Anyone going to the MS Launch Event tomorrow?

[thedave1164]

If you are, PM me and maybe we could meet up.

[Gman]

I'm registered but just too busy to go. I imagine it's going to be heavy on the marketing, too. I've downloaded the bits for Server 2008 but haven't had the time to play with it. I pray to God it's not the POS that Vista is.

I've got desktop platforms going EOL that I'm having to benchmark and test potential replacements for and a pre-release Barcelona server on the way. With server platform launches in Feb-Mar, desktops in May-June, and notebooks in Sept-Oct, things get busy. Add in a move to Exchange 2007, OCS 2007, Sharepoint 2007, SCCM 2007, evaluating the requirements for an Office 2007 upgrade and the other goodies rolling out tomorrow and I've got no free time. Oh, wait, my free time is between 1am and 6am.

[Delphi]

What exactly are they launching?

[thedave1164]

What exactly are they launching?

Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008 and Visual Studio 2008

[BadShot]

G-man, I'm hitting the Microsoft Management Summit at the end of April.. all about SCCM.. I'll get you the low down from that.

Server 08 should be a nice set of improvements, the expansions in the LDAP infrastructure is interesting, role based servers without extraneous default applications/services (yes I know you can do this in Linux/Unix platforms for 25 years now). I do have concerns about the over reaction to initial security configurations being over zealous, but that should be fairly easily mitigated with scripted installs and custom configurations. Read only Domain Controllers has some serious potential as well, even though the SAM db is still on the RODC at least it can't be modified and replicated. On that front they've fallen back to the NT4 hub and spoke model for DC replication and architecture. Should be interesting at least.

SQL08 on the other hand.. I haven't read much but I honestly don't see value yet, especially given that so many are still barely into SQL05.

SharePoint and the associated apps systems is MS's answer to Lotus Domino. It's a PITA to setup and manage but it's well ahead of the previous versions for security and scalability. We're using it in a distributed enterprise at a small scale now and it's got a ton of benefit. Just have to re-engineer my current deployment to be more scalable and user friendly.

Exchange 07, seriously mixed feelings on that. But, for a large enterprise, in conjunction with MOSS07 (SharePoint) it has a interesting potential. Finally MS caught on to why Domino based enterprises haven't been willing to switch.

Open source is a nice idea, but lacks wide private sector acceptance for wide scale and true Enterprise scaled use. Wrap that up with the reality behind having to re-train the user population for any type of open source desktop, retrain IT staff to implement and support the solutions and you see where the battle is lost. Sure there are niche' solutions provided via open source, but the segment remains small. Open source faces the same fundamental failures that Apple and their solutions do.. lack of home use customer base due to a broad lack of understanding and in the case of Apple, costs exceeding the Win-Tel platform.


So who ever gets out to the MS Dog and Pony show, make sure and let us know how it went.

[Ridge]

See, I really DID think this was multiple sclerosis