TechEd EMEA IT 2008 on When Software Attacks!

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Steve Riley

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The last session of the day was just incredible. A surfer-dude with boundless energy wandering around the audience in shorts, cracking jokes and telling stories and every single one related in some way to his point. Steve Riley is a fantastic presenter, and his session - Do these ten things now or else get 0wned was a great session on security. Sadly, I don’t think it’s repeated or I would urge you all to attend the next viewing. If you have the chance to see Steve speak, grab it with both hands - especially if you are involved in any way with security or IT management.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 4 - Guru Central

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So, we’re on the penultimate day of TechEd EMEA and I have to say that exhaustion is starting to creep in. However, the day had a great start with sessions by Steve Riley and then Mark Russinovich.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V)

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

OK, MED-V is cool! Sadly, cool though it is, it’s not something we’ll use3 at BM, but in my previous lives doing large organisation IT, MED-V would have been a killer.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Server 2008 R2

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We were in early today, looking forward to a session on SharePoint with Bill Engolish. Sadly, that was cancelled so Andy and I sat in on the Server 2008 R2 overview session presented by Iain McDonald. That was very interesing, and we learned a bit more about BranchCache. It doesn’t look like it will replace WAN accelerators like Riverbved, because it doesn’t appear to function at their low level. However, it does a similar thing at the file level. The client requests a file from the remote server, which instead replies with hashes. The client PC the requests those hashes from the local cache, improving performance. The cache itself is built on request so does not need to be pre-populated (which is good). I think WAN accelerators have nothing to fear from this, but for smaller organisations or ones which aren’t able to put the accelerators in (perhaps their servers are hosted, for example) BranchCache looks like a very promising technology.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Threat Management Gateway

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Andy and I are now in a TMG preview demo. This looks really interesting - we spoke to the guys at ATE last night and saw a few items that I hope to see now in more detail. TMG is ISA Server vnext - codenamed ‘Nitrogen’ and part of the ‘Stirling’ next wave of Forefront.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Windows 7 Feature Preview

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So, the first session of the day was an extremely well-attended overview of Windows 7 features. When they talk about evolution rather than revolution with regard to Windows 7, I think that’s accurate. It was very much about developing and extending the foundations of Vista.

Tech Ed EMEA IT 2008: Day 1 - Keynote

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So, the keynote was interesting. Much of the content I had seen before, but there were some demos that were interesting and a few snippets that made me take note.

Tech ED EMEA IT: Day 1 - Waiting for the Keynote

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It’s an exercise in surreality. I’ve just walked through tunnels reminiscent of THX1138, to emerge in a wonderful blue-bathed auditorium, and they’re playing the Akira soundtrack (specifically the bit from just after the first nuclear explosion). Weird.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 1

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It’s 7:25 AM. Andy and I are hoping to make a whistle-stop trip to the Cathedral before making it to the conference early enough to get good seats for the keynote.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 0 - Greetings from Barcelona

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Ola! Andy and I are now in sunny Espana. Only it’s not sunny. Oh well… However, true to form we started our trip, having registered at the conference centre, by eating hot dogs in a german fast food joint in a Spanish shopping centre! If you’re passing, Kurz & Gut does pretty good food.