Category Archives: Education

Back from the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2017

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I just got back from a very successful Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany, 2017 edition. I took some vacation days to go educate myself with the help of my peers and the excellent speakers. The people have a wealth of expertise and experience in real world solutions that address the challenges we face today. All this without marketing or too ego. Just pure knowledge sharing about the facts and realties. Take a look here at the wealth of industry experts that were attending and presenting.

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The attendees were amongst the better educated customers & partners you encounter in the field. This is great as this gives everybody good feedback and insight in the challenges we all face. I’d say there are definitely very pragmatic patterns in how businesses deal with the evolving cloud & datacenter ecosystem successfully. Cyber security is also part of that. I’m happy to see the insights shared with us by an expert lite Tudor Damian reminding us to always keep security in mind and showing us and that Microsoft is indeed making serious efforts to protect us in an IT environment they approach with the assumption that Ii t is compromised.

I did my part for the conference with a session on Failover Clustering Evolved (in Windows Server 2016) as well as with a presentation called SMB Direct – The Secret Decoder Ring for the Hyper-V Community day event the day before the conference. That was also awesome and I had a great response to the session and interest in our experiences with RDMA. Oh yes, I also got some hands on training in filming to the delight of my fellow MVPs Winking smile.

If it’s up to me, I’ll be back in 2018!

Heading to the MVP Global Summit 2016

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It’s that time of the year where I’ll be making my way to Redmond (Washington, USA) to attend the MVP Global Summit 2016.

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It’s going to be and interesting one as after 2 years of Technical previews Windows Server 2016 went RTM  last September and is generally available. Our hardware partners are selected for best value and that means early and good support for new releases of Windows. Dell, Emulex, Intel and Mellanox delivered and that means we can already share our first real life experiences around the finished product with Microsoft.

We’ll also be talking shop about future directions and provide feedback on what we want to see happen and need. Next to Windows (which is so much more than “just” an operating system nowadays) we have a stake in SQL Server  2016 and Azure. Azure in all it’s offerings, SAAS, PAAS, IAAS – both public and hybrid use cases.

To do so we need to get there first so we’ll hop on a Boeing (hey I’m flying to Washington, kind has to be a Boeing right?) for long haul a flight to Redmond and go talk shop all week long from early dawn at breakfast to night caps in downtown Bellevue with friends and colleagues.

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Next to pure technology we also talk about business challenges and opportunities. The best positioned organizations are the ones where the technical people have taken and been given the opportunity to lead. I know it’s scary for some managers that feel threatened by this but when the techies lead the IT side of the business the rest can can focus on the business and avoid the costly mistakes that I see so many make today. Most organizations have failed at getting business people up to speed on IT. I’ve seen a lot of successful organizations let technical people show how the business how to thrive in a mobile and cloud first world. It just makes sense to let your experienced and talented technical people take the lead. Don’t think for one second that they’re just janitors mopping the floor in an outdated server room when not busy handling the “other” facilities. Do that and you will fail painfully. Put away your politics, fears, long term gigantic projects and learn to let fast, inexpensive, simple, small technology solution rule in a federated world to maximize time to market, results and flexibility. If you don’t let go of centralized, long term, overly complex technology projects and old school enterprise solutions – where everything is held by back by everything else – you’ll fail, lose vast amounts of money and time. Don’t!

Heading Home after Ignite 2016

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While traveling back home here are some musings on Microsoft Ignite 2016. I’m not going to regurgitate all the news and announcements here.

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There were many and they were divers. Azure Identity, Security, storage, management, Windows Server 2016, Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, Storage Replica … are all offering a wide variety of new capabilities and options. It’s impressive now and it will be even more impressive in the future. When I connect the dots and look at the opportunities my take on what the future roadmap can and might be visualizes in front of my eyes. That’s the value I can add to an organization that’s committed to its future and realizes it needs to leverage IT to it’s fullest potential. That means you cannot treat IT as a facility because we build it on commodity products. Every success is build on creative and well directed use of the components and the capabilities. This requires a lot more than lip service or merely covering up bad choices and political ambitions with a thin layer of “big principles”. The key to success is speed, agility, insight in a world where mobile and cloud offer tremendous new opportunities. Large, long term, centralized projects have their place but sticking to them by default in the wrong place, the wrong way and manner will lead to failure in a 24/7/365 mobile world where federation, collaboration across boundaries are paramount. The small, cost effective and efficient projects delivering real value with a purpose will make giants, bot in government and the private sectors stumble and even fall.

We have so much opportunity here that many cannot see the trees through the forest anymore. This will lead to many failed projects, ambitions and organizations in combination with a waste of time and money. That’s were we can make the difference.

As an attendee and MVP I was very happy to be able to attend in order to calibrate my compass and correct course. In good tradition I signed the billboard for attending MVPs at Ignite 2016  I’m already looking forward to heading back to Redmond for the MVP Global Summit and continue the discussion at the Microsoft Head Quarters.

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To me, the Ignite 2016 edition was one of intensive networking with Microsoft experts and management. This extended to 3rd party vendors and partners of Microsoft. This, in combination with the discussions with my peers  to discover their views and insights have given me a very up to date view on where we are at and where things are going. That’s the value I’m taking back home to work with and help people reach their full potential. That’s not an easy task as many today are or feel at least a bit out of balance to completely lost. Technologists are the one to step up all the way to the board level and steer their organizations towards a successful future.  Many companies are not ready for this and some management feels threatened by this. There’s basically no need for that fear as we are technologists, not politicians. We solve problems, we don’t create them. We drive companies towards success, if you let us.

E2EVC 2016 Dublin

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So after 4 days in London with the Veeam Vanguards I’m hopping over the Irish sea tonight towards Dublin to attend and present at the Experts 2 Experts Virtualization Conference (E2EVC) 2016  Dublin.

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I’ll be presenting on High Availability with Windows Server 2016 Failover Clustering and Hyper-V. These are supported and enhanced by other new or improved capabilities in Windows Server 2016. So there will be a lot to take in. I’ll be around to talk shop before and after the session so if you want to chat, find me around the conference.

E2EVC a boutique community driven conference. It’s small scale and independence makes it a very direct experience in both realism and hard core real world experience in the virtualization ecosystem and related technologies. We encourage anyone to attend and present. No “prima donnas”  – you can speak when you want to as long as you’re willing to do so and share knowledge and insights.  Give it a shot!  I hope to see you there