Microsoft Cardinal Place, Victoria, London
On May 17th we attended one of our regular annual fixtures ‘Best of MMS’ which is a one-day (at 3 UK venues) synopsis of the week long main event held in Las Vegas in the spring – see www.mms-2012.com for the official MSFT site inc. videos keynotes, etc…
Microsoft described the event with:
“We have a very exciting wave of new product launches and announcements for the Microsoft Private Cloud in 2012 – starting with the release of System Center 2012, which allows you to manage your virtual, physical, and cloud environments from a single console, using common and consistent management experiences that provide full control across your existing datacentre investments.
We have also introduced a new edition line-up and simplified licensing for System Center 2012 to address both your server and client management needs – including Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Service Manager, Orchestrator, Endpoint Protection, and App Controller.
Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2012– This 1-day event will provide you with the best possible opportunity to learn about what’s new in System Center 2012 and our next step forward in the Microsoft Private Cloud vision, strategy and roadmap – with deep dive sessions on infrastructure management, service delivery & automation, application management, desktop & device management – whichis an opportunity you won’t want to miss!”
In addition there were 12 exhibiting and sponsoring partners – 1E, Avnet, Bytes, Computer 2000, EACS, HP, Risual, Silversands, Trinity, Ultima, Veeam, and of course our good friends at Inframon – Gordon McKenna, Sean Roberts, and Clive Donaghue.
The agenda for the day and our notes on the sessions are below:
09.30-10.00 Microsoft’s Private Cloud: Built For The Future, Ready Now
Mike Schutz, General Manager for Windows Server & Management
Opened with a flashy marketing video describing some of the new features of Microsoft’s private & public cloud management solutions
– Product Marketing
– Trends – Cloud computing, Continuous Services and Connected Devices
– Cloud Definition (yet more)
– Pooled Resources, Self Service, Elastic, Usage Based
– Cloud Drivers
– Agility, Economics, Innovation
– Microsoft Hybrid Cloud – stitched together with common technologies
– Identity, Virtualisation, Management, Development
– Private Cloud Focus
– All about the App, Cross-Platform from the metal up, Foundation for the future, Cloud on Your Terms
– TAP video interview with the business that were involved
10.00-10.30 What’s New in System Center 2012
Matt McSpirit, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Server & Cloud Platform Team
We’ve known Matt since his early days at Microsoft when Microsoft virtualisation meant Virtual Server 2005 and later worked with him on the Windows Server 2008 R2 EAP with Hyper-V v2 (more on EAP’s and The Full Circle’s involvement in the development of Hyper-V 2008 R2 at http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2009/11/05/the-full-circle-secures-ascom-network-testing-for-windows-server-2008-r2-early-adopter-program/)
Matt has deep technical knowledge combined with skill as a presenter, and thorough understanding of what the business needs means his sessions are always worth a watch – today was no exception.
System Center 2012 brings a host of new and improved features over previous releases and really does span the management gap between Private and Public Cloud Infrastructures with Heterogeneous support to integrate a wide range of technologies into a coherent private cloud.
System Center 2012 comprises:
– App Controller
– Operations Manager
– Orchestrator
– Service Manager
– Virtual Machine Manager
– Data Protection Manager
– Endpoint Protection
– Configuration Manage
Areas of improvement cover:
– Process automation
– Self-service infrastructure
– Deep application monitoring and problem diagnosis
– Standardized provisioning of application service
– Simplified management of applications
– Application self-service across clouds
– Flexible delegation with control
– Physical, virtual, and cloud management
more at www.microsoft.com/systemcenter
10.30-11.00 BREAK
11.00-12.00 Infrastructure & Fabric Management
Julius Davies, DataCenter Technology Specialist
Another no-nonsense, articulate, and technically deep presenter able to take a topic offline well into level-400 and beyond which is no surprise considering Julius has been working on Windows since when IBM & Microsoft were still working on the likes of OS/2 😉
Data Centre and Private Cloud
Self service > fills in a form > reaches into backend infrastructure and provisions service >
13.00-14.00 Service Delivery & Automation
Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager, coupled with the rest of the System Center suite, delivers industry best practice capabilities for managing your data center and adhering to Industry Best Practices. This session presented how the System Center suite supports industry frameworks like ITIL and MOF with the features introduced in the 2012 release.
14.00-15.00 Application Management
sorry we ducked out on Service Manager, there were offline conversations to be had on partnering opportunities with HP & Microsoft on getting Hyper-V to 50% of the market by 2014..
15.30-16.30 Desktop & Device Management
End users are bringing consumer devices into the organisation – iPhones, iPads, Tablets and Smartphone’s are now part of the corporate environment. All of this is adding pressure for client administrators to deal with this influx of diverse devices.
Microsoft Client management technologies such as the new version of Intune in beta wave, along with their partners’ (that’ll be us then – see www.thefullcircle.com), can help IT enable consumerisation.
Great demo showing a simple app deployment across iOS (iPad & iPhone), Android, and of course, Windows Phone.
Intune at http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windowsintune/pc-management.aspx
Intune Beta (April 2012 pre-release) Sign Up Now
16.30-17.00 NETWORKING & CLOSE
A bunch of the ‘usual suspects’ headed to Brown’s across the road – last time we were out with some of this lot it got quite early.. this time Reuben showed his determination on day-2 of a 9-day detox and left after two sparkling waters – fitter for next time!
Later heard that it was unfortunately dampened by some tea-leaf nicking Stuart’s bag with virtually his whole work life in it – sorry to hear it Stuart and hope you’ve now recovered from the obvious pain – thoughts with you.