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Live from PDC 2008: Day 1

Oct. 27, 2008 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Latest updates are on the top….

10/27/2008 5:48 PM – OK, they’re kicking us out of the press room soon. I’ve been working all day, so check back at 9:00 am PT tomorrow for some serious updates. Should be pretty decent. Up tonight: Another party on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel and then dinner with friends.

10/27/2008 2:46 PM – I just had a grueling Windows Azure briefing. I have to say, I’m having a hard time groking this. Part of the problem si that the announcement is only half-done: There will be more tomorrow around the Live Services. Part of the reason is that its just APIs they’re talking about now. More specifics later, I guess.

10/27/2008 12:46 PM – OK, I’ve actually been reasonably productive. Next up: A Cloud Computing Reviewers Briefing (90 minutes!!!) and then a meeting with the Oslo/Office folks.

10/27/2008 11:12 AM – Working on some articles that will post tomorrow. There’s a lot I can’t say yet.

10/27/2008 10:17 AM – So the keynote is over and … blech. Really unimpressive. Not the technology or the platform, but the presentation of it. Seriously, guys. I can’t say this enough: Pay attention to how Apple introduces things. Even their platform announcements are interesting. Bob Muglia and David Thompson were the most engaging. But most of it was pretty sad. And the Bluehoo thing. Cripes.

10/27/2008 10:03 AM – Random press room shot…

And yes, that’s Raf violating my privacy.  :)

10/27/2008 9:15 AM – Make sure you’re following the keynote live blog!

10/27/2008 8:09 AM – Oh, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’ve been posting the occasional photo there as well.

10/27/2008 8:09 AM - Here’s a very short QIK video Tom shot yesterday at the, uh, event.

10/27/2008 7:38:24 AM – We're in the press room. I think Rafael, Tom, and I and a few others will be live blogging from here instead of going into the main hall. (Update: Tom couldn’t resist. He’s heading over to keynote hall.)

10/27/2008 6:16:44 AM – And PDC is finally upon us. I'm eager to talk about what we did yesterday, but that will have to wait a day or so for confidentiality reasons. In the meantime, here's a quickie WinInfo news story about the show starting.

PDC 2008: Here Comes Windows 7 ... And Windows Server 2008 R2 ... And Windows Cloud OS ...

We are heading into the LACC for the morning keynote in a just a bit. Note that the PDC 2008 live blog—with Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren, Long Zheng, and yours truly--should be up and running for the keynote (8:30 am to 11:00 am). Today’s keynote, disappointingly, deals not with Windows 7, but with Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Cloud OS.

More when we get to the convention center….

Discuss this Article 17

bettieblu
on Oct 27, 2008
2008 R2 announced 8 months after 2008 ships? I hope there is a free upgrade. If not I bet most places will wait unless they got to have Hyper V.
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
"I hope there is a free upgrade." It's included in Software Assurance. Um....you did buy that didn't you?
bettieblu
on Oct 27, 2008
Lol, my employer has an Enterprise agreement. We are not deploying 2008 yet anyhow, probably next year and late in that year at that. So we probably will deploy R2 if its out then. I just finished my 2008 training, its a great OS that is for sure. Hyper V is huge improvement over VS and very close to VMware but doubtful my employer will be moving off of VMware anytime soon as we have thousands of Windows servers on VMware now.
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
"We are not deploying 2008 yet anyhow, probably next year and late in that year at that. So we probably will deploy R2 if its out then." Most "R2" customers are new customers, or SA customers that get it for free, and can afford the deployment support costs. Many customers don't pay the extra money for R2 version upgrades if they have to pay full upgrade price, knowing that the next major version upgrade will be less than 2 years after that. "doubtful my employer will be moving off of VMware anytime soon as we have thousands of Windows servers on VMware now" It's usually more economical to look at the competition when your support agreements are due to expire, or when you're buying new hardware. Don't forget that SCVMM will allow you to manage both VMware and Hyper-V VM's though - it even offers some integration with VMware Infrastructure management consoles. The cost is pretty low on it too. If you already use SCCM, you can use it for the actual OS deployment, and then deploy and manage VM's from SCVMM.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
Azure Services Platform! http://www.microsoft.com/azure/register.mspx
Delmont
on Oct 27, 2008
Waethron, Yes received your message. Will reply later today. Thanks!!
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
Well, huge chunks of the computing world just changed.
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
I look at this, and the one thing that bugs me is this: All the previous talk about virtualization platforms, and today it just got a big kick in nads.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
Wae Not really. The key point is the seamless range from local to virtualized to global and the ability to mix and match as makes sense.
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
"The key point is the seamless range from local to virtualized to global and the ability to mix and match as makes sense." ....and people say Windows client is bloated and offers too much choice. I think the same people that work in IT would say the same about Microsoft's business offerings now. This might be alright for enterprises, but a lot of the cloud computing stuff faces a big challenge: SMB's. Small businesses in particular, have been one of less likely customer segments to allow data to be hosted online. As far as Paul is concerned, SBS should be hosted now. Unfortunately Paul, that's just not possible now, as SBS is designed to run local DHCP and DNS services, as well as offering Active Directory domain authentication. That's well beyond the capability of the currently-shipping SBS products. Managed services for SBS are the key marketing message from Microsoft, and none of that has any mention of hosted SBS servers. SBS also doesn't play nice in a pre-existing AD system, so the kind of company that would need to host SBS would be one that has a) a hard line into every customer's business, and b) would have dedicated internet connections for each SBS server that they host. That's a bit much. You can host SharePoint and Exchange online, but it doesn't address the issue of workstation security that's managed by a local SBS platform.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
It's interesting to note that the BlueHoo mobile app that was demoed at the Keynote runs on (from their site) Nokia, Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG, HTC, Palm Treo, Windows Mobile, Java Phones, Symbian but not on iPhone. The company that makes it is asking people to help them lobby Apple.
bettieblu
on Oct 27, 2008
Last year I set through a MS hosting presentation from MS at a MS office (St. Louis) that was presented to SMB implementers. There was about 100 people the from various groups that sold and supported SMB solutions. Almost all of them walked away thinking that hosted solutions from MS was going to cut into their business and none where really happy with it.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
FYI: registration for the Azure SDK is now live. So is the beta for Bluehoo.
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
"Almost all of them walked away thinking that hosted solutions from MS was going to cut into their business and none where really happy with it." Really? Geez, they don't pay attention to Microsoft Partner marketing then. Hosted services have always been a big part of it. They've been lobbying partners to offer hosted SharePoint, Exchange, and SQL services for years now. Likewise, they've always talked about offering managed services for the SMB market because many SMB's won't have their own on-site IT staff. That's a value-add. If you, as a partner, can offer a customer an added managed service contract that's based off a product like SBS, it's a recurring revenue stream for you. SBS makes it easy to set up a server, and configure monitoring via email logs and remote access for not only users, but for the IT team offering the managed services to manage their IT setup from a single, central console. Most of the stuff mentioned today doesn't exactly apply to the SMB market anyway. Local SBS and EBS servers do, at least for the foreseeable future. They are bridging that to cloud-computing somewhat with the Office Live tie-in in SBS 2008. This is just an internet extension to the already-present SharePoint intranet system already offered in SBS. It's not a big deal though. Microsoft still allows partners and IT developers to customize the SharePoint experience on SBS anyway, so having both an intranet SharePoint (customized or not), and an internet-based document workspace means that the customer ends up with a lot of overlap, *and it will cost them extra*. The key is that documents online don't need a conventional backup system, since that's managed by the host. Many SMB's won't care anyway - many won't want to host data online due to privacy issues. This might fly against what Paul would have happen, but it's the truth, and many companies won't trust online services to host critical documents. DRWAM: would you trust someone like Google to host your patients' medical records? How about your own?
Waethorn
on Oct 27, 2008
@bettie: If they think Microsoft is going to cut into their business, they should look at customizing their service to offer better value to the customer. Office Live Workspace is a good example of how to customize SharePoint, and it's a kick in the arse for partners to get on to customizing web services and applications instead of just offering a generic out-of-box hosted service.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
Waethorn, It does seem like a lot of Value Added Resellers really want to avoid adding value.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Oct 27, 2008
Paul, It does seem like today's announcements and briefings were done so that people could have a day to wrap their heads around the framework before dealing with tomorrow. Interesting times...

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