TechReady9 Day 2 Wrap-up

Day 2 at TechReady was packed with technical sessions, no keynotes. In the morning I attended a session on model driven development. Not yet an infrastructure architecture related technology but as I mentioned yesterday regarding System Center, Microsoft is investing in a big way in modeling. The “Oslo” set of technologies is the foundation for developers and architects.

My next session was a special, invite only, session with a very senior Microsoft executive. It was an NDA session so I can’t discuss the content but in general the session was a very frank Q&A where the senior folks invited to the session were able to ask any question on any topic. I think people would be surprised how down to earth and still very technical some of the Microsoft senior execs are. Additionally, I don’t think most people realize the scope, scale, and challenge of managing the huge engineering teams for the big products.

Next up was a session with my Server Virtualization with Advanced Management (SVAM) colleagues. SVAM is a service offering from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and partners focusing on several virtualization scenarios such as server consolidation, dynamic management, VDI, etc. This session provided an overview of the next version of the offering which adds several new content modules including the VDI module I worked on earlier this year around the Microsoft+Citrix VDI solution.

The final two sessions I attended were with the Microsoft Online group (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, etc). The first was with the operations team of MS Online and the second was with the engineering team. Lots of info about their current offerings and even more about where they were going. The general theme is leveraging the new versions of the underlying products and bringing to the cloud a greater percentage of the features of the on-premise versions.

That’s it for Day 2. Day 3 will bring a keynote from Ray Ozzie, more technical sessions through the day, then Ask the Experts tonight.