Microsoft to Acquire Skype: Combined companies will benefit consumers, businesses and increase market opportunity.

Whoooaaaahhhh!

A good friend and ex co UK Microsofter just sent me this as a link (funnily enough on Skype) – what can I say!?!  or did..

[13:39:20] Steve Beer: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/may11/05-10CorpNewsPR.mspx
[13:42:57] Reuben Cook: VERY interesting. blimey!  gotta be a big boost for MS esp. windows phone and x-box
[13:45:03] Reuben Cook: interesting for Lync though… Skype has definitely been taking revenue from enterprise VoIP – what were the stats – 207 billion minutes in 2010 – jeeze!

I wonder what effect this will have on the (MS) share price… would have thought positive for Microsoft unless, of course and according to the market, they are paying too much… hmmm?
Anyway, probably a little too early in the day to tell – at time of writing only just gone 09:00 on Wall Street.

Now according to some other posts (excellent one at http://gigaom.com/2011/05/09/why-microsoft-is-buying-skype-for-8-billion/) this has already gone through, and joint announcements are due today…

Keep your eyes peeled and listening out for the familiar Skype ringtone

yep, its confirmed..

[14:53:14] Steve Beer: "Microsoft confirms $8.5B Skype purchase & plans to call new service Microsoft Skype Network, or "MS Skynet" for short."

update: Friday 13th May..

Since the acquisition was announced my Skype video hasn’t been working (I can see the other party, and my own image, etc.) all the other party gets is the spinning wheel of dullness…

Who do I call to fix this? Microsoft? or have they been buggering with the code already and already we need a Service Pack or perhaps a Cumulative Update to fix it?!?

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

-

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…?

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!

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 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:

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:

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.

Summary
Step-by-step understanding is key to successfully implementing and deploying SharePoint 2010. This 15-module course will guide you through each critical stage, giving you exactly the skills you need to leverage full value from the latest SharePoint technology.

Agenda
Module 0 – Getting Ready for a SharePoint 2010 Implementation: Why Governance and Business Requirements are Essential for a Successful Implementation.
Module 1 – Understanding the Architecture of SharePoint Server 2010
Module 2 – Installing SharePoint Server 2010.
Module 3 – Administrating and Configuring Farm Settings in SharePoint Server 2010
Module 4 – Understanding and Administrating Web applications
Module 5 – Managing Web Applications
Module 6 – Introduction to Site Collections
Module 7 – Creating Site Collections
Module 8 – Managing Site Collections
Module 9 – Working with SharePoint Server 2010 Portals
Module 10 – Governance and Information Assurance
Module 11 – Enterprise Content Types & Managed Metadata
Module 12 – Managing Documents and Records
Module 13 – Workflow
Module 14 – Implementing and Managing Search
Module 15 – People & Social Networking
Module 16 – Disaster Recovery

A handful of notes from the week..

Installation Preparation for Service & Install Accounts 

The SharePoint Installation Account

While I’ve become used to installing applications on servers with either the local or domain admin account, SharePoint 2010 really really really needs to have its own account created for the installation process. If you don’t you’ll have to correct the various service and app pool accounts later and that’s a pain.

Key points about the account used to install with -

• It will become the application pool account used in IIS for the Central Admin
• If you do plan to let SharePoint create your databases (content DBs’ etc…) this account needs rights to the SQL database to create DB’s (DBCreator and DBAdmin)
• If DB’s are already created then it only needs DBAdmin
• It only needs Local Admin permissions on the installation machine
• Not to be used in day-to-day admin
• Imagine this account to be “enterprise admin” of SharePoint.
• It should never be used again after the initial install, obviously that doesn’t mean disable or delete it.

Example User Account – spinstall

The Farm Admin Account

 The farm admin account is an account that should be used by as few people as possible.

• It either needs to be a local admin on the SharePoint front end or create a new supper user or login as spinstall(logging in as spinstall is not recommended)
• The farm admin account change services running on the machine hence the need for local admin rights, farm admin right in SharePoint central admin isn’t enough

Example User Account - spfarmadmin

During the SharePoint 2010 install

 Make sure you move index location during install off from the C:…14data location

 This index file is a flat file used in search and can grow very large in next to no time.

After the install – the Configuration Wizard

Do not use it, it doesn’t follow best practice.

 Performance Tip for SharePoint databases 

Turn off Auto Growth

While it’s been mentioned a thousand times and shouldn’t need to be mentioned…

To prevent it happening in existing installations for any new databases:

SQL Management  Studio > Database > Model. Under the file groups section  change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Fixing it for existing databases:

Open the properties of each database and under the file groups section, change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Note: Why 50MB? Because it’s just right for SharePoint since it aligns with the default maximum upload file size.

Registering Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

• Best practice is to add them here first then start to use them to run services
• All are generally fine  as just domain user accounts without elevated privileges

Application Pool Accounts in IIS for SharePoint 2010

 Never change the app pool account from inside IIS as the config DB will not know about the change, web apps will not know about the change and new servers added to the farm will not know which account to use.

One of the few things you can and do need to configure in IIS is SSL certificates and also needs to be done on each and every web front end.

This morning (whilst finishing our new Windows 7 with Office 2010 Beta build for the ThinkPad X series – yes I’m a sad git at 07:00!) I’ve deleted space consuming binaries and install media for older beta products that have been superceeded or are about to be.

For the cull are SCE2010 Beta, DPM 2010 Beta v3 (RC is due in early feb), and a really old SCVMM 2008 R2 RC…. saved a mere 26GB of disk space there! (yes this is sarcasm!)

Now I’m not intending to write possibly the most pointless and dull blog post in the history of the blaahhhg, but more as a reference to myself of our involvement in these stages of product testing and development.

If for some reason you’re not aware of how you get hold of Microsoft early release beta’s and release candidates then take a trip to http://connect.microsoft.com.  Be warned this may start a long and time consuming passtime of exploring new software, but the rewards are there for your efforts.

Anyway, its time to start reusing some of that reclaimed disk space and start extracting the 4.10GB of SCE2010 RC I downloaded the other day… who’s going to bet its even bigger than the beta?

IAMCP U.K Chapter Meeting Agenda

Date:            Thursday, 10^th September, 2009.
Location:       Microsoft, 100 Victoria St, London, SW1E 5JL.
Timings:        09:30 to 14:00 

 Aileen Hannah – Launch Lead for Windows Client
  Windows 7E (EU version) – dropped, Win7 in EU will be full product
  “Microsoft are 100% confident that 98% of Vista apps will work on Win7” (not inc. Security s/w!
  Win7 DirectAccess – needs Windows Server 2008 R2 on back-end
  Win7 BranchCache – works with R2, but also will do P2P without R2
  Windows 7 Manageability
   Problem Recorder – automate screen grabs and email to support! J
   Troubleshooting Assistant
   MDOP costs $6 /seat /annum

brains and beauty... 2008 R2 & Windows 7 works better together

Gareth Hall – Windows Server Product Manager, UK
  “$3B of investment covered in 3 minutes!”
  Windows 7 & R2 is a combined sell – massive interest in both, ‘work better together’
  R2 upgrades do not require new CAL licensing, full version do
  Value of Windows Server practise – costs more, takes longer to implement… customer benefit?
  R2 Active Directory Recycle Bin – ever spent 3 weeks trying to recover a bad AD object delete?
  DirectAccess – takes  a lot of setting up, but is very compelling.  Already IPv6 then easy, who is!?
  (services opportunity)
 
Dan Scarfe – CEO, Dot Net Solutions: Windows Azure Platform – What does it mean to me?
   “.NET for the Data Center”
  Azure (www.azure.com/PartnerQuickstart) is made up of:
    Windows Azure (Compute, Storage, Management)
    SQL Azure (Relational data, Management)
    .NET Services (Connectivity, Access Control) EasyJet are trialling connectivity from mobile devices to check-in systems so your mobile device will register you for check-in whilst you are in the queue.
  Generation 4 data centers – Chicago, IL 700,000 sq.ft (16 football fields), 60 megawatts, Dublin, 303,000 sq.ft (8 football fields), 22.2 megawatts – more DC’s planned
   Containers full of servers, whole container is connected, cannot walk inside, if a server goes down it is marked as bad like a sector on a disk, eventually the whole container is swapped out best energy efficiency for data center technology in the world
  Same platform as MS Online offerings (Exchange, SharePoint, Dynamics)
  Azure app development is very easy for .NET developers
  Pricing – pay as you go, charges based on metering
  If going for a cloud based solutions you really are getting into bed with the vendor, it had better be the right one as bed hopping has serious ramifications!

The Full Circle (www.thefullcircle.com) have been at the forefront of this exciting product development having worked with Microsoft on the EBS Technology Adoption Program (TAP) since early 2008 (we’d actually signed up on Microsoft Connect for what was then known as Centro in January 2007!).

To participate in the TAP you need a customer who’s willing to participate in deploying and trialling early release software known as Release Candidates.  Our customer deployment was with a London City based insurance and reinsurance broker call Newman Martin and Buchan (NMB Insurance –
www.nmbinsurance.com).

Our old mate, business associate & mentor (for all things PR & communications), John Dean (COO of www.showmethegolf.tv) helped us put together release that announced this exciting project, it went out to coincide with the global WESS launch event and is available online via PRWEB (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/11/prweb1607324.htm), but also below for your enjoyment!:

PRESS RELEASE – For release Wednesday 12^th November, 16:00 GMT

Step Jump for NMB with Microsoft Windows Essential Business Server 2008

Largest International pre-launch Deployment Completed

United Kingdom, November 12th, 2008 – Newman Martin and Buchan Limited (NMB – www.nmbinsurance.com), a leading independent Lloyd’s insurance and reinsurance broker, announced today that they had completed a successful migration to Microsoft’s brand new mid-market server product, Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS 2008 – www.microsoft.com/ebs), which launches globally today.

EBS 2008 has been developed to help IT managers increase the security, reliability and manageability of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, so they can focus more on strategic projects to boost business results.

NMB were invited to trial EBS 2008 as part of the product development phase in January 2008, and are the largest international pre-launch deployment client for the new product.

In June 2008 NMB migrated to a pre-release version of the product known as Release Candidate Zero (RC0).  The trial was supported by both HP and Microsoft, who worked in tandem with Microsoft Gold Partner ‘The Full Circle’ to implement the project.

Based in the financial centre of the City of London, NMB has over 150 staff. The business was previously supported by a Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server infrastructure, with a small proportion of users accessing Email and calendaring remotely via Outlook Web Access.  The majority of remote Email access was provided using Blackberry mobile devices to around 80 users.

With limited remote working, especially in terms of the range of mobile / handheld options available, the existing user experience had become dated. Providing and maintaining remote working required significant administrative and required the use of a complicated VPN infrastructure. As the existing infrastructure platform was at the end of its life, the need to upgrade both server-side hardware and software had become a business imperative.

NMB were therefore ideally positioned to gain significant benefit from Microsoft’s Essential Business Server 2008, which was in the process of being developed to support up to 300 concurrent users, and offer an easy migration path supported by simplified administrative & reporting capabilities.

According to Simon Edwards, I.T. Manager of NMB: “We appreciated that we would be in the sweet spot for what Windows Essential Business Server 2008 could offer, and were ready to accept the risks surrounding a full scale pre-release migration, and be part of the learning process, in order to enjoy the benefits of a brand new infrastructure.”

He added: “We are enjoying the productivity and capability benefits from the key component upgrades such as System Center Essentials (SCE) & Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), plus Exchange Server 2007 with Forefront security technologies.  We are also looking forward to consolidating a number of legacy databases with SQL Server 2008 as included in the Premium version of EBS 2008 we are running.”

He concluded: “Most importantly, our staff now enjoys a far more dynamic experience, including mobile and remote access, plus collaboration and document management via SharePoint. It’s been a major step jump for the business, but one that we are delighted we have taken.”

The Project was initiated and implemented by London based Microsoft Gold Partner, The Full Circle (www.thefullcircle.com). Reuben Cook, Managing Director of The Full Circle, commented: “We have worked closely with Microsoft for a number of years resulting in our Gold Partner status and were delighted to work with NMB in deploying Essential Business Server 2008.  NMB were an ideal fit to benefit from the improvements contained in EBS 2008, and we were the ideal partner to help deliver them”

Cook added: “During the pre-release testing stage, NMB were the largest deployment outside of the US, NMB’s implementation provided unique and valuable feedback to Microsoft.  A number of the experiences we had with NMB had direct results in honing and refining the eventual released product”.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners

Ends: 647 words

For more information, press only, contact:

Newman Martin and Buchan – Simon Edwards, simon.edwards@nmbinsurance.com

The Full Circle – John Dean, press@thefullcircle.com

Microsoft  – Matt Lambert, Matt.Lambert@infernopr.com

Publically available web resources:

www.nmbinsurance.com

www.microsoft.com/ebs

www.thefullcircle.com

Simon Edwards (NMB) & Reuben Cook (The Full Circle) post deployment to RTM code of EBS 2008

As founder and CTO of a London based IT consultancy ‘Full Circle Technology Limited (aka The Full Circle – www.thefullcircle.com) I often attend various trade shows and events, however these are often complimentary or supportive of our position as a Microsoft Gold partner.

Virtualisation has always been hot on our agenda, indeed it is in the business plan from when we launched our consulting business in 2003.  It has continued to be a growth technology we have implemented for several clients over the years using Microsoft Virtual Server, and more recently Hyper-V (www.microsoft.com/uk/hyper-v).

I’ve also been an early user of PC based virtualisation since 2001/2, where as CTO of a technology services company I’d insisted that our support & engineering team use virtual machines (VMware workstation at the time) for testing in relation to support & development (the main reason being to minimise the impact of breaking their production machines by ‘playing’ with flakey software! )

Anyway, today I went along with a keen new associate of ours, Will Darbey, to an excellent seminar event hosted by a leading UK training organisation, Global Knowledge (www.globalknowledge.co.uk).
The seminar was exclusively about a technology that could be viewed as just ever so slightly competative to Microsoft in the virtualisation space… VMware (www.vmware.com).

It must be said, that if in the market for VMware training and certfication, then Global Knowledge is well worth a serious look in… (http://www.globalknowledge.co.uk/courses__certifications/vmware_training.aspx).

A most excellent use for the corner of the BSG building (City Road, London)

The agenda for the day was split into two halfs:

AM Session: Business Briefing-Aimed at people who are considering virtualisation for their business and the benefits it can bring to an organisation.

• 10:00 – 11:30 Management Briefing
  Introduction to VMware
• Virtualisation the Datacentre Initiative
• VMware Infrastructure
• Virtualisation Benefits
• Disaster Recovery
• Green IT
• Government Legislation
• Virtual Desktop
• VMware lower total cost of ownership
• 11:30 – 12:00 Q & A
• 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch

PM Session: Technical Briefing -The session is for technical people responsible for evaluating VMware ESX Server and VirtualCenter; including IT managers, system architects, and system administrators.

• 14:00 – 15:30 Technical Briefing:
• Reliable Foundation
• The Hypervisor
• Architecture
• The Management
• Create, Convert, Deploy, Patch, Protect, Deliver
• Guided Consolidation, Upgrade Manager, SRM Shared Services
• Resource allocation
• Live Migration
• High Availability
• Resource distribution, Power management Integration
• Hardware and Guest OS support
• Conversion and Capacity Planning
• 15:30 – 16:00 Q & A

Speakers:

• David Day -David comes from a 10 year Cisco and Microsoft background, and currently manages the technical delivery program for VMware Authorised Training Centres. Originally from South Africa, David is now based in the UK, and has been with VMware for four years.
• John Churchhouse -John leads the VMware Strategic Partners team which covers all OEM and System Integrator/System Outsourcer relationships in the UK and Ireland.  Prior to VMware, John worked for Sun Microsystems where he managed the System Integrator partner sales team.

As usual I made a few scribbles from the day…

“Virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Virtualization will transform how IT is managed, what is bought, how it is deployed, how companies plan and how they are charged. As a result, virtualization is creating a new wave of competition among infrastructure vendors that will result in considerable market disruption and consolidation over the next few years.”
- Gartner

The day was split into two parts, the morning session with John Churchhouse on the business angle, and the afternoon a technical deep dive and demonstration with David Day.

Morning session: John Churchhouse, Manager Strategic Partners, VMware

VMware by the numbers..

Founded 1998

2007 rev. $1.33B projected $1.8-1.9B

6100 employees (almost doubled since Jan, current hiring freeze)..

50% year on year growth for last 8 years, limited

120,000 customers, 87% deployed in production, 43% standardising on VMware Infrastructure (i.e. VMotion, HA, Backup, etc.)

3^rd software company to maintain 50% revenue growth after reaching $1B (other two being Microsoft & Oracle)

reasons/uses for virtualisation (with VMware of course! ) 

Server Consolidation & Containment – eliminate server sprawl by deploying systems into virtual machines…

Infrastructure Provisioning – reduce time to provision new infrastructure to minutes with sophisticated automation capabilities and standardised machine templates.

Business Continuity – reduce cost and complexity of BC by encapsulating entire systems into files that can be replicated and restored to any server

Test and Development– rapid provision and re-provision of test & dev environments; store libraries or pre-configured test machines

Enterprise Desktop / Virtual Desktop Infrastructure– secure unmanaged PCs. Alternatively, provide standardised enterprise desktop environments hosted on secure, reliable, centrally managed servers.

Legacy Application re-hosting – migrate legacy O/S & apps to virtual machines running on faster and newer hardware for better/improved reliability.

TCO on server consolidation typically 6 months… ?!? www.vmware.com/go/calculator

Greenness- Qualcomm – reduced 900+ servers, 11.2 tonnes of CO2 per server saved!

ESXi / VMware Virtualisation Layer – 32MB, free download – smaller, tighter, less to go wrong!

Can be specified and shipped pre-installed with servers from HP & Dell..

Trigger points for VDI… hmmm I missed that one…

2008: the year of automation!

Automation = Business Agility

Automate IT processes (Lifecycle management from machine birth through death/retirement)

Create resource pools

Capacity on-demand

Disaster Recovery

DR in the virtual world is orders of magnitude simpler in the virtual world.. e.g. hardware and firmware levels can be different across DR sites as the virtual layer is consistent

Turn manual recovery run books into automated

Test & Development

Developer productivity – >75% reduction in server to staff ratio, 10x reduction in system config time, 20% acceleration in system development lifecycle time

A UK ‘small’ business example..

BT consolidated 1503 servers, est 375 racks of x86 ay 5 sites replaced with 30 at 3 sites

4509 network ports down to 168!
 

Afternoon session: David Day, Technical Services Director, VMware
David’s session was a fast paced, technical deep dive into various aspects of VMware virtualisation, including some complimentary technologies.  He also ran through some demonstrations including an unplanned, unrehearsed demo (always a brave thing to do) – everything worked like a dream! (its good stuff this VMware .

I’d love to give more detail other than David clearly knows his stuff and then some!, however and unfortuantely I was against the clock getting our EBS 2008 PR submitted - had to be out of the door for a 16:00 release… see http://reubenjcook.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/windows-essential-business-server-2008-launch/

Will & I did, however, have a chance to look somewhat confused with VMware… (before the event of course!! ).