Wired Life in the Roanoke Valley

Another year, another TechED.

So what is left to say about Los Angeles? I have already written my conference evaluation and I won’t bother repeating most of what I wrote – no one cares and only Microsoft can act on any of my comments. I do agree with the #tela09 twitter feed that this was not the best TechED I have ever been to. LA was expensive for both Microsoft and my company (I just got my hotel bill) and it is my assumption that the cost explains a lot of what was missing this year. At times it felt as if the conference logistics actually impacted the quality of the sessions. Ugh. On the speaker end of things, this was an off year as well. Minasi, Axford, and Russinovich did their best but some of the other speakers left something to be desired, if not for their content then certainly for their delivery. Powerpoint beat me down this year.

What am I taking away? Here is my short list:

• Time to learn Powershell. It seems that a lot of the management features are being drive to the CLI. Ugh. I knew it was coming but this year confirms it.
• Exchange 2010 will be a worthy upgrade. I am excited about the continued improvements with OWA and I look forward to some new features.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 is going to require some work. The x64 only business is a real shame and I will get to spend some time with my folks trying to determine what we can do with all of our x86 boxes.
• Windows 7 will be great. Microsoft really nailed this OS (even though it really is Vista R2). Technologies like DirectAccess make this a compelling upgrade.
• IPv6 is on Microsoft’s radar. Seeing that DirectAccess uses this as its primary connection method really confirmed to me that we need to start on a development plan for IPv6 even if it is only on our external network.
• Security awareness is where I need to spend some time this year.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services deserves another look before we re-up with Citrix. So many of the features that were Citrix only just a year ago can now be found in the Microsoft product.
• Hyper-v is maturing and is now worth considering side-by-side with VMWare. The feature set is developing and the price, $0, remains good.

I look forward to New Orleans next year and I hope Microsoft deals seriously with the feedback that they received this year.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Active Directory, DirectAccess, Exchange 2010, Microsoft, TechED, TechED 2009, TechED 2010 - New Orleans, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.