Worldwide Partner Conference … what a BLAST!

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I have had the pleasure of being at WPC this week.  We rocked in on Sunday morning to set up the hardware for the Day 2 keynotes today, and I am very happy (relieved?) to say that the demos went perfectly and our Demo Gods rocked them.

In summary, here is what we covered from our team today:

  • Our new President, Sataya Nadella gave a view into the future of the Microsoft cloud offerings
    • Demo from Senior Director Ryan O’Hara showing App Controller with hybrid private/public cloud management and applications delivered through service templates
    • Demo from Distinguished Engineer Amir Netz showing SQL “Denali” and project codename “Crescent” for dynamic and visually impressive data visualization
  • Our CVP, Robert Wahbe gave a view into how the Server and tools solutions (Windows, System Center, SQL) will deliver on the Private Cloud
    • Demo from Ryan O’Hara showing Virtual Machine Manager 2012 doing heterogeneous hypervisor with pooled resources across VMware and Hyper-v, how we can allocate these pooled heterogeneous resources can be allocated across clouds, and how we can use service templates to deliver application in a private cloud construct.
    • Demo from Principal Program Manager Jeff Woolsey showing a sneak peek of a couple of Windows Server “8” features. 
    • Demo from Amir Netz this time showing Crescent in use against IT data
  • My GM, Garth Fort presented a session on System Center 2012, covering both the Client focused Consumerization and Datacenter Private Cloud aspects.
    • I did a combo demo of Configuration Manager 2012 and how we can deploy a single application package in different ways to different devices (I did VDI and a Slate/Laptop) and then heterogeneous mobile device management.
    • I did a combo demo of Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (similar to what Ryan did earlier with VMware management) and Operations manager 2012 Application Performance Management.

I’ve also been able to spend some time on the Private Cloud booth, and it’s been great to have the opportunity to discuss these topics with so many Partners.  The enthusiasm and excitement around System Center 2012, Windows Server “8” and SQL Denali is amazing!

It’s going to be an epic year, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the Application Service Management space Smile.  For now, I’m off to 2 internal events, the massive MGX in Denver, CA and then the slightly smaller TechReady which thankfully is back home in Seattle!

Adam