23rd September: Three fantastic Microsoft enterprise IT presentations

We are very pleased to be able to announce a stellar line up of technical presentations and speakers from Microsoft at the September VBUG Newcastle IT Pro meeting here on the Newcastle University campus…

The Dynamic Desktop Experience – Windows 7, Windows XP Mode, App-V, MDT, MDOP and System Center – Dan Oliver

Windows 7 offers Microsoft’s customers with an opportunity to deliver a platform that releases new capabilities that deliver real business benefit and significantly reduced cost of ownership. The challenge for most companies is that deploying and migrating desktops is time consuming and traditionally offers service continuity risks with Application Compatibility that can prevent progress. This presentation will show capabilities, architectures and strategies that allow companies to move forward cost effectively to the benefits of a modern operating system. Level: 100

Dan Oliver is a Pre Sales Architect within Microsoft UK’s Speciality Technology Unit with some 14 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the virtualization and systems management fields. Dan has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial, Telecoms, Partners, Legal, Professional Services and Healthcare. Dan has also had the opportunity to work as a Chief Technology Officer for the Faculty of Advocates in the Scottish Legal Sector.

Novell and Lotus Notes – Migrating to Microsoft – Conrad Sidey

The business value of implementing Microsoft technologies like Active Directory, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint are clearly understood within Microsoft. For our customers that are still running their organisation on technologies like Novell and Lotus Notes they are starting to gain an understanding of the value of migrating to Microsoft technologies. The purpose behind this presentation is to provide the technical community with an insight into leading a project and architecting a solution to migrate environment that are running both Novell Netware and Lotus Notes. The presentation will discuss envisioning & planning of a Novell and Notes migration project, approaches to undertaking the migration depending upon the business drivers, providing an overview of the approach we are taking in migrating a UK Local City Council while providing coexistence, as well as presenting a number of migration & coexistence recommendations or lessons learnt from the project. Level: 200

Conrad Sidey is a Solution Architect within Microsoft Consulting Services with some 17 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the infrastructure field. Conrad has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial and Insurance, Manufacturing, Aero-Engineering, Defence, UK and European Government Agencies, Power Generators, Retail and Brewing. Conrad has also had the opportunity to work with large scale outsourcing services providers.

Implementing the “Black Box” – Performance Monitoring and Analysis for proactive and reactive support, server baselining and capacity planning – Richard Diver

All current versions of Windows come with a free tool that can prevent server downtime and solve many mysteries – Perfmon!

A little bit of practice with this tool can really help to solve issues with servers that may not even be performance related. Working at the OS level, you can find cause to most performance bottlenecks regardless of server function (Exchange, DC, Web etc).

This is something that has even more focus in future versions of Windows; a brief overview of these benefits will be shown also! Level: 300

Richard Diver is a Premier Field Engineer with 10 years experience implementing and supporting a range of Microsoft technologies, specialising in Active Directory, Server Platform and Virtualisation.

Wrap up Q&A with all presenters at the end.

Time: 18:45 to 21:00

Location: Room 118, Claremont Tower, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU

Price: FREE

Please register for your place at the VBUG site so we can make sure we have enough space and refreshments. 🙂

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Event – 8th July

For Windows sys admins, the biggest contacts on your approach radar right now are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, due to release later in the year (but be complete and released to manufacture next month). This free evening event, right here on the campus, couldn’t be much more timely then.

Rik Hepworth, the IT Director at Black Marble, will cover some of the great new features of the new operating systems, including BranchCache, XP Mode and what I personally think is the number one feature, DirectAccess.

This is bound to be a popular event, so sign up early over at the VBUG site.

TechNet Conference goes virtual (19 June 2009)

From Microsoft:

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the very first TechNet Virtual Conference taking place on 19 June 2009.

You told us that time and budget pressures make attending in person events difficult – so to help both you and the environment we decided to take the TechNet Conference virtual. Now you and your colleagues can join us to get a flavour of some key Microsoft technologies from the comfort of your own desks.

  • Windows 7 – Deployment and Management
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 – 10 things to make life easier for IT Pros
  • An overview of Office Communications Server R2 and voice capabilities
  • The trials and tribulations of SharePoint implementation

We are also really pleased to announce an exclusive Keynote featuring Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow specialising in the Windows platform.

And that’s not the only difference this year. In addition to Microsoft technology news and product overviews from the experts, the TechNet Virtual Conference will also feature a second auditorium focused on IT Management, including:

  • How IT will change over the next 10 years and why you should care – an exclusive session delivered at TechEd EMEA
  • Growing the Business and Managing Costs at Microsoft – An Insider’s View, presented by Asif Jinnah, IT Manager, Microsoft UK

Click here to see the full agenda.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/dd819085.aspx

Free events on campus in May

As I previously posted, Thursday 14th May sees Eileen Brown from Microsoft come up to the campus to talk about Unified Messaging. This should be a really interesting presentation, especially as WIT are looking to expand our Exchange systems into the UM area. Unfortunately, it’s possibly the last time we’ll get to see Eileen presenting in the North East as a member of the TechNet team, since she blogged yesterday that her current role is being impacted by the recently announced layoffs at Microsoft.

Sign up for your free place at the VBUG site (membership is not required).

Since the last Monday of May is a bank holiday, the SuperMondays event this month is being held on a Tuesday, but don’t let that put you off because the line-up is one of the best yet. The event is being held on the 26th May in the University’s Culture Lab and will feature some of the really interesting work being done there and more.

See SuperMondays.org for more details and sign up at Eventbrite.

OU Admin Day 2009: Slides and Handouts

After a slight delay here are downloadable Slides and Handouts from OU Admin Day 2009.

The files are all included in a single ZIP file.

The Sixth Annual “OU Admin Day” took place this year on 8th April 2009

Programme of talks

  • 09:30 – Registration and coffee
  • 10:00 – Introduction to the day
  • 10:05 – ISS Strategy
  • 10:30 – Green Computing and Procurement Guidelines
  • 11:00 – Coffee Break
  • 11:15 – Hosted Infrastructure and Research Storage
  • 12:00 – Lunch
  • 13:00 – ISS Services Roadmap
  • 14:00 – Coffee Break
  • 14:15 – ISS Desktop Roadmap
  • 14:45 – ISS Demonstrations
  • 15:15 – Questions to ISS
  • 16:30 – Close of Day

Thanks to all who attended.