Archive for the ‘Cloud’ category

Cloud Expo Europe 2012

January 26th, 2012

So we were at the Cloud Expo Europe yesterday which we knew wasn’t going to be as good as the IPEXPO in Earl’s Court back in October simply due to some big vendor names not being there as well as being the lesser of the Olympia exhibition halls.

Still, we got some great contacts out of it and had an interesting chat with the guys from Fusion-IO (who have some scary fast IO accelerator technology) about one of our customers. The speakers at the presentations we went to were great but the one that really stood out was an industry panel done lead by Equinix.

While the venue was OK, and some vendors were conspicuously absent it still shows just how important cloud platforms and services have become by the explosion of companies in this fairly new and rapidly growing sector. I don’t think there will ever be another IT industry expo that doesn’t focus on cloud.

In light of the shift to cloud technology and the benefits it brings, we are now offering discounted support to our customers who use Cloud services like Office 365. By reducing your operational complexity, we think it’s only fair to reduce the cost of supporting that reduced complexity. Are you getting a discount from your IT Support company for using Cloud services?

On a lighter note, we had a lot of fun taking pictures of all the marketing gimmicks there. Enjoy.

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Posted in Cloud, Expo, Systems Management

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UK Tech.Days 2011: Delivering IT as a service with the Microsoft private cloud

May 24th, 2011

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The Full Circle (www.thefullcircle.com) is a Microsoft Partner for both Online Services such as Office 365 (Public Cloud), and Virtualisation using Hyper-V with System Center (Private Cloud).

As part of this commitment we regularly attend Microsoft training and events, and over the course of this week there are a number of ‘Tech Days’ covering various industry hot topics – Cloud, Mobile, Web, Client and Server aimed at two distinct audiences – IT Pro’s and Developers.

Just over a year ago we attended the Virtualisation Summit TechDays event as covered in http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-techdays-virtualization-summit-from-the-desktop-to-the-datacenter/
Today’s topic from the Vue Cinema in Fulham, West London (around the corner from the office Smile) is a continuation of last year’s theme – Private Cloud – running your own utility based compute platform using Microsoft technologies,  namely Hyper-V for virtualisation and System Center for management.

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the latest technical updates for your datacentre & infrastructure investments. This event will share more expert knowledge and information than ever – with deep dive sessions on the Windows Server 2008 R2 platform, Hyper-V virtualization capability, and System Center end-to-end service management capabilities.

For more information, please visit: http://uktechdays.cloudapp.net/techdays-live/delivering-it-as-a-service-with-the-microsoft-private-cloud

Transforming your Datacentre

Kevin Sangwell

Virtualisation + Fabric Management + Mature Operations and Service Management + Cloud Principals = Private Cloud

a lot of benefit is based on stove pipes of provisioning teams – racking team handing off to system build, waiting on networks for VLANS, then storage team for LUNs, etc. to give the average time from order to service ready of a new server being c.12 weeks start to end.

In reality do many large IT shops still behave this way?  unfortunately for a lot of enterprise shops the answer is yes, this, is of course, fortunate for us! Smile

Building the foundation: Server Virtualisation and Management

Julius Davies & Clive Watson (Data Centre Technology Specialists)

 

Evangelising Hyper-V, also introduced Hyper-V Server as ‘Enterprise’ but cut-down without GUI, same capabilities… in terms of CPU (64 Cores), Memory (1TB), etc. and the difference being that Enterprise and Data Center have licensing rights to run more VMs… this took me by surprise and at the break discussed with Stuart Leddy, old friend of ‘The Circle’ and Microsoft Core Infrastructure Marketing Lead – Server & Tools Business Group.

Hyper-V R2 Server is akin to Enterprise but cut-back, rather than the original Hyper-V Server which was more like Server Core with Standard constraints (32GB, etc.)…
since R2 – 1TB memory, 64 CPU cores – see:

Q. Are there any limitations to the number of processors and/or cores that Microsoft Hyper-V Server can utilize?

A. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 supports systems with up to 64 logical processors on the physical machine.

Q. Are there any physical memory limitations to Microsoft Hyper-V Server?

A. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 supports up to 1 TB of physical memory.

 

Teaming Support provided by NIC vendor

Intel = PROSet, Broadcom = BACS, HP = NCU
Best practise: :install/enable Hyper-V, then install networking utilities…. ???? WTF?  perhaps before configuring networking?  surely you present a Teamed NIC to Hyper-V rather than abstract post event

Hyper-V Networking for Clusters – guide at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff428137(WS.10).aspx

Best practise suggesting 5 separate networks!!  host mgmt, heartbeat, CSV’s, live migration, VM traffic, if iSCSI x2 with MPIO!  (interestingly their demo platform used 3 – Corpnet (External), Live Migration, and Storage

 

How can we better manage?

Clive talked about SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1… but not much SCVMM 2012… a shame!

interesting use of the term ‘evacuate virtual machines to another host’ (implementing a PRO Tip), and ‘rehydrating’ back onto a host once fixed.  Usual demo of Self Service and breaking VM’s – audit trail, etc.

ahha..a little bit about v.Next / 2012 – its all about Fabric Management!

VMM Self-Service Portal 2.0 – bringing business requests and IT service delivery/provisioning together.

 

HP Hyper-V Reference Architecture

Adam Richardson, HP & Neil MacCuish, CSC

Adam dot Richardson @HP.com – a sales guy, but a good sales guy.  Talking about the shape of HP customers and their agility, or rather, in a lot of cases lack of… 1 customer who took 18months to deploy a mail platform – yikes!

Some ‘Hyper-Customers’ – in excess of 100,000 servers installed – Microsoft is one of them.

Hyper-V Cloud Reference

IMG_0691

Virtualisation at the Royal Mail

Customer Profile
The government owned Royal Mail Group (RMG) is responsible for universal mail collection and delivery in the United Kingdom and delivers more than 70 million items every working day.
Business Situation
RMG needed to improve the resilience and flexibility of its IT infrastructure to prepare the company to meet the challenge of a changing market for postal services.
Solution
The company looked to CSC as its IT outsourcing and systems integration partner to virtualise its servers using the Hyper-V feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

IMG_0692

Summary / Headlines

  • 9 months to platform ready
  • up to 720 Guest VM’s over 2 x HP 16 slot blade enclosures
  • Delivered against plan** (of course, it evolved)

Key Points & Learnings

  • Issues not really technology based – people change are harder
  • ** Build it and they will come! – once the business realises you’re faster they will come to you
  • Keeping it green, Service Integration
  • One team – HP/CSC/Microsoft – go to meetings together, share the issues, share the plan

Managing your infrastructure with System Center

Ellis Paul & Paul Collins

 

Presenting your business case for Private Cloud

Adam Collins, Risual

Cloud, over time will allow a closer alignment between IT and the business by giving back time to focus on more strategic objectives and decision making. Understanding how to position with the business, build a technology roadmap and deliver long term value from your current and future investments is a critical task that can’t be put off any longer. Within this session you will be presented with the necessary tools to support you in taking advantage of Cloud solutions from both an experienced IT consultancy in Risual and a global customer in Paul Smith.

IMG_0699

Very interesting session starting with the driver being ‘ensure predictable IT costs’ with five pillars to support:

Business
Service Delivery
Sustainability (Green IT) –
Contract Management –

Assumed Benefits – Financial, Operational Efficiency, Governance, CSAT, Innovation, Agility, Sustainable IT

Hyper-V and System Center- Competitive Comparisons

Matt McSpirit

You’ll learn more about the different components within the Hyper-V and System Center, but more specifically, how they can provide a greater level of comprehensive management, choice, and advanced automation.

IMG_0701

Matt McSpirit for one of his last UK presentations before jumping to Redmond for a career in Corp. with Andrew Fryer doing his ‘Pap’ impression but with a gagging order this week.. Winking smile

As usual a great presentation from Matt who gave a deep (and broad!) session on why Hyper-V isn’t just a viable alternative to VMware, but a serious contender.  In a lot of cases not just a better value proposition (not difficult) but also more performant (not so easy!), and with independent 3rd party evidence to back up the claims e.g. TS workloads on VMware, Hyper-V R2 SP1, and XenServer (Virtual Reality Check – Phase II version 2.0) and more at http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net (same as http://www.projectvrc.nl)

There was a lot of myth busting around the issue often cited that Hyper-V is fundamentally flawed because it sits on top of Windows – of course there is Hyper-V Server (think Server Core), but what isn’t common knowledge is how many patches there have been for VMware and some pretty high profile issues, and as per Microsoft many require guest or host restarts – its not just Microsoft platforms that require reboots!

And, of course Matt plugged http://virtualboytv.com for great content including video walk-through’s and more e.g. bare-metal to live migration in under an hour!! – I’ve used Matt’s site as a handy reference and basic training tool many times and highly recommend as well worth your time.

 

What next?

For more information on what The Full Circle can do to help you find your way in the clouds, see http://www.thefullcircle.com/whatWeDo/Pages/Cloud.aspx

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Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, System Center, Systems Management, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

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Microsoft Event–Harnessing the Power of Cloud Productivity

March 11th, 2011

Join us at the ‘Harnessing the Power of Cloud Productivity Event’ featuring Kevin Turner Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer – due to unforeseen circumstances is no longer able to attend. John Jester, General Manager of UK Enterprise Business has now been added to the agenda.

Now more than ever, productivity is at the top of every business leader’s agenda, while proven security, reliability, usability and absolute control are essential.

Productivity comes from empowering your people. Giving everyone in your organisation the ability to work together in real time, and collaborate from anywhere on any device.

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a familiar user experience with a reduced learning curve for greater overall employee productivity; driving connections across people, processes and ecosystems.

· Microsoft Office 365, the evolution of Microsoft Online Services, helps people connect in new ways – harnessing all the productivity benefits of Microsoft Office, together with the undisputed convenience of Cloud services.

At this event, we’ll share insights and demonstrate how Microsoft and the Cloud work together. You’ll discover how to get the scalability your organisation needs, while achieving measurable productivity through improved business gains and cost savings.

 

K2 – Dr Katy Ring, www.K2advisory.com

Martini Solution – Anytime, Any place, Anywhere (Business viewpoint), IT professional view is somewhat different.. how to keep secure, deploy, manage, etc.

Four main ways to deploy..
Public – e.g. Salesforce, GoogleApps
Private –
Community
Mixed model

a key is a common code-base across on-premise, private, and public.. something that is key to Microsoft’s strategy

Cloud & FUD

Fear about Security – is diminishing, only 42% believe it is a greater threat

Uncertainty about integration – although often easier & quicker than moving an on premise solution

Doubts about the business case – regulatory e.g. no PCI compliance therefore prohibits some industries, cost/benefit concerns

Key Message:
Cloud Computing is the IT industry’s best effort to provide the business solutions we need in the era of the Internet

Using Cloud Services to drive productivity

John Jester, General Manager – UK EPG, Microsoft (john.jester@microsoft.com)

Change of priorities:
2008 – More for Less
2009 – Cost Reduction
2010 – Cloud.. Opportunities provided through Cloud Computing
2011 – Add capabilities to the business, more business insights but lower cost & more effective

$9.5B in R&D, 75% on Cloud related activities, 30,000 engineers on Cloud Services
$2.3B invested in Cloud Infrastructure (geo-replicated customer data, public & private, 30,000 engineers, regional DCs in Americas, EMEA, and APAC)

Cloud = more speed, agility, productivity

SharePoint – fastest product to $1B sales

show of hands for who is virtualised in the data center – about 25%, but John saw 100%..
More new servers are virtualised than not, existing install base is c. 50/50 – virtualization has worked

Office 365 – was BPOS but now with Office, plus Exchange, SharePoint, Lync

Who is using – some very large enterprises inc. >300,000 employees

Security concerns from IL0->6 – “no one wants their data in the US”

What happens if you loose your network connection?  building more offline caching capabilities like Outlook

When will Office 365 be available?  “in the first half of the year” June! was the answer from the 365 team

Drive Business Success: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Brad Wilson, General Manager – CRM, Microsoft

Microsoft claim the leader in CRM with 23,000 customers with 1,400,000 users in 80 countries with 40+ languages, and 1,200 software & services partners
100+ hosted services providers for specialized solutions and territories

Microsoft is the biggest user of Dynamics CRM with 40,000 users and 10,000 on CRM 2011

How much in the UK? Launch promotion of £22.75 per user./month for first 12 months if signed by June 30th.

Look and feel like Outlook – Office fluent, Contextual SharePoint

Lots of incentives to move from competing products such as Salesforce & Oracle

Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 commonality between SharePoint & Dynamics CRM

Release cadence for CRM online is planned to be 6-9 months, in last 30 months has been 5 releases (in US market).

Cloud Productivity Brought to Life

Hayley Bass &

Demo of a CRM online customised property sales & management application interfaced with an Azure web portal to provide a feature rich public website and back-office system utilizing Lync and SharePoint.

https://contosoproperties.cloudapp.net
https://contosoprop.sharepoint.com

 

Cloud Productivity in Action

Alex Montgomery, Solutions Consultant, Microsoft UK

speakers from 3 customers using CRM Online:

- NSPCC

- Wise Group www.cloudwise.com

-

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Posted in BPOS, Cloud, CRM Online, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Office365, SharePoint, Virtualisation

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War On Cost II, The Churchill War Rooms, London

November 5th, 2010

Today I’m in London for what I expect will be one of the most valuable events of my calendar – Inframon’s now annual War On Cost event, this year held at The Cabinet War Rooms in London’s Westminster.

Inframon, headed by Gordon McKenna and Sean Roberts are old friends of ‘The Circle’ since we attended their System Center Train the Trainer workshop in November 2008.  Since then we’ve kept in touch at various events & launches, and when they are hosting they always deliver a cracking event.

Indeed, a fair summary as I wrote to some colleagues only a few weeks ago..

Coming up on the 5th November is Inframon’s War on Cost which is basically a 1-day systems management focussed preview of TechEd Europe which starts the following week in Berlin.
A whole bunch of senior Redmond folk come over the week before TechEd to present at this event, hit the town for a few beers (limited for me am afraid this year), stay the weekend in London before going on to Berlin for yet more & possibly better beer!
 
So, click on http://www.waroncost.com/ to register – I’ll absolutely guarantee you, if you have an interest/responsibility in managing a Microsoft estate then you will get a load of value from this event.

The official agenda is below, and if I made notes I’ve added them in-line with the agenda:

Event Schedule

Inframon, the UK’s leading specialist in the Microsoft System Center suite present "War On Cost 2010", a very exclusive event which will be taking place in the Cabinet War Rooms in the heart of London, an historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War.

The aim of this event is to give you valuable information on how you can help your organisation drive down the cost of managing your Windows and Non-Windows based infrastructure using the Microsoft System Center Suite of products.

Featuring two dynamic tracks aimed at both Business and Technical decision makers, to give you the knowledge you need to make a difference in your organisation.

 

09:00 – 09:30 INFRAMON KEYNOTE

Introductory keynote from Gordon McKenna, CEO at Inframon setting the scene for our theme "The War on Cost"

Unfortunately I missed the start of Gordon’s keynote as I was unable to enter the Cabinet War Rooms due to an ‘entry lockdown’ whilst waiting for the PM to arrive and enter the building… okay I was slightly late in the first place… but no, not a Churchill impersonator, but Mr David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister!
‘Dave’ as he’s known to his mates was at the war rooms for an interview with ITV – maybe related to the recent UK Government spending cuts and the UK’s War on Cost…? ;-)

DC-comes-to-the-War-On-Cost

David Cameron speaking about The War On Cost..?

I eventually got in the building to then wander around the maze that was the cabinet war rooms and haunt of another famous conservative PM.. a certain Sir Winston Churchill!  to eventually find the Inframon team, Gordon, Sean and the guys in a War on Cost bunker that looked like it certainly did cost!  great venue!

Gordon McKenna ..it was this BIG!!!

Partners (allies) in the battle of the war on cost…
ComTrade – MPs for Citrix & Seibel
Silect Software – MP Studio, CP Studio, ConfigWise
Flexera – Win7 migration application challenges (packaging & sequencing)
Savision – Live Maps & Vital Signs for System Center (extends SCOM with mapping and real-time performance dashboards)
BridgeWays – helps you convert from VMware… Also free Hyper-V MP @….
Odyssey Software -

prize draw for an Windows Phone 7 device, the HTC HD 7 – went to European Market Oct 21st, won’t be in the US till Nov 8th!  and they are as rare as rocking horse sh1t in the UK with one distributor saying to me on Friday 5th Oct “Unfortunately we are not likely to be able to supply the HD7 as all three of the new HTC devices are going to be network exclusives.”

ROOM 1: 09:30 -10:30 MICROSOFT KEYNOTE – RYAN OHARA: DATACENTER TO THE CLOUD

Join us in the main auditorium for a first keynote from Microsoft’s Senior Director of System Center Product Marketing, Ryan O’Hara who will be giving us an insight on how Microsoft’s Datacenter and Cloud strategy can help you in the battle your organisation faces around reducing the cost of managing your IT infrastructure whilst trying to increase efficiency. Learn also how System Center can be a key business enabler in both on-premise and off-premise scenarios.

 

Ryan O’Hara & Justin Buffington (AKA The Professor)

Google, Salesforce, Amazon – don’t provide services that can run in your Data Center / stand up within your service offering

Ryan reckons that MS is the only single vendor that provided the widest reach of cloud based services to provide ‘IT as a service’

Self Service Portal for VMM – version being shown today along with VMM vNext. Capability for business process owners (application owners) to request and provision new data center services through a web portal.

VMM 2012 CTP demo
Moving from a server centric model to a service model – detaching the application from the O/S.

Create Cloud Wizard! ;-) what’s your job? I’m a cloud creator!

Demo of service maps – Opalis 6.3 available at the end of the month to all data Center management suite registered customers… & partners?

Acquisition of AVIcode allows 360 degree monitoring in delivering IT as a service. Black box & White box monitoring… Wazzthat then?

OpsMgr watcher nodes running outside your environment

SCOM2012 / OM10 – now with dashboards and can manage network infrastructure (at last! :-) )

ROOM 1: 10:50 -11:50 MICROSOFTKEYNOTE – ANDREW CONWAY: DESKTOP AND SECURITY CONVERGENCE

With end users increasingly mobile, consumerization impacting IT,  and security and compliance needs converging on the business you are likely considering options for desktop virtualization, endpoint protection, cloud management and application delivery. IT has an opportunity to simplify their investments, tools and processes in order to be ever more responsive to the changing face of their customer.  In this session, we’ll focus on effective solutions that will help you in the War on Cost – we’ll do this and take a forward look at upcoming System Center and Forefront technologies

ROOM 2: 10:50 -11:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN ROBERTSSIMON SKINNER INFRAMON: MICROSOFT PRIVATE CLOUD STORY

Join Sean Roberts and Simon Skinner of Inframon for a walk through Microsoft’s new private cloud story. Learn how to build your own, internal private cloud solution with Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and the new Self Service Portal 3.0. See how you can drive more efficient use of your IT infrstructure using batch processing and chargeback reporting putting you back in control of your costs.

Sean Roberts & Simon Skinner …how many MVP’s needed to… don’t ask! Winking smile

ROOM 1: 11:50 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – JUSTIN INCARNATODANIEL SAVAGE MICROSOFT: OPERATIONS MANAGER R2 AND V.NEXT

This session will cover updates to Operation Manager 2007 since the release of R2, including the latest new features included in R2 CU3. We will also go over the next major release of Operations Manager including the vision and product demonstrations. This will be a demo packed session with plenty of time to interact and ask questions

  • OpsMgr R2 Sizing Helper
  • OpsMgr R2 Core MP updates
  • Service Level Dashboard 2.0
  • Cumulative Updates 3 (CU3) for OpsMgr 2007 R2

    • OpsMgr Sizing
    OpsMgr sizing helper to address the unknown around sizing – ‘ask 5 MS engineers an OpsMgr sizing question and you’ll likely get 5 different answers…’

    target environments:

  • Small to Medium deployment – 250-1000 computers
  • Large deployment – 1000-10000 computers

    • Use in conjunction with the OpsMgr design guide, an introduction is at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735403.aspx

    OpsMgr R2 Core MP updates

     

    Cumulative Updates 3 (CU3) for OpsMgr 2007 R2

    Get it from the download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f1e1154-52ae-42df-aeea-b3ee83247e6a&displaylang=en

    The KB article describing the fixes, changes, and instructions is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2251525

    The high-level fixes are:

  • Feature Addition: Azure Application Monitoring
  • Feature Addition: Parameter Extraction in Web Application Synthetic Transactions
  • Multi-selection in the alert view is not maintained during a view refresh
  • Upgrading MPs that include new properties may not recreate views correctly
  • The Operations Manager Console stops working when a high number of instances of State Views / Alert Views are left open for extended durations
  • The Operations Manager Console stops working when creating an override on the cluster resource group monitor
  • When using a remote console the notification wizards does not work in certain situations
  • The SDK Services stops working due to an unhandled exception, and the operations console becomes unresponsive
  • The SDK service may stop working due to an arithmetic overflow error in very rare circumstances
  • The notification scheduler does not compensate correctly for different time zones
  • Alerts using the “Specific Time Period” criteria are not included during automatic alert view refresh
  • Generic performance reports consume a large amount of temporary database space and can fail for Windows Server 2003 Computer Groups
  • SCOM 2007 SP1 Reports do not run after a shared Data Warehouse is upgraded to SCOM 2007 R2
  • Monitoringhost.exe does not work reliably on Windows 2003 SP2 X64 Domain Controllers
  • The total transaction response performance counter in URL monitoring is not accurate
  • MPs with empty knowledge elements cannot be imported in Operations Manager 2007 R2
  • Language packs authored for a previous version of an MP cannot be imported once an updated MP is released
  • Language Pack import fails if the MP contains strings which are not contained in the English Management Pack
  • When Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) is set up to use SharePoint, reports from Watson are blocked
  • Some ACS reports do not work as expected with Windows Server 2008
  • ACS forwarders with 15 character names in workgroups are unable to communicate with the ACS collector

    • CU4 should be out at the end of Jan’11 – plan is to have quarterly updates

    There is a great post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/10/04/opsmgr-2007-r2-cu3-rollup-hotfix-ships-and-my-experience-installing-it.aspx which covers in-depth on CU3 and its deployment – essential reading!

    OpsMgr v.Next 2012, Daniel Savage, Senior PM Operations Manager

    Support for network device monitoring

    Support for Java EE (J2E) Web Service Monitoring – server level, not currently site/app level

    Release roadmap – Public Beta in Q2 CY11, RC Q3 CY11, RTM Q4 CY11

     

    ROOM 2: 11:50 – 12:20 BREAKOUT – ODYSSEY SOFTWARE: ATTACK THE COSTS AND COMPLEXITY OF MANAGING MOBILE DEVICES IN YOUR ENTERPRISE WITH ATHENA TM DEVICE MANAGEMENT EXTENSIONS FOR SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER 2007

    In this session we will demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of managing deployments of Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows CE, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Android and Symbian devices through comprehensive, centralized management of these devices utilizing Odyssey Software’s AthenaTM device management extensions for System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

    ROOM 2: 12:20 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – BRIDGEWAYS SOFTWARE: HETEREOGENEOUS MANAGEMENT WITH OPERATIONS MANAGER 2007

    Learn how you can extend your Operations Manager 2007 platform beyond the Windows stack with Bridgewys cross-platform extensions and connectors, allowing you to manage platforms such as VMWare and Oracle from the same familiar console as the rest of your devices allowing you to consolidate your management tools, driving down your infrastructure costs,

    12:50 – 13:50 LUNCH

    Join us for lunch in our partner pavillion, where you can network with other delegates and meet our ISV partners and speakers

    ROOM1: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – JEFF WETTLAUFER MICROSOFT: SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER V.NEXT HIGHLIGHTS

    The next generation of the world’s leading systems management technology is now in Beta!  As we enter a new era of work styles, with people working in new ways from new locations on new devices, the System Center flagship product is evolving.  In this session we present a demo rich technical highlight of the next release of ConfigMgr.  We will focus on our continued vision of User Centric client management, highlight new improvements to core capability, infrastructure simplification and more. 

     

    ROOM 2: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN CHRISTENSEN MICROSOFT: SERVICE MANAGER THE BETTER TOGETHER STORY

    Breakout two, takes us on a journey into the world of IT service management with one of the newest members of the System Center family, Service Manager. Learn how you can pull together your IT resources with industry standard best practices, bringing disciplines like incident and problem and change and release management to your organisation allowing you to drive more efficient working processes across your organisation.

    ROOM 1: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – JASON BUFFINGTON MICROSOFT: INTELLIGENT DATACENTER APPLICATION PROTECTION

    This session will focus on leveraging Data Protection Manager’s protection and recovery capabilities in large datacenters.  We will look at how Data Protection Manager protects and recovers critical application workloads such as SQL, Exchange and SharePoint – as well as virtual machines within Hyper-V.  The session is full of demonstrations, including the new self-service restore capability for database administrators.  We will also look at combining on-premise and off-premise protection using both Data Protection Manager’s built-in replication mechanisms as well as cloud-based Data Protection Manager-partner repositories.

    One stat to take away… up to 60% of corporate data does not reside in the datacenter… Yikes!!!

    therefore backing up the client machines, with policies to not backup the junk, movies, music, etc.

    ROOM 2: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – ADAM HALLGREG CHARMAN MICROSOFT: DATACENTER IT PROCESS AUTOMATION

    In one of the final sessions of the day we bring you the one solution that will probably give you the biggest set of tools in fighting the War on Cost. Microsoft’s newest addition to the System Center suite is Opalis, a robust and multi functional IT orchestration toolkit that can help drive incredible efficiencies in your organisation by automating many of your time consuming, day to day IT processes. This is not a session to be missed.

    16:10 – 16:30 CLOSING KEYNOTE

    Proceedings end with a closing keynote from Inframon CEO Gordon McKenna.

    16:30 – 17:00 TOUR OF VENUE

    Finally you are invited to take a tour of this very historic venue.

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    Posted in Cloud, Data Protection Manager, Green IT, Microsoft, SCE 2010, System Center, Systems Management, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

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    ITEXPO – Googles view on Enterprise Cloud

    October 21st, 2010

    Today we are at IPEXPO in London hearing amongst other things, Google’s view on the future of Enterprise computing…

    www.google.com/enterprise

    Google & PaaS

    From 1999 to present & using the world for RAID!

    Google is the 4th largest hardware manufacturer… sell more servers than Dell but only internally!

    www.google.com/appstatus

    http://goo.gl/EEyc

    http

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    Posted in Cloud, Google, Networking, Tech

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    Microsoft Partner Business Briefings – Transitioning to the Cloud

    October 5th, 2010

    5/10 @ https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/40127070 – ‘Transitioning to the Cloud’ featuring Steve ‘Developers!’ Ballmer

    As a UK Microsoft Gold partner (www.thefullcircle.com) staying up to date with the latest trends in technology, and in particular Microsoft’s take on those trends is essential.

    Today we are at the ExCeL London conference centre in the heart of Docklands to hear Steve Ballmer and others tell us about Cloud computing solutions in a Microsoft Partner Business Briefing called ‘Transitioning to the Cloud’

    Below is Microsoft’s marketing introduction on the event and then the agenda, then my notes from the day..

    Event Overview

    There is no doubt that the market around us is in a transition period, whether this is from an economic, societal or technological standpoint, and we want to work together with you to ensure we are all making the most of these opportunities in 2011. 

    We’ve made a Microsoft-sized commitment to the cloud and through our London Partner Business Briefing we want to share our vision with you and your sales teams. Cloud technology is now a CIO’s #1 priority. Worldwide more than 40 million people have adopted Microsoft cloud services, and AMI Research predicts a rapid transition through 2010-2013 in the UK as businesses purchase cloud solutions. Join us for an exciting day with guest speakers and Microsoft executives.  Expect to receive more information on this event and how to prepare over the coming weeks.

    Agenda

    Welcome 09:30
    A Changing World 09:45
    New Way of Work 10:00
    Customer: Why we chose Microsoft 10:30
    Summary/Interactive Exercise/Feedback 10:50
    Break  
    Our Commitment to the Cloud – Microsoft Executive 11:30
    Our Commitment to Microsoft Partners – Microsoft Partner Network 12:15
    Going first 12:30
    Break  
    Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner with Microsoft for Online Service 13:45
    Product Demonstration/Roadmap 13:55
    Value Proposition/Customer Sales Pitch 14:05
    Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner adopt Windows Azure 14:20
    Product Demonstration/Roadmap 14:30
    Value Proposition/Customer Sales Pitch 14:40
    Break  
    Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner with Microsoft for CRM Online 15:30
    Product Demonstration/Roadmap 15:40
    Value Proposition/Customer Sales Pitch 15:50
    Partner Case Study: Why we chose to Partner with Microsoft for Windows Intune 16:05
    Product Demonstration/Roadmap 16:15
    Value Proposition/Customer Sales Pitch 16:25
    Close – The Go Do’s 16:40

     

    		  

     

    My  notes from the day..

    Welcome – Katie Ledger
    Various marketing videos featuring partners who have embraced..
    ThinkScape “I used to go out to customers, now they come to me!”
    MD’s and CFO’s love the cloud – move from capex to opex
    Katie presented/hosted a Microsoft Cloud event 2 years ago.. – show of hands on who was there and who’s changing their business to embrace cloud… not many!  Will the show of hands be different at the end of the day?

    A Changing World – Barry Ridgeway, new GM of SMS&P
    Small Medium Business is the fastest growing part of the Microsoft business.
    A new acronym.. PaaS – Platform as a Service e.g. Azure
    Opportunity – projection in 3yrs $148B… Microsoft investing $10M in UK marketing (opportunities to ride on that wave by timing marketing releases carefully to coincide)

    Customer: Why we chose Microsoft – Bert Craven, Architect, easyJet
    65 IT team (59 full-time), IT Budget only 0.75% of revenue, 100% SLA requirement, £3B retail business, 20% per year growth! – a challenge!
    Reliance on partners
    Started with classifying systems – a commodity tier, airline system tier, easyJet specific tier – silver, gold, platinum – then defined SLA strategy for each – top tier is 100% uptime and has been achieved
    Simple, standard systems by default!
    The potential cloud offers as a Integration platform cannot be understated – Azure AppFabric “the ace in the pack” (origins in BizTalk)
     - small step – easy to swallow, perceived as lower risk
    misconception of putting your data in the cloud makes it more vulnerable – a double edged sword
    Project Sydney VPN’s…?  wazthat!?!

    James Akrigg – Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist
    Enterprise class systems used to require Enterprise class infrastructure – not anymore!

    Why partner with Microsoft – Martin Neale, MD ICS Solutions
    Started a cloud practise after the event 2yrs ago, built up on BPOS at the start of ’09 – 23 customers in the last year, but signed 6 in the last week!  both public & private sector, a lot of support from Microsoft – the best they have had in all their time as partners… did I tell you about our 7 account managers in 7 years…!?!?  (You’ll be one of few I haven’t.. ;-) )

    Dealing with change.. – Chris Moon (www.chrismoon.co.uk)

    Chris is an inspirational & motivational speaker extraordinaire – a former Army officer who then worked for the charity HALO clearing landmines in Asia and Africa, and is one of the few westerners to have survived kidnap by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia.

    Two years later he became a double amputee when blown up whilst walking in a supposedly cleared minefield in 1995, the blast resulted in the loss of his lower right arm and leg. Doctors say he survived against the odds due to his determination and fitness.

    Within a year of leaving hospital he then ran and finished the London Marathon, plus threw in a Masters Degree in Security Management for good measure!

    He’s since done numerous marathons and many of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons including the Great Sahara Run and Badwater – the 135-mile ‘fun run’ through Death Valley to the mountains on the hottest day of the year – mental! (yes mentally a hero and physically a superman!).
    During his amazing speech he described the Death Valley run as ‘the death fun run’ and revealed comments from others re: ultra-distance as runs that amputees simply don’t do – he clearly doesn’t believe in don’t or can’t

    Chris was inspirational, motivational, heart-warming, and very funny at the same time, a few notes from his speech are below:

    Keep up or get left behind!  The biggest issue to keeping up is the way that you think..

    Never be a victim, take the initiative

    What can I do to avoid Being a victim and Create a victimless environment?
    Engage-Listen-Understand

    Why don’t we like change?
    - fear of the unknown
    - maybe worse off as a result
    - out of comfort zone
    - requires effort & hard work
    - easier not to
    - can cause headaches
    - creatures of habit
    - loss of territory or control
    - puts us in the spotlight
    - previous efforts maybe wasted
    - we don’t like imposition or ‘have to’

    crossing the change curve, instead of following the U-bend, get across it to Aspirational

    Stay calm.. see the wood and trees – lead by example

    Who doesn’t finish an ultra-marathon?  Those who don’t believe that they can
    Never underestimate the power of belief

    Dealing with sudden change
    - be realistic
    - choose a positive perspective
    - choose a positive attitude
    - use imagination

    No matter how great the change, never adopt an attitude that allows you to be crushed
    (followed story of an auzzie vet castrating a water buffalo – circle of life, what goes around comes around, next life, past life..)

    And finally.. What is it like being blown up?   ….VERY LOUD!  (what a guy!)

    Chris has published an autobiography called ‘One Step Beyond’ – indeed I’ve just bought 4 copies for our company from Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Step-Beyond-Chris-Moon/dp/033037155X
    Our Commitment to the Cloud – Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft
    A new era of opportunity…
    What is the Cloud – lots of things!
    Cloud services for business – Microsoft claim to be the market leader in cloud services with the largest spread of cloud offerings
    A key question was how important will the private cloud vs. public cloud be – we are discovering that now..
    Factoring in the connectivity costs into the equation – it’s in the calculations

    Steve had never been east of Tower Bridge… I think that was obvious! and it sounded like the guys at the front were lined up with pre-screened questions…?  Is that cynical or just an obvious safety net..?

    Overall I didn’t really get Ballmer, whilst he’s a passionate and powerful speaker (boy does he project!) I can’t say I really took anything major away from his speech whereas seeing Gates in the flesh you really got the feeling that he truly believed in the role of technology to help improve people’s lives for the better.
    The main point that came across was the insistence that the shift to the cloud was one of the most important changes in the history of computing after the Internet – maybe that’s all he wanted to get across, that and the key numbers from Microsoft’s view being:
    - 580M Windows Live customers
    - 40M users of Azure
    - $10M spend in the UK alone on Cloud marketing

    What he did leak was that Windows Phone 7 release in UK in next week or so – I’m keen to jump from the iPhone back to a Windows phone so will be keen to watch the last session of the day… a Windows Phone 7 preview.
    Microsoft Online Services - Shaun Frohlich, James Akrigg, Myles Jeffery (ThinkScape), Katie Ledger

    Demonstration of Software plus Services – SharePoint online, PowerPoint, Outlook migration from a.n.other Email platform to Exchange online, etc.  Lots of tools to make it easy!

    Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner with Microsoft for Online Service
    Myles Jeffery, MD ThinkScape
    Embraced MS cloud technology after watching an online Ray Ozzie presentation in 2008 – a software development company realised they could focus on development and integration rather than platform.  Moved internally (small IT consultancy <10) to BPOS in early 2009 and recommends any prospective partner to do the same.
    Believes the sweet spot for ease of migration is up to 25.
    Coexistence tools are available to assist trials – SharePoint easy, but what about Exchange..? sub-domain for a project team or something better?

    40-million Azure users already, caching in 22 countries keeps the performance good, plus offline caching capabilities

    Product Demonstration/Roadmap – Microsoft CRM Online
    Dynamics CRM 2011 online – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg & Roger Collins
    Outlook experience, very BCM 2010 look and feel… however its better..
    Can we move to it although we have traditional on-premise Exchange? Yes!
    Is the only CRM application available today that can be switched between on-premise and cloud and vice-versa – is the same codebase.
    Top tip – 40% margin available for new business.
    Dynamics CRM 2011 is available in beta now, and should be publically available in March-April 2011.
    Partners have inclusive seats for CRM online – e.g. as a Gold Partner we would get 250!

    Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner adopt Windows Azure – James Scarfe, Dot Net Software

    How do you make money from selling Azure… there is a small kickback on the referral (5%), however services revenue is where the money is.
    Reduction in time to market is one of the major advantages
    Software virtualisation rather than hardware virtualisation – removing the dependancy on IT platform builds, and the delays in architecture planning such as capacity & resliance planning that a typical corporate IT department needs to do and can take months.  With Azure you can deploy the envionment in minutes and start developing on the production platform striaght away!

    Windows Intune – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg
    Microsoft recently announced the Windows Intune Beta, a new solution that aims to simplify how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7.
    Intune is designed for businesses without an existing PC management infrastructure that need a cost-effective, simple way to manage and secure their PCs (not servers.. for servers and/or over 250 desktops there is System Center Essentials – SCE, or for larger environments Operations Manager).

    For businesses with a highly mobile and/or distributed workforce, the Windows Intune cloud service can help manage and secure PCs across multiple offices, remote & mobile and manage them from anywhere.  If you have multiple smaller offices not on the corporate VPN then Cloud services can work very well, especially for security & remote management avoiding costly site visits.

    Intune fits very well with our long term support of ASP, and now cloud based solutions – two of the three directors of The Full Circle have been heavily involved in managed AV and Security-as-a-Service since early 2002 building one of the first McAfee ASaP (formerly MyCIO) UK platforms, then as a reseller for SecureResolutions, and now with Panda Security with their Managed Office & Email Protection services.

    So in summary it’s a cloud based PC management solution aimed at the small to medium market that takes key parts of Operations Manager, WSUS, ForeFront plus an Enterprise license of Windows 7 to deliver:

    -          Updates (from what I could I see the interface is quite simple and not as feature rich as WSUS, nor as complicated)
    -          Malware protection (based on Security Essentials and Forefront)
    -          Monitoring (alerting for all major functions;  malware, updates, etc.)
    -          Remote Assistance (EA taken as used by Microsoft Support, initiated by the end user, allows remote control & file transfer, is firewall friendly as uses TCP Port 443 – same as https)
    -          Security Policies (malware, updates, Windows Firewall, what about existing Group Policy?)
    -          Hardware and software inventory (quite a simple inventory solution)
    -          Licensing (only Microsoft software)

    Goto http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/windowsintune-experience.aspx for more info, and if you are lucky enough to be on the beta login to the console via https://manage.microsoft.com

    Intune is due to be released in 2011 for 11$ per PC per month, and possible another dollar for MDOP on top – which as you can pay £40 per desktop per year for AV alone makes it a compelling offer esp. if you are currently running XP or Vista due to the upgrade license to Windows 7 Enterprise.

    There are c.450 UK partners in the 1st technical beta (now closed – worldwide cap at 10,000), but the next beta wave will be in the New Year – signup for notification of next wave at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/register.aspx

    Windows Phone 7 preview – more to follow…

    http://www.windowsphone7.com/

    http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/five-uk-networks-will-carry-windows-phone-7-10003
    other useful links..

    https://www.quickstartonlineservices.com/pages/default.aspx

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