Microsoft’s CloudPro Twitter Hour

As I posted last week, on Friday, Microsoft has an hour long twitter conversation around the cloud. The basic idea was that Microsoft and a few MVPs (I was one) would hang out on Twitter, and answer questions around the cloud and the cloud technologies. The hour came and went – and it was an interesting experiment, which I hope Microsoft will continue with. I lost count of the number of tweets but it was around 150 for the hour. The questions came from a range of sources. I do have the source data (well everything I captured and want to make a CSV file from it – give me a bit of time to write the PowerShell scripts to do it .

As I read through my notes, the following items were discussed:

1. What is the cloud and what are the economics of the cloud and what’s there and not there. The answers were predictable – some definitions of what the cloud was (and the need for public cloud vs. private cloud). Lower cost was seen a key driver if not the key driver.
2. Security in the cloud - both in general and with respect to US Patriot act. The architecture provides good provision against most risks and there is an SLA with financial penalties. And Simon May provided a great link to an article around hosted data and exposure to the Patriot act (see http://bit.ly/fj5BbE). It goes some ways to addressing the concerns.
3. Office 365 - now that it's in more public beta, there's more interest for sure. The questions looked at what features were there and a couple of things learned so far (e.g. no PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint Online or Lync Online!).
4. Training and the Future of the IT Pro. It’s clear, to me at least, that the IT Pro does not go away in this drive to the cloud. There continues to be work to be done to facilitate the cloud – IT Pros do not have to worry too much just yet. As for training, well this needs to evolve and training providers need to evolve too.

I understand from talking to the organisers that another event like this is being planned. What did you think? Comments please!

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Cloud,CloudPro,#CloudPro,Lync Online,Exchange Online,SharepointOnline Office 365

IT Pro Cloud Hour–Friday 15 April

The cloud, and all it’s variations, is one of the more fundamental paradigm shifts of modern times, at least as far as IT id concerned – perhaps as fundamental as the arrival of the Internet itself. As a way of advancing IT Pro’s understanding of the cloud, Microsoft is running an interesting event this coming Friday, April 15 from 12:00 to 13:00 (local time): IT Pro Cloud Question hour. This hour will be conducted on line via Twitter.

The way this is meant to work is pretty simple: to ask any Cloud related question, post your question to twitter and add the hash tag #cloudpro to your tween. Alternatively, you can text your question from you phone – text to 80809 or even send the question by mail to ukitpro@microsoft.com. During the hour, a team of Microsoft and MVPs will be watching the questions and tweeting answers. Watch for @AskTechNetUK where at least some of the answers are going to come from (I suspect these will be MS staff) – others like me will be posting under our own twitter IDs, but still using the #Cloudpro hash tag.

For more information on this event and to learn more about the cloud, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/gg710912.

Technorati Tags: Cloud,Twitter,#CloudPro