When I registered for MMS2013, it was noted that as participants, we should be prepared for lots of walking. I normally expect this, but this year MMS2013 is taking place in Mandalay Bay, where the Convention Center and Event Center are two enormous venues. Having said that, Microsoft has been very prepared this year. When registration opened on Sunday, Microsoft provided numerous people to help direct traffic and provide assistance to participants. Since many IT Pros arrived on Saturday or Sunday morning, there was not much time to spare as some sessions were already finished on Sunday!
As always, the MMS keynote attracts the most attention from the over 5000 IT Pros in attendance. I’m always excited to find out what the theme will be, what sort of demos I should expect, and what video showcases Microsoft will show this year. While no major announcements were made this year, Microsoft did deliver a very robust keynote. It focused on what is available today and how we can make the most of it. For me, this kind of keynote demonstrates leadership, instead of promising what Microsoft plans to do in the future.
I encourage everyone to go out and try those capabilities today. You can build, deploy and operate an elastic cloud solution, seamlessly move resources from your Private Cloud to Public Cloud or Service Providers Cloud or use Windows Intune to manage your devices wherever they are, and whatever they are. It’s not the future anymore, its right here, right now!
So here are my top references for today as I will be spending the upcoming days collecting all the information I will need to digest next week:
The re-launched Cloud Blog from Microsoft Build Clouds:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/
An awesome extension to System Center Operations Manager 2012, enabling you to complete your 360 degree view of the health web application:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/global-service-monitor.aspx
A great blog about software-defined networking in Virtual Machine Manager 2012, which played a great part in the demo presented during the keynote: http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/22/software-defined-networking-enabled-in-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1-virtual-machine-manager.aspx
Although System Center Advisor was announced quite some time ago, I believe it deserves recognition. As a service that provides best practices for Microsoft Workloads, it also integrates to System Center Operations Manager for free! https://www.systemcenteradvisor.com/
Finally, don’t miss the MMS2013 keynote opener video, and don’t forget to join Microsoft at TechEd 2013 where Microsoft will begin to talk about the future!
Terry, an IT Leader and visionary, brings more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry to the Navantis team. In his role as the Director of Cloud and Infrastructure Solutions at Navantis, Terry works closely with his team to develop innovative solutions to help clients navigate the complex cloud driven environment.
(647) 258-9031
info@navantis.com
