TechEd Barcelona - Keynote Announcements

Today is the first day of TechEd-IT Form and as usual,there's a keynote. And as usual, there were loads of demos (most worked). And in a change form last year, the session finished on time!

Microsoft used the keynote to make a number of key product announcements. These include:

Windows Server 2008

• Hypervisor naming. Viridian was the code name - now it's officially named Microsoft  Hyper-V. A stand alone server for virtulisation was also announced as Hyper-V Server.
• Dates for release of WS08 are still "WS08 in Q1 2008 with Hyper-V 180 days later!
• MS is to release 8 Ws08 SKUs. Three of these come with Hyper-v built in, five don't. "This gives users lots of choice" said the MS person! The three SKUs with Hyper-V are : Enterprise, Standard Edition, Data Centre edition. The five that ship without Hyper-V: Standard Edition Without Hyper-V, Enterprise Edition without Hyper-V, DC without Hyper-V, Web, and Itanium Edition.
• Pricing and licensing was also released. Costs are roughly 1 more than for Windows Server 2003! The difference in cost between the Hyper-V and non-Hyper-V systems is US$28!
• At RTM, the Hyper-V beta bits will ship in the box. Hype-V RTM bits then ship 6 months later via Windows Update
• Virtulisation Validation program - helps to ensure virtulisation works

System Center

• General Availability  of 3 products: SC Configuration Manager 2007 (aka SMS), SC Virtual Machine Manager and SC Data Protection Manager 2007 (joined  by SC Operations Manager released earlier this year).
• New System Center Suite licence (licensed per physical server, manage unlimited guests)
• System Center Alliance - a community effort to promote System Center
• VM Manager (a future version) will also support both Hyper-V VMs and VMware VMs! This means you can manage ESX servers from Windows.

SQL

• Release to be in 2nd quarter of 2008.
• New SQL Server CTP - November CTP. This is to be the penultimate CTP prior to release.

Vista

• Formal announcement of the beta of next release of application virtulisation approach (the stuff bought in from Softtricity and available only to volume license customers). Version 4.5 beta should be up on Connect.
• Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Package fastest moving SA product ever - but not available outside SA. MS still bullish on SA and MDOP.

PowerShell

• CTP for Version 2 is now available.

IIS6

• FastCGI extension for IIS 6 - makes PHP run even better.

Centro

• Centro was announced as "Windows Essentials Business Server 2008". Centro won't ship till end of 2008.

Community Efforts

• A set of announcements around MSDN and TechNet - more content, more communities, etc. New site: "TechNet Edge" (http://edge.technet.com).

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, TechEd, IT Forum, WS08, Virdian