When Software Attacks!

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Steve Riley

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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, November 6, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 4 - Guru Central

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. Steve was talking about security implications of virtulisation and his views were stimulating. He was talking in depth about what to consider when virtualising machines and why Microsoft took the architectural approach that they did for the Hyper-V stack when security was considered.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, November 6, 2008

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

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. In a nutshell, it is this: create a Virtual PC image with your legacy OS and legacy App. Deploy that VPC to your users desktop so they can run your legacy app but let them run the app without needing to start the VPC and use two desktops.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Server 2008 R2

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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Threat Management Gateway

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. Stirling family members exchange information to allow ‘dynamic response’ - trigger actions from different forefront elements (client sec etc) based on alerts from other elements (eg mail scanner).

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Windows 7 Feature Preview

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. A few things stuck out, however. An almost throwaway comment about DirectConnect requiring IPSEC and IPv6 means that I must dig deeper, and that the technology, whilst cool, is almost totally useless to me, stuck behind two layers of NAT in a managed building.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT 2008: Day 1 - Keynote

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. For example, I had not understood that the acquisition of Kidaro will enable interaction between applications running within a virtual machine and the host desktop in ways that are not currently achievable. That the technology will ship as part of a new Desktop Optimisation Pack was news.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

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

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. Andy and I travelled all the way from Bradford, and the first guy we strike up conversation with… is from Salford! What are the odds? Anyway, here’s a pic of the view from our seats.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 1

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. I thought I’d take a picture of the conference pack, especially since I’ve heard grumblings about the PDC bag. The TechEd pack looks pretty much identical to the pack the devs brought home last year, to me. However, when I opened the curtains I was greeted by a fantastic sunrise:

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 0 - Greetings from Barcelona

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. I’m also extremely impressed with the Metro system here in Barcelona. It’s my first time in the city, and the transport is pretty efficient, with a wonderful simple trip-based charging mechanism.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, November 2, 2008