. The other party will get an a caller ID from the office, instead of the employee’s mobile number.

So far so good. To be continued from a now overcast Barcelona….

Hi there,

Yesterday TechED EMEA 2008 started with the keynote by Brad Anderson (general manager of the Management and Solutions Division at Microsoft Corp.) Unfortunatly this is the last TechED in Barcelona, but next year we will be in Berlin, so bye Tapas and Hello Bratwurst

The keynote was all about Dynamic IT, this was also the topic @ MMS 2008, so it is something Microsoft is realy into these days. Microsoft started with some trends/priorities they see in the current market:
Virtualization
Green IT
Anywhere Access
Business Intelligence
Compliance
Cloud Computing

For your convienience I’ve put the slidedeck on our fotolog, so you can have a look.
Keynote slidedeck

During the keynote the following announcements were made:
Windows Server 2008R2 M3 is ready and will support Live Migration in Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V is RTW and can be downloaded for free (this was allready announced last month)
SC Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is RTM
APP-V 4.5 (formaly known as Softgrid) is RTM and available for MDOP customers.
Microsoft Assesment & Planning toolkit 3.2 is RTM
SC Opperations Manager 2007R2 beta is available and will support SLA dashboards (see the great screenshot in the slidedeck)
Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 is RC
Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 SP2 is available.

Besides the announcements Microsoft also gave a demo of Server 2008R2 branche caching, witch was realy impressive. Using Branch Caching it is possible to have a great user experience using files and sites at HQ while working at a branche office. The first user that opens a file will have to download that file from HQ to the branche office, but the 2nd user that opens that file will open it from the cache that resides in the branche office.

Well it’s time now to have some other great sessions, so TTYL

Erik Luppes