MMS 2013: In the Cloud

It is cloudy in Las Vegas today, but even if the sun was shining, Microsoft is definitely "in the cloud" when it comes to System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012. That, of course, could get a little interesting when your demos are in the cloud and the Internet link goes down...but Brad Anderson's keynote was saved when access was reestablished, initially by using smartphones for tethering (in Windows Phone lingo, enabling "internet sharing"). Necessity was definitely the mother of invention!

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System Center Advisor now free of charge

Without much fanfare on March 6, Microsoft announced System Center Advisor will be free for Microsoft customers in supporting countries (a list of countries is available here).

System Center Advisor, originally code-named "Atlanta," offers configuration-monitoring cloud services for Microsoft server products. The list of monitored products has grown from Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server deployments to include SharePoint, Exchange, and most recently Lync.

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Unappreciated Software Installations

I don't know about you, but I try to be aware of what software is installed on my home computer. This makes it somewhat annoying when I go to install an update to Adobe Reader (or other software) and suddenly discover that along with the software update, I am getting software I did not ask for.

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InformIT - Author of the Week

Had a nice surprise in my inbox this morning - one of my coauthors for the upcoming System Center 2012 Orchestrator Unleashed book sent me an email congratulating me on being the Author of the Week on InformIT.com (it's there this morning on the homepage. When I clicked the details page, I saw the publication date of System Center 2012 Operations Manager is today! (I knew it would be back from the printer this week, but its only Monday ...)

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Microsoft's Software Battles (some of them, anyway)

With Microsoft's vast reach in the marketplace, it seems the company regularly has an area where it is trying to be better than the competition or has a challenger to one of its many products. This is nothing new, its been going on almost since the beginning of recorded history - at least since Lotus gained ground over VisiCalc, only to see Microsoft Excel later gain market share over the 1-2-3 spreadsheet product. Later it was WordPerfect, Novell ... I suspect you can think of others.

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Google vs FTC: Google 1, FTC 0

About 6 months ago, Google made the news for bypassing Apple's Safari browser settings for guarding privacy. Google, of course, claimed it would never do anything nefarious, that it was only reversing Safari protection for users who were logged onto Google and had turned off privacy protection in Google (or not).

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The Downside of the Microsoft Marketing Machine

CIO Insight tells us consumers are holding back on buying PCs - either awaiting the arrival of Windows 8 devices or buying tablets and smartphones. IDC reports that anticipation of Windows 8 devices has (predictably) led to sluggish sales of PCs in the last quarter.

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Microsoft's Lost Decade and Server Management

Andy Patrizio, in this blog post, continues discussing his thoughts on the Vanity Fair article, "Microsoft's Lost Decade." This last article mentions some things Microsoft has done right!

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How About that Surface?

On June 18, 2012, Microsoft announced their Surface tablet, to be available in Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro flavors. The Surface is a bit of a departure from traditional Microsoft announcements, as it uses Microsoft rather than OEM hardware. As one of the distinguishing points between Microsoft and Apple is their open hardware platform, this raises the question of alienating Microsoft's OEM relationships. Is it worth it? One of the theories behind Microsoft's move is this makes the price more competitive with the iPad, which of course also has a closed hardware platform.

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What's up with Google Drive?

Now that Google has rolled out their competitor to Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive, and both the Dropbox folks and Microsoft have made adjustments in their products to respond to what Google offers, let's take a step back to see what the newcomer is bringing to the table. Most obvious is the capability to use the cloud to store everything you do in Google Docs - making it accessible from anywhere and making Google's offering conceptually similar to the other cloud-based storage offerings.

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NOW@MMS 2012 - the world of connected devices

The second day keynote at MMS traditionally discusses Configuration Manager. That was extended a bit this year to include Microsoft's cloud-based service for device management, InTune.

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NOW@MMS 2012 - the cloud is here

Several years ago, the theme at the Microsoft Management Summit was the Journey to the cloud. Today, its NOW.

• Are you ready? - NOW.
• Are you building for the future? - NOW

This year, for the 10 year anniversary of MMS (previously known as the SMS User Conference), Microsoft is back at the Venetian, bigger (sold out with 5000+ attendees) and better than ever. To celebrate that event, Brad Anderson announced general availability of System Center 2012 worldwide.

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is BYOD a good idea?

For years, companies have debated whether to let employees expense their personal cell phones rather than issuing a separate phone for business use, and if so, how much control to have over them in terms of vendors and carriers. It was an easy decision when folks used pagers (remember those?), which were issued to an employee. Corporate cell phones started as an expansion of pagers. However, now with the explosion of mobile devices, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) brings new questions to the table, because people already have phones. Here's some of the issues:

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Diversity and Jobs in IT

Earlier this week, Network World published an article (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/030612-women-it-257009.html) quoting an Anita Borg Institute report saying "at least 1 woman should be interviewed for every IT job opening." The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology say this will raise the chances that the high-tech industry will begin to see a growing number of female technical specialists and managers.

Because I happen to be a female, I hope I can discuss this topic without being accused of being a MCP (and that's not a Microsoft Certified Professional!).

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Google in the News

Google, rightly or wrongly, has had its share of bumps in the news over the past week. It started Feb 17, when the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Google had bypassed Apple's Safari browser settings for guarding privacy. (For some strange reason, this never showed up in my local paper.) The default on many browsers is to allow this tracking, but Safari, used on all Apple devices including iPhones, blocks this tracking. Google got around that. Although, after being contacted by the WSJ, Google disabled its code.

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Is SOPA really that bad?

Friday, January 27, Mark Gibbs published an article discussing "the real reasons why SOPA and PIPA are real bad" (http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2012/012712-backspin.html).

Mark points out what he sees as two major issues:

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This week in System Center 2012

As you may have heard by now, Microsoft released the release candidate of System Center 2012 on Tuesday, announced during their "Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud Virtual Event" on Tuesday. Just two days later, I see at least 112 news articles related to System Center 2012!

Here's a smattering of those articles:

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System Center 2012

Today Microsoft announced availability of the release candidate for System Center 2012. While there previously has been a System Center "suite," with this version, Microsoft is getting serious about making the suite the product, and the individual products are now components. Microsoft is focusing on the entire application.

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Microsoft System Center Evolution

System Center was first introduced as a concept in 2003, consisting of MOM and SMS, with an envisioned reporting product unifying information between the two. Since then System Center has gone through several product releases, but the components have been released on their own timelines using the System Center name as a moniker but not as a unified product. As System Center has grown, its products have largely operated independently, with only a few minor connections between the products. 

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Microsoft's $99 hour PC support service

Microsoft's Answer Desk debuted Dec. 7, touted as a premium service to give you the most convenient, friendly, and easy way to get the most out of your PC (per a TechNet blog article by Blake Morrison Dec. 9 that was pulled shortly it was posted). However, http://www.answerdesk.com/ is live, including a complimentary consult to get you started. Service is oriented towards removing malware, helping with performance problems, or solving problems with Windows or Office.

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