Each week there are a number of interesting questions that I get from my own internal Microsoft team, our Microsoft Partners, and even our customers. Many of these responses I send through the tunnels of communication like Email, Instant Messaging, phone, and even (can you imagine) face-to-face conversations. While getting this time sensitive information out the people who are asking the questions is important to meet some end goal like closing a deal, kicking off a project, or just gathering data, it really doesn't help anyone else out in the blogosphere. So I'm making an attempt (notice I didn't say commitment) to provide a weekly update to my blog with some of the useful information I come across. So here goes the first one....
This weeks topics:
- Mix08 Sessions Online
- Silverlight 2 Beta 1
- Silverlight for Mobile
- Hardcore Demo Laptop
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1
- Apple licenses Microsoft ActiveSync for the iPhone
- Microsoft Virtual Desktops
- SQL Server Data Services
- Microsoft Zumobi
Mix08 Sessions Online: The Microsoft Mix08 event in Las Vegas produced a ton great sessions. Those sessions are all available for your geek out pleasure at: http://sessions.visitmix.com/
Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is now available: There are so many great things about Silverlight it's tough to figure out where to start. I guess I should shoot off some of the things I find some cool about the technology:
- Leverage your .NET Development skills to build rich interactive web applications (yes, like Adobe Flash) using the same IDE (Visual Studio 2008 & BLOCKED EXPRESSION and languages that you've come to learn, know, and trust.
- Cross Platform (Windows & Mac...not like the commercial) and Cross Browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox
- Build high quality application that includes things like High Definition video!
Hard Rock has a HUGE memorabilia collection all over the world. Using Silverlight 2, they bring this collection to the Internet world in a very cool way. Check it out: http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/
Silverlight on Mobile Devices: That's right, you will soon be able to use the Silverlight 1.0 platform on mobile devices. That includes Nokia phones as Microsoft and Nokia announced that last week in Las Vegas.
I must also make note that one of our local customers in the Washington D.C. Metro Area was on stage during the keynote and showed off their very cool Silverlight for Mobile application. The customer is AWS Weatherbug and the application brings weather information to your mobile device in a very rich fashion. Here is a link to the application. You can try it out today on your browser using Silverlight 1.0: http://sl.weatherbug.com/?zip=98052
Hardcore Demo Laptop: Dell is now selling a laptop that carries 8GB of RAM! Now that makes for either a fantastic mobile development environment and/or demo machine. It says the machine can have 8GB of RAM, but the online order form only allows you to select 4GB. I think you'll have to call this order in yourself. http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_m6300?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04#tn3
Service Pack 1 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 is now available: You can download SP1 AND watch the videos of the latest additions. Don't forget to checkout the earlier getting started videos. They are a great way to learn your way around the system when you're, well, just getting started. :) Here are some additional readiness material on the product (Webcasts, Virtual Labs, & Podcasts): http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx
Apple has licensed ActiveSync for the iPhone: This further points out the massive growth in the Microsoft Exchange Server platform within the Enterprise (large and small) space. This will, however, open the door for the iPhone to enter into the corporate market space. That said, the Windows Mobile marketplace is still a growing and popular space. The power of the Windows Mobile platform is one where we provide a great application platform WITH the phone, but we give the consumer and business user a tone of choice in form factor, price, phone operator, and more. Plus with the upcoming releases of System Center Mobile Device Manager (which will provide a great way to manage and connect devices to your corporate resources) and Silverlight for Mobile, consumer and business users will continue to get a rich and well managed device to carry in their pocket, purse, or whatever.
Microsoft Virtual Desktops: There isn't a product from Microsoft called, "Microsoft Virtual Desktops", but the technology and licensing is available to make this work. And just how FAR you want to virtualize depends on the organizational needs. So here is a quick run down of the components:
- Licensing: Before you can even think of deploying the technologies to do this, you first have to ensure that you're properly licensed. Where many of the Microsoft server products have virtualization built into their licensing models, the client OS doesn't have that nearly as tied in. Well, in the beginning that is. There is now a licensing model that enable an IT department to run as many copies of a Windows Client OS (e.g. Windows XP and Windows Vista) within a virtual machine on any number of back end virtual servers. This is called, "Vista Enterprise Consolidated Deployment" (VECD). VECD is licensed per device. The device being the end user computer or thin- client (different prices for a Fat/Rich or Thin client). Each device can connect to any four virtual desktops at a time. Can you leverage the OS licenses from a retired computer and stick it on a virtual server without needed to use VECD? No, because that Windows Client OS is tied to the machine. This remains true whether you decide to leverage Microsoft's virtualization technologies or not. The license can't be transferred to another machine. You can learn more about VECD here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/benefits/licensing.mspx
- Virtualization Technologies: Now in order to run a Windows Client OS on the server side, you'll need to leverage a server virtualization technology to do that. There are two flavors from Microsoft to enable this. The first is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (VS2005R2) which is a free product and available for download. It runs on both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. It can run on an x86 or x64 platform and can host a number of different platforms including Windows XP and Windows Vista. There are some drawbacks to VS2005R2, such as it can not host x64 guest machines, only one virtual CPU per virtual machine, and more. With the release of Windows Server 2008 comes a new virtualization technology called, "Hyper-V". There are a number of reasons why Hyper-V is a great technology choice for the IT market place. First, this brings the server virtualization technology and puts it into the hands of all Windows focused engineers as it's just another role within Windows Server. It also provides true 64-bit support for guests, up to 4 CPU's per VM (depends on the OS), can manage up to 2 TB of RAM for the machine, and much more.
- Application Virtualization: Within the Windows Client OS, there is always a challenge in Software Distribution. Especially for mobile users as applications can't just be "Presented" to the desktop via Windows Terminal Services or Citrix Presentation Server. At the same time, IT departments don't want to just dump a ton of software on users desktops that they don't need. So there is a requirement to enable the targeting of applications to people (versus targeting machines), enable on-demand deployment, and reduce the overhead and issues with traditional software installations on client machines. This is where Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly Microsoft Softgrid) comes into action. More information can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx
- Virtualization Management: Now that you have all of this virtualization in your environment, you'll assume that you need a whole new management platform to manage it. Well this is partially true, but with a twist. Microsoft has a management platform and brand named, "System Center", which provides a collection of management products that focuses on separate scenarios. The big difference that "System Center" has over other products is that it managed physical and virtualized platforms in the same way. This reduces the number of technologies an IT department has to purchase, train their people, update their systems, and purchase support for. From a "Virtual Desktop" perspective, this enables you to leverage a single management platform to manage not just your virtual desktops, but also within the desktop itself AND the server platforms they leverage. Here is more information on the System Center Products: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/
For more information on Microsoft Virtualization as a whole: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx
SQL Server Data Services is announced: Microsoft release released information about a new service that they will host on the web. This is a large Internet Scale database platform leveraging SQL on the back end. If you're like me, you find yourself writing a ton of very interesting applications. Some may be just a private project or perhaps it's a production service. Regardless, you need a place to stick that database. So in order to run a data-driven application on SQL, you'll need to either host it yourself or outsource that server, monitoring, and more to a third party. Will Microsoft is now providing their own way of doing this. Learn more here: dataservices AND here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/
Microsoft Zumobi Goes Live: Zumobi is a Windows Mobile application that delivers rich content to your phone in a very cool way. Download it today: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/domore/zumobi.mspx
Well this post turned out to be a bit longer than expected, but I guess that meant I had a long and productive week. I hope to see you back next week!
- Conrad