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Untitled-4 1 2/22/11 11:31 AM Foley: How Microsoft Measures Its Own Success

MARCH 2011 VOL. 17 NO. 3 REDMONDMAG.COM

Executive Exodus

Steve Ballmer is ﬁ rmly in control at Microsoft, but an alarming number of his top lieutenants have departed. What does that mean for the future of the company?

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Untitled-8 3 6/15/10 3:20 PM Untitled-4 1 1/10/11 10:26 AM Redmond The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT CommunityContentsMARCH 2011

REDMOND REPORT 9 The Long Road to ARM- Based Windows Servers Chipmakers are gearing up for Windows Servers based on the ARM low-power architecture, but ARM-based machines COVER STORY aren’t ready for prime time. 12 Top 10 Inﬂ uential Executive Exodus Microsoft Pundits Microsoft has famously lost—or ousted—eight top executives since 2008, Without these folks, we’d including luminaries Ray Ozzie and Jeff Raikes. The change of leadership be in the dark about the might have questionable long-term effects, but isn’t likely to change much goings-on at Redmond. in Redmond for the time being. TECHNET PRACTICAL APP Page 28 23 Delivering Intelligence with SharePoint Dashboards FEATURES Integrate data from disparate sources into 39 The 2011 Microsoft scorecards with rich data Product Roadmap visualization for interactivity Coming off one of the largest product and workfl ow automation. waves in its history, Microsoft has a fresh crop of wares in the pipeline this year. COLUMNS 6 Barney’s Rubble: Doug Barney Ask Doug 47 Keep the Lid on Social Networking Social media has opened a whole new can of worms for companies, just as they were getting e-mail under control. Despite the challenges, it’s possible to get social networking applications 50 Decision Maker: under control, too. Don Jones It’s Time to Invest in Your Team REVIEWS 54 Windows Insider: Product Reviews 19 Disk Defragmentation: Greg Shields 15 Cutting to the Core Lite Is Right The Security Mentality Core Confi gurator greatly Diskeeper 2010 comes with that Really Works eases the process of deploying plenty of bells and whistles, 56 Foley on Microsoft: Windows Server 2008 in a but it fails to get a few basic Mary Jo Foley Server Core environment. functions right. How Microsoft Measures Its Success

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 4 Redmondmag.com | 8 [email protected] | 55 Ad and Editorial Indexes

RAY OZZIE PHOTO BY JASON GROW/ BOB MUGLIA BY RICK DAHMS Redmondmag.com MARCH 2011

ADTmag.com Questions with ... Development Shops Lee Pender Redmond Executive Loosen Purse Strings Editor of Features Lee Pender discusses bright spot in the application development space: A recent survey by changes in the Aapplication lifecycle management solutions provider Serena Software Inc. Microsoft executive showed that dev shops are no longer as tightly focused on reducing costs. lineup, which he Michael Desmond writes: “When asked to identify top application develop- explores in this ment priorities, 61 percent of survey respondents included ‘Deliver applications month’s cover story, Lee Pender faster’ among their primary goals. By contrast, ‘Reduce app costs’ was identi- “‘Execudus’ in ﬁ ed by only half the respondents. The results mark a sharp shift in attitudes.” Redmond.” Read Pender’s Blog According to Desmond, Serena VP of Corporate and Community Marketing (Redmondmag.com/Pender0311) Adam Frankl said: “Over each of the last three years ... reducing application for more on his thoughts about development costs was by far the No. 1 priority. There has been such a focus on Microsoft and its leadership team. cost cutting these last three years.” Read more about the survey results and what they mean for IT pros. Which departed executive left the ADTmag.com/Desmond0311 biggest mark on Microsoft? I’d say Jeff Raikes. He built the MCPmag.com multibillion-dollar Offi ce franchise.

Watch out for Web Components Which Microsoft division could most benefi t from a shakeup in leadership? ecurity expert Jabulani Leff all is back with more information to help keep The divisions and their leaders keep Syour systems safe. He identifi es a new threat to Windows OSes, which changing, but I’d say that the targets Web components. entertainment division has already Leff all writes: “At issue is the way the Microsoft MIME-Hypertext Mark-up benefi ted the most. language protocol handler can allow attackers to construct malicious links posing as trusted HTML documents. Specifi cally, Redmond said the new vulner- Which Microsoft executive ability could ‘allow an attacker to cause a victim to run malicious scripts when departure most surprised you? visiting various Web sites, resulting in information disclosure.’” Bob Muglia, because Steve Ballmer Find out more about the Web components security advisory and the latest essentially fi red him. Confi cker worm news. MCPmag.com/Leff all0311 REDMONDMAG.COM RESOURCES What Are FindIT Codes? What we once called FindIT codes are now Resources Enter FindIT Code easy URLs. You’ll see these embedded >> Daily News News throughout Redmond so you can access any additional information quickly. Simply type >> E-Mail Newsletters Newsletters in Redmondmag.com/ followed by the FindIT >> Free PDFs and Webcasts TechLibrary code into your URL address fi eld. (Note that >> Subscribe/Renew Subscribe all URLs do not have any spaces, and they are >> Your Turn Editor Queries YourTurn not case-sensitive.)

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Untitled-13 1 2/2/11 4:11 PM Barney’sRubble by Doug Barney Redmond THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF THE MICROSOFT IT COMMUNITY

REDMONDMAG.COM

MARCH 2011 ■ VOL. 17 ■ NO. 3

Editorial Staff Editor in Chief Doug Barney Ask Doug Executive Editor, Features Lee Pender Editor at Large Jeff rey Schwartz Managing Editor Wendy Gonchar Associate Managing Editor Katrina Carrasco

’m not an IT person. I’m merely a passionate observer. Contributing Editors Mary Jo Foley Don Jones Fortunately, Redmond readers—who are real IT people— Greg Shields Art Staff overwhelm me with information. My expertise is directly Art Director Brad Zerbel I Senior Graphic Designer Alan Tao

derived from yours. That’s why I feel comfortable giving Online/Digital Media Online News Editor Kurt Mackie advice: I’m really just channeling your great knowledge. Executive Editor, New Media Michael Domingo Director, Online Media Becky Nagel Associate Web Editor Chris Paoli Here’s what I’ve gleaned from your sounds good, go for it. If not, shut the Site Administrator Shane Lee Designer Rodrigo Muñoz many letters and comments. old pie hole. Relax: The world isn’t going to get Down to Business: IT is not just a any better if you stress, nor will your bunch of wires, processors and lines of

job, or the economy, or your networks code. It’s perhaps the most important President Henry Allain and computers. Stress just makes aspect of your company’s business. Vice President, Publishing Matt Morollo things worse. You may not turn gray Here’s what to do. First, understand Vice President, Editorial Director Doug Barney Director, Marketing Michele Imgrund (though I seem to be going from dirty the business imperatives. This can be Online Marketing Director Tracy Cook blond to white), but you will as simple as just listening to be less happy, and pressure your business leaders—or, if

wreaks havoc on one’s health. that doesn’t work, go ahead President & Neal Vitale Be Strategic: I’m sure and ask. Chief Executive Offi cer Senior Vice President & Richard Vitale many of you feel like the Understand the business of Chief Financial Offi cer little Dutch boy with his IT. Most vendors have TCO Executive Vice President Michael J. Valenti

fi nger in the dike—one step and ROI case studies and Senior Vice President, Abraham M. Langer Audience Development & away from disaster. Not only worksheets. Go ahead and Digital Media Vice President, Finance & Christopher M. Coates is this stressful, but it’s a bad read them, then dismiss most Administration way to run your systems and of what you learned. These, Vice President, Erik A. Lindgren Information Technology & career. Rise above by driv- Doug Landers for the most part, are hope- Application Development Vice President, Carmel McDonagh ing strategic IT thinking lessly skewed. But you can Attendee Marketing Vice President, David F. Myers and planning. This may take some take their worksheet and redo it based Event Operations extra research on the side, but—trust upon your own assumptions and your me—it will also make your job far own environment. Or do your own Chairman of the Board Jeff rey S. Klein

more interesting. economic analysis. Reaching the Staff Get a license: Staff may be reached via e-mail, telephone, fax, or mail. Work Toward Success: I know plenty Vendors love to make A list of editors and contact information is also available of people that are happy with simple licensing as complex as possible. Like online at Redmondmag.com. E-mail: To e-mail any member of the staff , please use the jobs, but this no longer works in IT. lawyers, if you have no clue what soft- following form: [email protected] Framingham Offi ce (weekdays, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET) Things are moving too darn fast. If ware sales people are talking about, Telephone 508-875-6644; Fax 508-875-6633 you aren’t moving ahead, you’re falling you’re putty in their hands. But IT pros 600 Worcester Road, Suite 204, Framingham, MA 01702 Irvine Offi ce (weekdays, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. PT) behind. Part of staying ahead is knowing are used to complexity. Active Directory, Telephone 949-265-1520; Fax 949-265-1528 16261 Laguna Canyon Road, Suite 130, Irvine, CA 92618 the hottest, most strategic technologies. C++, routing tables, just keeping Corporate Offi ce (weekdays, 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. PT) Telephone 818-814-5200; Fax 818-734-1522 Just as important is how you carry Windows running—what could be 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311 The opinions expressed within the articles and other contents yourself. If you want to lead, drop the more intricate than that? So don’t fear herein do not necessarily express those of the publisher. attitude, roll up your sleeves and mentor licensing. Take control. You can save a rather than dictate. Act with class and whopping amount of cash, and making dignity. Sure, jokes are great. But those sales reps sweat is so dang fun. think in terms of how that joke would What’s your best advice? Tell me at come off if your boss said it. If it [email protected]. PHOTO FROM GETTY/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALAN TAO

6 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | Smarter technology for a Smarter Planet: What 3 million lines of code means to a piece of luggage. It means Amsterdam Airport Schiphol will be able to accurately and efficiently move 70 million pieces of luggage per year—20 million more bags per year than they used to. The airport’s automated baggage solution will allow Schiphol to increase their baggage handling capacity by 40%, so they can meet the growing demand placed on them as one of Europe’s largest transport hubs. This system is built on IBM Rational® and Tivoli® software and runs on Power Systems™. A smarter business is built on smarter software, systems and services.

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IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Power Systems, Rational, Tivoli, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2011.

Untitled-8 1 1/27/11 4:03 PM [email protected]

The Cloud Battle Rages On Six weeks ago, I was In our February cover story, “Clouds Collide,” Editor at Large skeptical of Google’s Jeffrey Schwartz explored the developing struggle between vision of cloud Microsoft and Google Inc. for cloud-computing market share and computing; with each passing week it looks mindshare. Redmond readers defend their favorite competitor. better to me. I’m one of the Cr-48 testers. [The Cr-48 is a test notebook

designed by Google for its Chrome OS pilot program.] I’ve the iMac; head off to the train and noticed signifi cant enhancements to Google Docs in the write a few more lines from the Droid while standing in line; there’s more past month. Regarding the adequacy of 100MB per month, I space on the train so out comes the iPad. It’s perfect integration. Save button? File system? I’ve forgotten used about 80MB of 3G data Jan. 6-30; My opinion is that it’s basically a why I ever needed that stuff. the rest was WiFi through home and browser in a box, which might sound Do I still use Windows? Yes. I ported public access points. simple, but I think a lot of organiza- a virtual machine through Remote I won’t prognosticate about businesses, tions will love having that non-personal Desktop Protocol to the iPad—but, but for personal use, I expect Verizon (nothing is stored on it, everything is really, I have staff that can deal with to offer Chrome OS notebooks later online) device that can be handed out converting legacy desktop documents this year at signifi cant discounts (when right, left and center to any staff. You’re to open cloud standards. I had to wait tied to a monthly data plan), just as it no longer tied to your personal laptop— for a staffer to start up their Windows does for cellular phones. you can pick up any notebook just like box the other day to get a fi le, and in During the time I’ve been testing the you’d do with a notepad or pen or that time I sent several e-mails, read Cr-48, I’ve applied Microsoft updates other productivity tool. Plus—because some news and reviewed a proposal. If and security patches to Windows XP it’s a simple device without internal Microsoft wants a chance in this new (always a ghastly process) and multiple memory—it’ll also be cheaper than generation of devices, the company must updates to Ubuntu 10.04, both on an anything we’re using at the moment. give up cornering the market on “Just Acer netbook, as well as OS X updates Anonymous wait, it’ll get going in a few minutes— on a desktop iMac. In contrast, updates Posted online and let me restart.” Velos to Chrome OS have been virtually New Mexico transparent, requiring no effort at all I have a Cr-48, too, as well as just on my part. There’s a lot to be said for about every other device out there. Maybe for some folks Google and the a platform that just works, and for What’s really impressive about Google cloud are the answers, but I’m not buying which backups are unnecessary. Six Apps is that I can jump from one into Google’s totally cloud world. Like weeks ago, I was skeptical of Google’s device to the next completely seam- Microsoft, we also believe in a hybrid vision of cloud computing; with each lessly: Start writing a Google doc on model, and will do business with ven- passing week it looks better to me. dors that produce revenue from sales Selden and service of products such as Apple, Atlanta, Ga. IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle—not Whaddya Think vendors who produce revenue from Send your rants and raves to ?! I’m also a Cr-48 user. I haven’t advertisements. In addition, if recent switched on the Verizon 3G because [email protected]. world events are any hint as to the reli- I’m using the wireless at work and at Please include your fi rst and ability of the Internet, we had better be last name, city and state. If we home. If you’re working a lot from sure we have real local resources. use it, you’ll be entered into a customer sites or whilst traveling, I Tom drawing for a Redmond T-shirt! guess you’d want the 3G. Posted online

8 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | RedmondReport The Long Road to ARM-Based Windows Servers Chipmakers are gearing up for Windows Servers based on the ARM low- power architecture, but ARM-based machines aren’t ready for prime time.

By Kurt Mackie some time to bear fruit. Products might forces, ecosystems, software availability, he future hasn’t arrived just yet. not appear until late 2012, given past design and programming diffi culties, At some point, ARM-based Microsoft OS development cycles. But if legacy software, and risks of a dramatic Tservers could be able to reduce ARM eventually will be good to go with shift in direction,” says Carl Claunch, power costs in the datacenter, helping the next Windows desktop OS, why vice president and distinguished ana- cloud services providers such as wouldn’t it work with the next-generation lyst at Gartner Inc. Microsoft, as well as enterprises that have Windows Server? It seems possible, Gartner expects to see some adoption their own private cloud infrastructures. because Microsoft desktop and server of these low-power servers, but only in However, this low-power ARM OSes now share the same code base. “special situations” where it makes architecture, currently used in many sense, he adds. Linux-based mobile devices such as Datacenter Claunch notes that simpler low- smartphones and netbooks, may be at Power Reduction power chips typically have slower least four years away from contesting Microsoft, in recent years, has become performance. Consequently, servers the x86-based Windows Server market. an “all-in” cloud services provider based on such chips would require That market is currently dominated by building out datacenters. From the software to be more parallel to make Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro very beginning of that effort, the up for that defi cit. “Looking from the Devices Inc. company has focused on reducing standpoint of energy effi ciency and Servers based on low-power system- datacenter server power consumption. greenness, if the software parallelism on-chip (SoC) architectures from ARM A 2007 “Commodity Datacenter is not a barrier, these [low-power Holdings exist today, mostly based on Design” presentation by James Hamilton, chips] can accomplish the same work the Linux OS. Some home servers run Linux on ARM-based processors. How- ARM-based processors traditionally haven’t played ever, speculation about such servers running Windows increased after a role in the Windows desktop PC market. Microsoft announced in early January that its next-generation Windows OS formerly an architect with the with less energy than mainstream will be designed to run on ARM chips. Microsoft Datacenter Futures team, approaches,” Claunch says. The Microsoft announcement at the estimated that “power is 40 percent of Chips are just a part of the whole Computer Electronics Show (CES) in [datacenter] costs.” Hamilton later server power equation, according to Las Vegas was about ARM-based PCs, jumped ship from Microsoft in January Martin Reynolds, vice president and not about servers. The CES demo of 2008, joining the Amazon Web fellow at Gartner. He notes that servers showed next-generation Windows Services team as vice president and dis- consume “a couple hundred watts” applications running on ARM-based tinguished engineer. without doing work, and that power laptops. Still, that announcement Intel and AMD have long-established consumption is largely unrelated to marked a big change from the partnerships with Microsoft on x86- the processor. entrenched x86 market. based server technologies, and both “Where people get confused is there ARM-based processors traditionally companies are currently working on is nothing about the ARM architecture haven’t played a role in the Windows their own low-power designs for the that says that it’s going to be signifi - desktop PC market. Instead, the Cam- next-generation Windows desktop OS. cantly more energy effi cient than the bridge, England-based licensor of SoC Those partnerships have worked very x86 architecture,” Reynolds says. architectures has a 13-year partnership well. Consequently, ARM likely will “Energy effi ciency is about the total with Microsoft on Windows Compact face some obstacles getting into the system design from the processor level Embedded OS for mobile devices. Windows Server market. on out. So, if Intel wants to build a Future ARM-based, Windows-next “The challenges to adoption of these 5-watt server processor, they can do it, PC implementations likely will take low-power alternatives include market and it will deliver a lot of performance

| Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 9 RedmondReport

in that footprint. If ARM were to with ARM CPUs seem to indicate a One criticism of ARM-based chips deliver a 5-watt server set of processors, higher performance per clock cycle for for servers is they currently are based they’d probably struggle to deliver the the ARM processor),” Fichera wrote in on 32-bit architectures. Even the same kind of performance as Intel has. a Jan. 17 Forrester blog post. future ARM Cortex A15 design will But all this pales in signifi cance when ARM’s latest design offering is the be 32 bit. Meanwhile, Microsoft is you add in the power cost of the Cortex A9, which vendors are packaging writing its software for 64-bit memory, support, I/O and the net- as dual-core chips running at up to machines (Windows Server 2008 was working that goes around it.” 1.2GHz—but it’s scalable to four cores the last Microsoft 32-bit server OS). Even Microsoft has noted that at 2GHz, Fichera explained. “It draws However, the situation may not neces- ARM faces challenges in the Windows approximately 2W, much less than any sarily be an unfavorable one for future Server market. single-core x86 CPU, and a multi-core ARM-based servers. “If ARM can show us enough value version should be able to execute any “We haven’t seen 32-bit that long,” over an x86 solution [in the server reasonable Web workload. Coupled Reynolds says. “Really, it’s been fi ve to market], we might consider that,” said with the promise of embedded graphics six years. One of the possibilities, if we Dileep Bhandarkar, a distinguished processing units (GPUs), the notion of were to go with smaller server cores, is engineer with Microsoft Global a server that consumes much less that we might well be able to go back Foundation Services, according to a power than even the lowest power x86 to 32-bit and use less memory.” Jan. 27 Computerworld article by begins to look attractive,” he wrote. Warren East, CEO of ARM, James Niccolai. ARM also unveiled its Cortex-A15 dismissed the 32-bit issue in a Q&A The benchmark for acceptance would MPCore design for mobile devices and with analysts during the fi rm’s fourth- be a dollar-per-watt improvement by a servers in September, which possibly quarter 2010 earnings announcement. He even suggested that ARM would If the software parallelism is not a barrier, these move to 64-bit server technology, “ possibly by 2015. [low-power chips] can accomplish the same work “There are certainly server applica- with less energy than mainstream approaches.” tions today for which 64-bit, or lack Carl Claunch, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Inc. of 64-bit is not a barrier, a 32-bit processor is perfectly adequate to address that in, typically, multi-core confi gu- factor of two at least, Bhandarkar could scale up to 16 cores. However, rations and blades with multiple added, or perhaps a factor of fi ve. the Cortex A15 “Eagle” likely won’t be multi-core chips on the blade,” East Bhandarkar reportedly said that Intel available until late 2012. said on Feb. 1, according to an ARM should build a 16-core version of its Gartner’s Reynolds notes that com- transcript. “That’s where we are Atom chip for future Windows Servers. panies such as Nvidia have boosted today. And out in 2015 then, we’re not He also acknowledged that AMD has a processing power by “using the ARM in the business of announcing our low-power chip design for servers processor to control accelerators.” He 64-bit products today, by the way, but called “Bobcat.” adds that “you’ll see that idea coming it’s logical to suppose that at some Servers already exist that use the out of Nvidia where they’re thinking stage in the future, ARM will extend Intel Atom chip, a low-power processor about using GPUs to do the bulk of its architecture in that direction and it typically found in small devices such the computing.” would certainly be helpful as and as netbooks. Santa Clara, Calif.-based when we have those sorts of products. SeaMicro claims that its SM10000 Clash with Intel and AMD? But right now we’re not ready to talk server uses “less than 2KW of power,” ARM-based servers may lead to an about those sorts of products and a according to the company’s Web site. industry shakeup of sorts. A November large chunk of the server market is The SM10000 server has a total of white paper from Clabby Analytics, available with the product roadmap 512 processors based on 1.6GHz Intel “Will ARM Servers Usurp Intel that we have.” Atom chips. Xeon?” suggested that the new ARM- In any case, it’s likely that Intel and However, Richard Fichera, vice presi- based processors for servers might use AMD won’t stand still to see their dent and principal analyst at Forrester 20 percent of the power consumed by dominant x86-based server market Research Inc., questions whether the Intel Xeon chips while costing half the chipped away by upcoming ARM- Intel Atom chips can compete. “It price. The authors of the white paper based server offerings, should that looks like a dual-core ARM CPU at also confi rmed IBM’s interest in “the come to pass. 1.2GHz should outperform a single- concept of ARM servers,” although core Atom (the few benchmarks that they stressed that IBM hasn’t make Kurt Mackie is the online news editor for exist comparing low-end x86 CPUs any commitments. the 1105 Enterprise Computing Group.

10 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | Smarter technology for a Smarter Planet: What 99.9% system uptime means to a kilo of gold. It means that the futures contract for that gold can trade instantly and more securely. The Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX) has maintained their complex network of worldwide members for four years without a single security breach due to malware, and without any unplanned downtime. The DGCX worked with IBM Security Solutions to help implement an intrusion prevention system that builds security into every aspect of their online trading services and proactively adapts to ever-evolving threats. A smarter business is built on smarter software, systems and services.

Let’s build a smarter planet. ibm.com/exchange

A data visualization of the settlement prices for gold, silver and other commodities from March 1 to September 1, 2010.

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2010.

Untitled-4 1 12/2/10 11:28 AM RedmondReport

10 By Lee Pender and Jeff rey Schwartz Top 10 Inﬂ uential Microsoft Pundits Without these folks, we’d be in the dark about the goings-on at Redmond.

1. Mary Jo Foley: The Redmond mag- for a couple of years now, but he takes on the enterprise software mar- azine columnist once penned a column hasn’t lost any of his credibility or ket as a whole. on Microsoft called The Evil Empire. infl uence. This super-sleuth journalist Over the years, her tone has softened a in Redmond’s backyard is as impor- 8. Matt Rosoff: An analyst at Direc- bit, but her observa- tant as ever to the Microsoft universe. tions on Microsoft for 10 years, Rosoff tions about He’s also a solid pundit, with worth- now plies his trade on a more industry- Microsoft haven’t. while opinions on happenings in the wide basis at Silicon Valley Ridiculously con- Pacifi c Northwest. Insider, but his Microsoft nected in Redmond, knowledge remains second she’s still the go-to 5. Stephen Chapman: One of the to none. Rosoff is pro- person for Microsoft fi rst sources to break the leaked plans vocative without going news and analysis. for Windows 8, Chapman over the top. He’s not serves up Microsoft news, afraid to take on Microsoft leadership 2. Ed Bott: Often the source of analysis and love on his in the bluntest of terms. Microsoft news before it comes out of MSFTkitchen.com Seattle, Bott is as familiar with Microsoft enthusiast blog. 9. Sarah Friar: Don’t recognize her Microsoft as anybody writing today. Well-connected and highly name? She’s the infl uential Goldman His personal blog at edbott.com/weblog technical, Chapman is a friend to both Sachs analyst who recently lowered the Microsoft stock rating and criticized Always connected and quick with a take on what’s the company’s strategy, happening in Redmond, Fried is a must-read for particularly its cloud Microsoft watchers. efforts. Her take wasn’t exactly fresh, but her words can move markets. is full of expert advice about working the Microsoft IT professional and Microsoft—and its partners and with Windows and PCs, and is a great those who enjoy the gossip coming out customers—have no choice but to pay resource for IT professionals. of Redmond. attention to someone who has so much infl uence over the company’s stagnant 3. Mike Cherry: The whole team at 6. Ina Fried: Always stock price. Directions on Microsoft is excellent, connected and quick and Cherry sits right on top of this with a take on what’s 10. Mini-Microsoft Blog (Who delicious sundae of Microsoft analysis. happening in da’Punk): The gold standard among Straightforward and visionary, Cherry’s Redmond, Fried is a internal corporate bloggers, we don’t words carry weight. His expertise must-read for know who Who da’Punk is or why he ranges from the technical to the busi- Microsoft watchers. (or she?) identifi es himself with such ness side of Microsoft. A pundit with Her commentary is insightful while odd punctuation, but the Mini- uncanny accuracy, his predictions are also packed with new information, a Microsoft blog has been the internal some of the few in the industry actu- rare combination among bloggers. conscience of Redmond for years. Who ally worth noting. da’Punk’s stance on making Microsoft 7. Ray Wang: This analyst is not just leaner and more fl exible shouldn’t fall 4. Todd Bishop: The former a great guy—he’s also a Twitter on deaf ears in Redmond. reporter for the Seattle Post- monster, tweeting sometimes hun- Intelligencer has been doing his dreds of times a day. He’s an expert Lee Pender is features editor, and Jeffrey own thing at Techfl ash.com on Microsoft and also offers great Schwartz is editor at large for Redmond.

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Untitled-4 1 12/9/10 3:33 PM Untitled-1 1 9/9/10 10:20 AM ProductReview

Cutting to the Core Core Conﬁ gurator greatly eases the process of deploying Windows Server 2008 in a Server Core environment.

By Brien M. Posey n the 15-plus years I’ve been writing Core Confi gurator 2.0 (x64) about technology, I don’t think I’ve Price: Free download Iever written a full-blown software coreconfi g.codeplex.com review about a freeware product. I’ve always felt that the whole purpose of a product review is to take a product for a test-drive and give my honest opinion so those who read the review know what to expect before they spend any money. In this article, however, I’m breaking my own rule and reviewing a freeware utility called Core Confi gurator. Why am I doing this? Every once in a while, I stumble onto something so useful that I want to share it with the world. While working on a recent project, I found just such a utility. Core Confi gurator is designed to make it easier to deploy Windows Server 2008 (with Core Confi gurator Figure 1. Core Confi gurator requires NetFX-ServerCore and Windows PowerShell. 1.1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (with Core Confi gurator 2.0) in a product key, activate the server and based on Core Confi gurator 2.0, which Server Core confi guration. If you’ve assign the server an IP address. is currently available for download at ever performed a Server Core deploy- Because a Server Core deployment coreconfi g.codeplex.com. ment, you know the initial installation lacks a GUI, each of these tasks must be What’s so complicated about that? process is no different than what you’d performed from the command line, and Well, even though this is version 2.0, use for a more traditional Windows this can be tedious. Core Confi gurator, there have been at least three major Server deployment. After the deploy- which was developed by Guy Teverovsky releases of Core Confi gurator. Fur- ment process completes, however, of CodePlex, is designed to make the thermore, the various versions have there are a number of tasks you must initial confi guration process easier by specifi c requirements. Version 2.0, for perform before the server will be allowing the confi guration to be per- example, only works with the 64-bit usable. For example, you must enter a formed through a GUI. version of Windows Server 2008 R2. It So, how is this possible? Well, I’ll let won’t run on Windows Server 2008. you in on a little secret: Technically RedmondRating speaking, a Server Core deployment still The Installation Process Installation: 25% 10.0 uses a GUI. Sure, the Start Menu is I’ve deployed and used Server Core Features: 25% 10.0 gone, as are all of the desktop icons, but deployments before, but I’d never Ease of use: 25% 10.0 it’s still possible to run graphical applica- installed a third-party application in a tions within a Server Core environment. Server Core environment. My primary Administration: 25% 10.0 concern with doing so was actually Documentation: 0% N/A Acquiring getting the installation fi les to the Overall: 10.0 Core Confi gurator server on which they’d be installed.

Key: One thing that can be confusing about Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, 1: Virtually inoperable or nonexistent Core Confi gurator is making sure you but most of the real-world Server Core 5: Average, performs adequately 10: Exceptional have the correct version. This review is deployments I’ve seen are running in

| Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 15 ProductReview

virtualized environments. Organiza- Confi gurator couldn’t run because server to a domain controller. Renaming tions have found that Server Core NetFX-ServerCore and Windows my server and joining it to a domain deployments consume fewer resources PowerShell were both missing (see proved to be a simple endeavor, and I felt than their GUI-based counterparts, so Figure 1, p. 15). But I clicked Yes to as though I was working within a using core servers in virtualized continue, and the utility automatically Microsoft interface. environments—where resource con- installed the missing components. sumption really counts—makes sense. Once the required components were Defending The problem is that a brand-new in place, the software loaded without Core Confi gurator Server Core deployment can’t access any problems. My overall opinion is that this is a the network at fi rst. One of the things The fi rst thing I decided to do on my must-have utility—and something Core Confi gurator is designed to do is test-drive was go into the “License set- Microsoft should’ve created in the fi rst to help initially confi gure the network tings” section and enter a product key place. I realize some purists will say settings. Therefore, it wouldn’t make to activate the server. The process this utility defeats the purpose of sense to manually confi gure the server worked fl awlessly. having a Server Core deployment, but I just to access the Core Confi gurator Next, I needed to provide my server disagree for several reasons: installation fi les from a network share. with an IP address. I clicked the “Net- 1. Nobody implements a Server Core If you know how to do that, then you work settings” button, which took me deployment simply for the thrill of don’t even need Core Confi gurator. to the Network Menu. The menu (see confi guring the server from the command prompt. IT pros do it for the sake of resource conservation and improved server security. Core Confi gurator doesn’t actually install on the server and therefore doesn’t undermine any of the benefi ts offered by a Server Core deployment. 2. Even though a core server doesn’t include management tools of its own, it’s common practice to remotely manage a core server using the GUI tools on another machine. 3. The purpose of Core Confi gurator is to help admins get a new server up and running quickly. It’s not a GUI replacement that can be used for server management once the initial confi gura- Figure 2. Core Confi gurator allows you to confi gure several diff erent network settings. tion has been completed. The Core Confi gurator DVD didn’t Another problem is that many Figure 2) provides several different include any documentation, and I virtualization platforms—including networking options beyond just being couldn’t fi nd any documentation on Microsoft Hyper-V—don’t allow guest able to assign an IP address. I was the CodePlex Web site. However, I machines to access USB-based storage impressed that the utility contained a don’t think any documentation is nec- devices. Imagine my delight when I mechanism for iSCSI confi guration— essary. Anyone who knows how to set went to download Core Confi gurator this is something that many admins up a GUI-based Windows Server 2008 and discovered the download fi le was a will appreciate. Assigning an IP R2 deployment will have no trouble DVD image (ISO) fi le. address proved to be a simple process, using Core Confi gurator. In fact, many and I felt as if I was working within the of the confi guration screens are nearly Using Core Confi gurator native Windows GUI. identical to the dialog boxes provided I found Core Confi gurator to be quite When I fi nished, I decided to rename by Microsoft in the GUI version of intuitive. The DVD only contains one my server and join it to a domain. For Windows Server. fi le that’s not a Windows PowerShell that, I went into the Computer Settings script (Start_Coreconfi g.wsf), and this is section. This section allows you to Brien Posey, MVP, is a freelance technical the fi le that you run to launch the utility. change a computer’s name and domain, author with thousands of articles and The fi rst time I ran it, I received an but you can also do other things, such as dozens of books to his credit. Visit Posey’s error message that indicated Core install roles and features or promote the Web site at brienposey.com.

16 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | The new industry standard.

Up until now, many companies have settled for x86 performance with the mistaken belief that more power equals more money. That equation has changed. Today, a comparable workload on IBM Power® 730 Express systems can be as much as 37% less expensive than on HP ProLiant DL380 G7 systems.1 And we haven’t compromised performance to reach that price point. Power Systems™ are designed to enable you to optimize hundreds of workloads on a single system, drive up to 90% utilization and reduce energy costs by up to 80% when consolidating servers. Can systems be built to do more for less? On a smarter planet they can. ibm.com/power7

Smarter systems for a Smarter Planet.

1. Comparison based on performance and virtualization advantage of two IBM Power 730 Express systems with equivalent throughput of ﬁ ve virtualized HP ProLiant DL380 G7 systems and takes into account the cost of the systems, operating system, virtualization and middleware software and software support for 3 years. Comparison is based on performance and utilization characteristics in a virtualized environment. Actual performance, system and software savings and environmental cost savings will vary depending on client actual implementation. Contact IBM to see what we can do for you. For more information, visit www.ibm.com/ power7/claims. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Power, Power Systems, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2011.

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Untitled-1 1 2/10/11 3:40 PM ProductReview

Disk Defragmentation: Lite Is Right Diskeeper 2010 comes with plenty of bells and whistles, but it fails to get a few basic functions right.

By Stuart Fordham iskeeper Lite has always been Diskeeper 10 Professional Edition one of my go-to software Price: Home Edition $39.95; Professional Edition $59.95 Dproducts for two reasons: It’s Diskeeper Corp. | 818-771-1600 | diskeeper.com free and it works. I’ve never needed to pay for the full version, because the contiguously, runs in the background jumps anywhere between 16 and about free version has always performed so as to not gobble up system resources, 1,500 as I watch it. brilliantly. I was surprised, then, to see speeds up fi le access and defragments that the pay version has progressed so large volumes (more than 20TB). It all Get Down to far, partly because I’d used the Lite sounds impressive on paper. But is it, Defragmenting version for about eight years and partly like razors, all just clever marketing? Performing a defragment is still as because it seemed diffi cult to improve Anyone who’s worked with Windows easy as it was with prior versions of an application that exists just to tidy up 95 or Windows 98 knows the built-in Diskeeper: Just right-click the volume a hard drive. defrag tool is pretty useless. It restarts and choose Defragment. (The func- Making something that has a singu- every time the system performs a disk tion position as eighth on the menu lar purpose sound new and inventive write (usually at about the 10 percent is testament to the priority Diskeeper seems akin to creating razor-blade commercials: One more blade makes all the difference, four blades are no Anyone who’s worked with Windows 95 or good, it’s all about the fi ve blades, and Windows 98 knows the built-in defrag tool is on and on. pretty useless. The Product Diskeeper 2010 comes in no less than mark). In later editions of Windows, places on other aspects of the pro- seven different varieties: Home, Home Microsoft improved the defrag tool gram.) Defragmentation is fast. Using Server, Professional, Pro Premier, considerably—until Windows Vista, the tabs at the top of the window, you Server, Enterprise and Administrator. when the tool nosedived again. What’s can switch between the File Structure The product literature now boasts interesting is that the defrag tool sud- and File Performance views. Or you technologies such as “IntelliWrite,” denly improved for Windows 2000 and can read the Job Report, which tells “InvisiTasking,” “I-FAAST” and Windows XP because Microsoft based you how many fragments you have, “Titan Defrag Engine,” which are it on a version of Diskeeper. access times for the volume, the vol- basically tools that ensure the software Overwhelmed with the number of ume’s health and the number of fi les does a few key tasks: writes data versions, I opted for Diskeeper 2010 with performance loss. Professional for this review. The IntelliWrite is enabled for all drives. InstallShield-driven install lasts just a The display says that the tool has RedmondRating few minutes, and then the interface improved read and write times by 47 Installation: 20% 7.0 appears with a list of logical drives at percent on my L: drive (which holds Features: 20% 8.0 the top, followed by a dashboard. The my OS). But the volume health and Ease of use: 20% 6.0 dashboard looks impressive. It tells recommendations panel shows a big me that Diskeeper has improved read red warning sign that the volume is Administration: 20% 6.0 and write access on drive C: by 35 heavily fragmented and is in a “critical Documentation: 20% 8.0 percent and that IntelliWrite has pre- state.” Before I can begin to fi x my Overall: 7.0 vented 1,568 fragments since it was Windows 7 volume, the software

Key: installed. A graph shows me that the fi nishes defragmenting the D: drive, 1: Virtually inoperable or nonexistent software prevented 37 fragments— which holds my virtual machines 5: Average, performs adequately 10: Exceptional just in the last second! This number (VMs) and TV shows.

| Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 19 ProductReview

Although there are no red marks and chose “do not defragment VSS- A Need for Focus telling me that I have fragmented fi les, enabled volumes,” but I got the same Diskeeper has worked so hard to give there’s still a huge amount of white result. I enabled “offer VSS defrag- you all the possible options that the space between fi le blocks. I would’ve mentation” in the Manual Defragmen- actual mechanics of the program have thought Diskeeper moved the free tation Options. fallen by the wayside. The number of space to the end of the fi les, as once Again, the software told me that the editions of the product is mind-blowing. new fi les are created Windows will setting I had changed failed to save. Why pick one defragmentation tool automatically go for the fi rst available Thinking it might have something to when you can choose from seven? space on the drive. However, this is do with the cluster size bytes, I selected The prices, however, are reasonable, probably where IntelliWrite comes the analyze option, only to fi nd out starting at $39.95 for the Home Edi- into play, with Diskeeper taking over that the service had failed to start. I tion, with the Professional Edition at for Windows and performing disk- exited Diskeeper, restarted the Disk $59.95. It’s not a price that will make writing activities. Service and reopened Diskeepeer. you walk away, but it might take you a Finally, the analysis worked, and so did while to decide which version you Fuzzy Math I wanted to compare statistics before defragmenting my L: drive, so I unin- The defragmentation report informed me that the stalled Diskeeper. I also did this to overall health of volume L: was “severely affected” confi rm a suspicion. Since installing and “critical,” because the Master File Table (MFT) Diskeeper, I had noticed that Outlook took considerably longer to open. was fragmented into 1,920,991,232 pieces. With Diskeeper uninstalled, Outlook opened in less than two seconds with all my e-mail in front of me and the the defragment, using the standard should choose. Then, you get into the initial send and receive completed. defragmentation method. product and fi nd not one but three The built-in Windows 7 defragmen- The defragmentation report methods of defragmenting. The tation tool (Dfrgui) doesn’t provide informed me that the overall health of reporting, while generous in the num- the statistics on the level of fragmen- volume L: was “severely affected” and ber of results it generates, seems about tation, so I downloaded a trial of “critical,” because the Master File as accurate as a guess by a 3 year old Perfect Disk 11 Professional. This Table (MFT) was fragmented into taking part in the TV show “Kids Say offers “StealthPatrol,” which is similar 1,920,991,232 pieces. It also said that the Darndest Things”: to Diskeeper InvisiTasking. Stealth- the free space was at 0 percent, making Bill Cosby: “How many fi le fragments Patrol defragments only when your it “diffi cult to defragment the volume.” are there?” computer is idle. I chose to keep it in Having worked with Windows for a Diskeeper: “Um, 11 billionty!” manual mode and got it to analyze my long time, I know that you need a Bill Cosby: “How many?” L: drive. decent percentage of free space to Diskeeper: “Two.” After reinstalling Diskeeper, I ran the defragment a volume. My L: drive is It looks nice, but in its attempt to manual defragmentation, choosing the 730GB, and Windows reports that prove with numbers just how badly standard defragmentation method. 510GB is free. How Diskeeper did the your machine may or may not be frag- The software informed me that “the math here is confusing, as that works mented, the software becomes too Diskeeper setting you changed has out to 69 percent free space—the same much. There are too many numbers to failed to save,” the option I requested number, oddly enough, which the read. If I want to defrag my disks, I just failed to start and that I should refer to Diskeeper report shows. want to do it, not be asked how I want Diskeeper Help and the Windows On the report page, which has a it done. Maybe in time, when Diskeeper Event Log. The applications log frightening array of statistics on it, releases the Super Deluxe Six-Blade simply said that the Diskeeper analysis there’s a section regarding MFT frag- Ultimate Edition with Kung-Fu Grip, engine had started and stopped and mentation. Obviously, I was concerned it might get the calculations right. For that the VSS service stopped due to an that my MFT was badly fragmented; now, though, I’m uninstalling the new idle timeout. with nearly 2 billion pieces, it’s a product and going back to the Lite I ran another defrag, this time wonder that my computer even starts! version from 2002. choosing the Defragment Using VSS But I was pleased to see that, under the method. I got the same message, but MFT section, the software reported a Stuart Fordham has worked in IT this time there was nothing logged in total of only two MFT fragments. infrastructure for fi nance and medical the event viewer. I ran a third defrag What a relief! health companies for more than fi ve years.

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Untitled-2 1 12/13/10 9:34 AM Content provided by TechNet Magazine, MAGAZINE PracticalApp Microsoft’s premier publication for IT Professionals Delivering Intelligence with SharePoint Dashboards Integrate data from disparate sources into scorecards with rich data visualization for interactivity and workﬂ ow automation. By Joshua Hoff man e live in the era of data-driven decision making. It may also cut across numerous variables, such as sales data by region, Robust data infrastructures help organizations inventory by supplier and so on. W These critical measures are called collect unlimited volumes of data from myriad Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). sources. They can then integrate and analyze that data, driving They represent the metrics you set to defi ne success. It’s crucial that you and intelligent business decisions based on concrete information. your IT staff and the business decision makers work together in establishing A powerful data back-end like technical feat. Instead, you must the appropriate KPIs. You want your Microsoft SQL Server is essential, but so, carefully consider the most important information workers have the best too, is a rich presentation layer—one that kinds of information to present to your intelligence upon which to act when harnesses information and helps drive business decision makers. making those decisions. the decision-making process. You want What components of your amalgam- to present this Business Intelligence (BI) ated business data actually count as Build Your in the most effective way possible. You intelligence? What information can First Dashboard want to give your users control over their users actually act upon when making The fi rst step in building a SharePoint experience, and leverage the existing decisions? It may be sales data, job dashboard is installing Performance- presentation and collaboration resources performance, customer satisfaction, Point Dashboard Designer. The in your IT infrastructure. logistics or supply chain information. Dashboard Designer is a rich client SharePoint 2010 can help you deliver rich BI solutions directly to the information workers in your organization. By leveraging easy-to-use tools and a familiar environment, SharePoint 2010 helps you provide self-service BI functionality, empowering users and reducing costs for your IT department. As part of that BI infrastructure, SharePoint 2010 dashboards and PerformancePoint Services are powerful decision-making tools. SharePoint dashboards integrate data from disparate sources into scorecards, enhance scorecards with rich data visualizations, and enable deep interactivity and workfl ow automation. Information vs. Intelligence The fi rst step in empowering users to make data-driven decisions is not a Figure 1. An assembled scorecard in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer.

| Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 23 MAGAZINE PracticalApp

Scorecards display a collection of KPIs to give you a high-level overview of organizational performance. For example, you can build a scorecard that shows sales performance against quotas across every sales territory or different product lines. Once you’ve added the appropriate KPIs to your scorecard in Dashboard Designer (see Figure 1, p. 23), you can publish your scorecard to a SharePoint dashboard. Data Visualizations They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and with good reason. Visual images display a rich depth of information at a glance. With Perfor- mancePoint Dashboard Designer, you can create and publish data visualizations that help you to present critical business data in a visually compelling way (see Figure 2). Figure 2. An assembled SharePoint dashboard including visualizations. Dashboard Designer lets you create reports that leverage familiar analytic application that lets you create data PerformancePoint Services helps chart and graph controls, but also sources, dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, connect critical business data and provide a high degree of depth and custom indicators, fi lters and reports— portray it in a meaningful way to interactivity. For example, you can all of which you can publish directly to business decision makers. You can also create a report with a pie chart of sales SharePoint Web sites. base SharePoint 2010 KPIs on calcu- revenue broken down by sales repre- Once you’ve confi gured Performance- lated values, like the sum of several sentative. You can also let your Point Services for your organization, sales fi gures representing revenue for a business users redisplay the report as a you can install Dashboard Designer by defi ned sales territory. When defi ning bar chart or line graph, re-sort the visiting the Business Intelligence Center site within your SharePoint infrastructure. After completing the initial installation, you can access the Dashboard Designer directly from your Start menu. Your next step is to select the data sources you need to contribute to your dashboard. Those data sources can include SharePoint lists, instances of SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services, Excel Services or even Excel workbooks. Once the data source connections are active, you can begin to build KPIs. When creating KPIs, select the data points you want to measure—for Figure 3. A strategy map connects business data to visual representations. example, sales data from SQL Server Analysis Services. You also need to KPIs, you can also select appropriate data, apply value fi lters, show or hide choose targets against which you want visual indicators. This is often some- particular information and more. to measure that data, which might be thing like red/yellow/green stoplights Besides using traditional visualization sales quotas as defi ned in a SharePoint that indicate when the values meet, forms like charts and graphs, Perfor- list of your sales associates. exceed or drop below certain targets. mancePoint gives you some innovative Once the KPIs are accepting data After defi ning your KPIs, you can new approaches to data visualization. from multiple data sources, build scorecards for your dashboard. Strategy Maps, for example, let you

24 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | Untitled-2 1 1/11/11 2:53 PM MAGAZINE PracticalApp

connect business data to Visio diagram shapes, such geographic maps or From within a SharePoint process diagrams, as shown in Figure 3 (p. 24). Strategy maps help connect dashboard, users can perform business data to visual representations of real business processes. With strategy maps, you can get a quick business tasks, which are glance of sales performance by region, progress against your strategic plan, or then executed by the supply chain performance. Interactive Intelligence SharePoint workﬂ ow engine. By delivering business data dashboards with SharePoint 2010, you can give Figure 4) is an analytics tool that helps attributes (like sales territory) by way your business users a level of interac- users perform root-cause analyses. of the dashboard. tivity they won’t fi nd in other BI Using an interactive, Silverlight-based solutions. In SharePoint dashboards, control, they can deconstruct report Working with Workﬂ ow users can dig deeper into the data, elements to see the individual compo- The SharePoint dashboards also use drilling into the KPIs to develop a nents of a composite fi gure. This helps the powerful workfl ow functionality better understanding of the informa- them understand how various contrib- already built into SharePoint. From tion that lies within and how it impacts utors impact the fi nal number. within a SharePoint dashboard, users organizational performance. When you connect dashboard can perform business tasks, which are In a KPI that displays sales revenue by elements, you get an additional level of then executed by the SharePoint region, for example, a user may wish to interactivity. For example, you can workfl ow engine. For example, if a drill down further to see what product confi gure a dashboard so that when a salesperson reviews his dashboard and lines are performing best, and where user selects a region on a scorecard of fi nds he’s is likely to miss his quota, he can submit a request to his manager for an adjustment. Then his manager can approve or reject the request before any change is refl ected in the dashboard. SharePoint dashboards provide integrated, tailored BI. They empower information workers to make data- driven decisions. With rich, visual, interactive intelligence, the decision makers in your organization have access to the information they need quickly and easily, in useful and familiar formats. With its self-service- oriented approach, the burden on you and your IT staff is greatly reduced, helping to save both time and money. Thanks to Leif Brenne and Craig Boobar for their assistance in the development of Figure 4. A decomposition tree shows contributing factors to a KPI. this article.

underperformance needs to be addressed. regional sales data, another Web part Joshua Hoffman is the former editor in They can also pivot on data within those on the page—a KPI Details report— chief of TechNet Magazine. He’s now an KPIs, applying fi lters and combining refreshes to show additional informa- independent author and consultant, additional data sources to understand the tion. This could be data about the advising clients on technology and root causes of the data results. salesperson responsible for that region, audience-oriented marketing. Hoffman To that end, one of the most helpful their quota, contact information and so also serves as editor in chief of analytical features of the Performance- on. You can retrieve this data from ResearchAccess.com, a site devoted to Point dashboards is the Decomposition completely disparate data sources, but growing and enriching the market research Tree. The Decomposition Tree (see continue to connect it by common community. He lives in New York City.

26 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | Untitled-1 1 5/11/10 10:41 AM Clockwise from top left: Robbie Bach (with Slash and Bill Gates), Chris Liddell, Jeff Raikes, Stephen Elop, J Allard, Kevin Johnson, Bob Muglia and Ray Ozzie ‘ExecudusExecud ’

28 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | in By Lee Pender Redmondedmond Microsoft has famously lost—or ousted—eight top executives since 2008, including luminaries Ray Ozzie and Jeff Raikes. The change of leadership might have questionable long-term eff ects, but isn’t likely to change much in Redmond for the time being. Here’s why.

hen Microsoft Chief Software Architect since November 2009, and many more at slightly lower levels Ray Ozzie left the company, it sent also left the company. Ozzie’s name might top the list, but the shockwaves through the technology other fi gures on it are also signifi cant: Stephen Elop, industry and rocked the Richter scale in Microsoft Business Division president; Robbie Bach, Enter- WRedmond. Bill Gates’ heir-apparent tainment and Devices Division (EDD) president; J Allard, walked away after just fi ve years with Microsoft. EDD chief experience offi cer and chief technology offi cer; Ozzie’s departure was arguably the most devastating Chris Liddell, chief fi nancial offi cer; and, most recently, Bob executive exit at Microsoft since Gates himself left full-time Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Division. duties in 2008. But if one executive leaving a company can Go back to 2008, and the list gets even longer: Kevin cause such a stir, what happens when many leave in fairly Johnson, Platform and Services Division president, and Jeff short order? How many departures, how much “brain Raikes, Offi ce Division president, both left during that year. drain,” can one company endure in a short period of time? Raikes in particular was a titan in Redmond; he left to run What are the long-term effects of such an executive exodus? the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His replacement at Microsoft is about to fi nd out. No fewer than six major Microsoft was Elop, and the company also broke out Server Microsoft executives have taken the last train out of Redmond and Tools as a separate division at the time and picked Muglia

RAY OZZIE PHOTO BY JASON GROW/BOB MUGLIA BY RICK DAHMS | Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 29 Execudus

“[Microsoft] is [Ballmer’s]’s] babybaby. If you’re an executive and you want too run yoyour own thing at some point, it’s veryy frustrfrustratingg to you because it’s probablybly not ggoingg to happen soon.” Michael Cherry, Analyst, Directions on Microsoft

to lead it. Raikes announced his departure three years ago. Ballmer has also used executive departures to consolidate All of the executives involved have since left the company. his power and have more direct control over particular Yet, in the face of what for many companies would be a divisions in the company, says Michael Cherry, analyst at major crisis, Ballmer and Microsoft soldier on. In its most Directions on Microsoft. It’s that type of leadership style recent quarterly earnings report, the company easily beat that might have driven the infl uential Johnson, former head Wall Street analysts’ expectations and touted strong growth of the Platform and Services Division, out of Redmond. in its Entertainment and Services Division—formerly the “[Microsoft] is [Ballmer’s] baby,” Cherry says. “If you’re an domain of Bach and Allard—as well as in its Business executive and you want to run your own thing at some point, Division, which is essentially the same group that Raikes it’s very frustrating to you because it’s probably not going to and Elop ran. And while the stagnant Microsoft stock price happen soon. This is probably the case with people like still worries investors, its market share in OSes and produc- Kevin Johnson. Switching visions doesn’t interest them.” tivity suites—to name only two areas—remains massive. Experts can speculate over which of the Microsoft execu- So, what does the Microsoft “Execudus” mean for the tive exits were surprises and which had Ballmer’s hand in company’s ecosystem? For Microsoft itself, it could lead to a them—directly or indirectly—but observers agree that vision defi cit in years to come. However, any short-term some of the results aren’t all negative. Part of Ballmer’s effects are likely to be minimal and barely noticeable. That’s executive paring has led to a focus on moneymaking prod- good news for IT—for now. The future for Microsoft, its ucts and a de-emphasis on more experimental projects. leadership, its products and the people who invest in them is The CEO has also made up for a few of his own mistakes, a much more open question. says Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. “Over the last fi ve years, [Ballmer] has gotten rid of a lot of Ballmer Seizes Power the dead wood, but a lot of [those employees] were there Perhaps it was inevitable that Ozzie would never fully fi ll because he co-hired them,” Enderle says. “The end result is Gates’ shoes. That’s partly because Gates is so unique—but he has made it his company.” it’s also because Microsoft is Steve Ballmer’s company now, and observers say that he wants to run things his way. Kevin Turner Overdrive Redmond magazine columnist and longtime Microsoft Ballmer hasn’t orchestrated his power grab without help. He observer Mary Jo Foley has noted for years the cultural has a right-hand man in the boisterous and effective—if not differences within Microsoft between followers of Gates and necessarily well liked—Kevin Turner. COO at Microsoft fans of Ballmer. With Ballmer’s ascendancy to the CEO post since 2005, Turner is something of an anomaly in Redmond. more than a decade ago, his faction began to take more power Turner came to Microsoft from Walmart Stores Inc., the inside the company. When Gates left for good in 2008, infamously hard-driving retailer that transformed American Ballmer began to make Microsoft more and more his domain. shopping habits over the last three decades. At Microsoft, “In the past year, the Steve Ballmer guys have gotten a lot Turner is something of a fi sh out of water—but he’s a big more power,” Foley says. fi sh, and Microsoft employees have little choice but to swim And Ballmer has wielded his own power. Not all of the wherever he leads. It’s unlikely that Turner’s vision pleases recent executive departures were voluntary. Observers agree many current Microsoft executives, particularly those who that the CEO forced Bach and Muglia—and possibly have a long tenure with the company. He is, by some Allard—to leave Microsoft. Ballmer said as much in an accounts, a divisive fi gure in Redmond. (Turner and internal company e-mail announcing Muglia’s departure: “I Ballmer declined to be interviewed for this article.) have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in The energetic COO brought a penny-pinching, effi ciency- place for [the Server and Tools business].” driven ethos to a company that, in earlier years, wasn’t afraid

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Untitled-2 1 1/5/11 9:33 AM Execudus

to spend big money on experimental products and projects— of Steve, whoever came in would have to cut that company or on its employees. Ballmer and Turner have cut costs and dramatically to run it,” Enderle says. “He grew up with closed unprofi table projects at Microsoft, observers say. Their that breadth, so he has better control of it than even fi ngerprints are all over the company that exists today. somebody inside the company might have. He’s still the “They’ve closed a lot of the projects that aren’t making best-trained guy for the job.” money,” Foley says. “They closed Live Labs because nothing Foley agrees: “I don’t get the sense that he’s thinking about that was coming out of there was going to make money. leaving or that the board is thinking about kicking him That’s defi nitely Ballmer and Turner’s infl uence there.” Gates, Foley explains, was much more willing to let unprofi table projects go for the sake of innovation and Where Are They Now? experimentation, even if that meant losing money. Ballmer ost of the executives who have left Microsoft since and Turner don’t work that way, she says, and the results M2008 have landed comfortably, to say the least. are noticeable: “It really felt like [in 2010] it became even Some, such as Kevin Johnson and Stephen Elop, moved clearer that they were tightening the belt around things on to more prominent positions in diff erent companies. that aren’t making money.” Here’s a look at where these executives were at Turner’s name is often the fi rst to surface when pundits Microsoft and where they are now. speculate about who might take over for Ballmer as CEO. Stephen Elop Foley’s not so sure that plan would work, though. Internally, Microsoft Offi ce Division President ▼▼ she says, Turner is unpopular. Turner makes decisions as to President and CEO of Nokia Corp. which employees Microsoft will lay off, she explains, and he Robbie Bach recently told employees the company would cut their health Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) President care benefi ts. ▼▼ “I get the feeling if they ever made Kevin Turner the CEO Current employment status unknown (February 2010) of Microsoft, they’d lose a lot of the company,” Foley says. J Allard Other observers, however, say Microsoft could use some EDD Chief Experience Offi cer and Chief Technology Offi cer discipline after years of hiring executives from other com- ▼▼ panies who didn’t understand the culture in Redmond. One Rumored in the San Francisco Chronicle to be headed to Skype (January 2010) Redmond reader and former Microsoft employee, who asked not to be named, says that the company became softer with Chris Liddell an infl ux of people from IBM Corp. and the former Great CFO ▼▼ Plains Software, based in Fargo, N.D., which Microsoft Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Offi cer of General bought in 2000. Motors Co. “One of my complaints at Microsoft in recent years is that Bob Muglia Ballmer and his lieutenants have hired way too many President of the Server and Tools Division ex-IBMers,” the reader says. “They seemed much softer and ▼▼ slicker and more bureaucratic than the old Microsoft execs. Scheduled to leave Microsoft this summer Sometimes it almost seemed like Steve [Ballmer] wanted us Ray Ozzie to become more IBM-like. [It] gives me shivers. Chief Software Architect “We had a similar, smaller-scale infl ux of softer ’Softies ▼▼ Current employment status unknown (February 2010) when we bought [Great Plains],” he adds. “They came into the Redmond mother ship sans assimilation, and it was a huge Kevin Johnson Platform and Services Division President cultural change for us old timers. The Great Plains folks were ▼▼ polite. They didn’t curse and throw fi ts in meetings. And they CEO of Juniper Networks Inc. really changed the internal operating culture in Redmond.” Jeff Raikes Offi ce Division President The Biggest Loss ▼▼ Throughout much of Ballmer’s tenure as CEO—and CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation particularly since Gates’ departure—certain pundits have —L.P. argued that the Microsoft chief is in over his head and should step down. That’s not likely to happen. Not only is Ballmer strengthening his position by consolidating power out,” she says of the CEO. “He’s a known quantity. If he’s with Turner, he’s also quite possibly the only person who out, who’s in? Who’s the new CEO, and is he really going to could run Microsoft right now. be better? [Microsoft is] terrible with outsiders coming in. Only Ballmer, Enderle says, can run the nearly Outsiders never survive there. Ozzie is a great example.” 90,000-employee operation, which has its tentacles in an Indeed, Ozzie never seemed to quite fi t in with the array of markets in the technology industry. “If you got rid Microsoft corporate culture. But he did leave a legacy that

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Untitled-10 1 2/11/11 11:59 AM Execudus

will endure—the Windows Azure cloud-computing plat- the departments run themselves, experts say. Even with form. Microsoft, now famously “all in” with the cloud, will turnover in middle management, which is also taking place, likely be using and building on technology designed and the Microsoft product roadmap is likely to remain spearheaded by Ozzie for years to come. His departure is unchanged. And the departures of major executives will the most signifi cant of Redmond’s recent executive exits, affect it even less than the exits of their minions. says Enderle, and his failure to succeed Gates long-term as “People at [the executive] level aren’t individual contributors— chief software architect might not have been his fault. they’re the ones that carry the vision and the strategy,” Cherry agrees: “Nothing against Ray, but who could have Enderle says. “You get plenty of time to anticipate the stepped in?” he questions. “You’re replacing a mythical change. [Executives] have got to fi gure out where the bodies fi xture within the company. It doesn’t go well in a lot of are buried. Then they have to fi gure out where they want to technology companies. It’s like when [CEO Steve] Jobs left take the ship. It can take a year to a year and half to fi nd out Apple the fi rst time. Ray had this Herculean task of what the change will be. Even if [the departed Microsoft mythical proportions. Gates was an anomaly. Gates was executives] had stayed in place, they undoubtedly would’ve knowledgeable from a business perspective and from a been making course corrections. You bring in different technology perspective.” people, [and] you’re going to get different directions—but Ozzie’s departure might have been the most high-profi le nothing immediate.” and garnered the most headlines, but IDC analyst Al Gillen IT pros have less to worry about in terms of change than says that Muglia’s departure was also a shocker and might do consumers, as IT products have much longer develop- end up being the most detrimental of all. ment cycles and slower acceptance speeds than do consumer “It’s pretty hard for Microsoft to fi nd somebody to fi ll Bob products, Enderle adds. Microsoft isn’t going to mess with Muglia’s shoes if they’re looking for technical knowledge, IT products that have been successful and continue to be, familiarity with the products and the ability to interact with and Ballmer’s strong presence adds stability.

“I get the feeling that if they everver mamadee Kevin Turner the CEO of Microsoft,oft, thethey’dd lose a lot of the company.” Mary Jo Foley, Redmond Columnist and Microsoft Observer

customers,” Gillen says. “If you’re looking for that, you Ozzie’s departure shouldn’t be too alarming for IT, don’t get rid of Bob. I’m interpreting that to mean that Steve experts agree: “I don’t think Ray Ozzie leaving is going to Ballmer thinks he needs a different type of manager, not a affect Microsoft that much,” Foley says. “He had already technically adept manager. Losing Bob Muglia is probably a handed off everything he was doing to the Server and Tools much more serious thing than losing Ray Ozzie. Ray wasn’t team. He was involved with Windows Azure in the beginning, as important in execution [as Muglia was]. I’m a little sur- and his involvement was putting together the right team to prised that Bob is gone.” build it. He didn’t have anything to do with crafting the OS. Jeff Raikes is arguably just as big a loss. Microsoft employees I don’t think that, on the day he decided he was leaving, miss Raikes dearly, Foley points out. He played a major role anybody said, ‘What about “X” product?’” in moving Microsoft Offi ce to the cloud, even before “cloud” Adds Cherry: “You can take a technology like Windows became a buzzword in Redmond, Foley says. “Raikes was Azure and say, ‘Will Ray Ozzie leaving hurt that?’ My gut laying the groundwork for things that didn’t materialize for reaction is no. It was defi ned. Now it has to be implemented. years,” she explains. “A lot of people felt he had a good capa- [Microsoft has] some great implementers.” bility for where things were going to go in the future. Before The same goes for others who have left Redmond. At Microsoft started thinking about the cloud, he was saying to Microsoft, the executives who have made positive contribu- the Offi ce team, ‘We’ve got to get ready for the cloud.’ tions have already put their visions in place, experts say. That’s the kind of leadership they need.” With a vision set, execution becomes critical. And the company doesn’t necessarily need big names around in order to Business as Usual accomplish that. What’s most interesting about the Microsoft execudus is IT Still, IT professionals will need to choose their products professionals won’t likely notice any changes, at least in the diligently, as they do now. But they shouldn’t expect quick next few years. Microsoft is a huge entity, in which most of or major deviations from the current Microsoft product

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Untitled-2 1 12/13/10 9:19 AM Execudus

plans. “Some technologies will change. Some technologies level, I’d say they’re still a pretty good draw,” Foley says. “It will be deprecated, and others will move forward. You still never hurts to have Microsoft on your résumé.” want to carefully pick your way through,” Cherry says. Everybody Needs to Relax Stability for the Long Term Ultimately, despite the words of the doomsayers who love to So, if top executives don’t have much of an impact on day-to- predict the demise of Microsoft every time a big name departs, day execution, and if their presence isn’t necessary for product the company’s future seems strong. Some observers note that development to continue apace, why do they earn six- and not all executives leave Microsoft because of dissatisfaction or seven-fi gure salaries? Why do they create so many headlines? an ouster from Ballmer. Some just want their lives back. Vision and driving the execution from a high level, appar- “You wouldn’t have believed the hours that people like Jeff ently, are worth the cost of bringing them on board. Raikes put in,” Cherry says. Consider Ozzie. Nearly lost in the head-shaking and Gillen echoes his sentiment: “You’ve got to look at the age of hand-wringing about his inability to be the next Bill Gates these guys. At some point, when do you stop working so hard?” is the fact that he led the creation of Windows Azure, a The message to Microsoft customers is, despite the changes platform that could eventually become as important to in leadership, the company is not necessarily getting weaker. Microsoft as Windows is today. Raikes built the Microsoft In fact, it’s as strong as ever, particularly in the enterprise.

“[Microsoft] stopped being thee placplace too go to work and started being a placee to hhavee on your résumé.” Rob Enderle, Principal, Enderle Group

Offi ce franchise—a business that Cherry says as a stand- “Microsoft faces an interesting challenge going forward,” alone company would have cracked the Fortune 500. Muglia, Cherry says. “They have to balance how they move young, who had been with Microsoft since 1988, oversaw strong talented people up within the organization and give them growth in the Server and Tools Division. the feeling that there’s a place for them to go, [and also] Microsoft will miss its former leaders, even those Ballmer address the challenges of giving them both interesting work chose to oust. The question is when, and how much? At a and appropriate monetary compensation. company where turnover has been relatively light until “My bottom line on this is that too much is made of all the recently, especially at the executive level, that’s a question [executive] changes,” Cherry adds. “I think the company will no one can currently answer. What might soften the blow, go on. It’s the last thing people should worry about.” though, is the fact that some of the departed executives had worked to avoid a leadership vacuum upon their departure. Lee Pender is executive editor of Redmond magazine and editor “The good ones had already put succession in place,” of the Redmond Channel Partner Update newsletter. Scott Cherry says. “They built organizations that had everything Bekker, editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine, they needed to keep going without them.” contributed to this story. But short-term executives might be a future trend at Microsoft. Experts say that the company, once a desired fi nal destination for big names, now looks better in the Lee says: Celebrity culture is a funny middle of a résumé than at the top. thing. It has moved from movies, TV and pop music into the corporate realm. Microsoft “stopped being the place to go to work and Names like Ozzie, Raikes and Muglia are started being a place to have on your résumé,” Enderle says. household words for people who work “For right now, people looking for a job are likely to look at for or with Microsoft. And like main- something like Facebook. Even Google is looking long in stream celebrities, industry celebrities the tooth at the moment, at least for top stars. There are carry a mythical aura of importance and inﬂ uence. Are they brilliant? Yes, generally. Are they people who want to get rich and make names for themselves. important? Yes. Will the world, or Microsoft, end if they It’s very hard to do in an aging company.” decide to leave Redmond? No. If Microsoft could survive Still, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft won’t be able to the departure of Bill Gates—and it has—then it’s strong attract the talent it needs to keep its vision strong—even if enough to recover from the loss of some top executives, that talent doesn’t hang around for decades: “At the executive no matter how bright and inﬂ uential they are.

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Untitled-13 1 2/2/11 4:16 PM The 2011 Microsoft Product Roadmap Coming off one of the largest product waves in its history, Microsoft has a fresh crop of wares

in the pipeline this year. By Jeff rey Schwartz and Kurt Mackie

f you look back at the roadmap of Microsoft version is in the works, but it appears too far out on the products in the pipeline last year at this time, it’s horizon to fi nd a home on the 2011 roadmap. We certainly clear that 2010 will be a tough act to follow. After will be tracking it here. Iall, in 2010 Microsoft released new versions of [The anticipated release dates are not all confi rmed dates Offi ce, SharePoint and SQL Server, among others and many of them are subject to change or clarifi cation by products. But as we looked at the pipeline for this year, it Microsoft.—Ed.] turned out there were quite a few new products coming to the channel from Redmond. Offi ce 365 The year 2010 was a big one for Microsoft and much Anticipated Release: This Summer has transpired—most notably Redmond’s push to move One of the most anticipated offerings coming from all its products to the cloud. So it should come as little Microsoft this year is Offi ce 365, the company’s successor surprise that kicking off this year’s roadmap is Offi ce 365, to its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Offi ce which will bring the 2010 wave of Exchange, Offi ce and 365 will consist of Exchange Online, Offi ce Web Apps SharePoint to the cloud, along with the new Lync unifi ed and Lync Online, the Microsoft UC offering that allows communications (UC) platform. users to control their telephone systems. They will all be Microsoft is also bringing systems management to the based on the 2010 versions of the respective products. cloud with its new Windows Intune. Fresh releases of Anchoring Offi ce 365 is Microsoft Offi ce Plus, which various Dynamics products will ship, and be on the will include versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint and lookout for some key enabling technologies such as the Outlook that enable sharing within native clients, while new Internet Explorer 9. One category that didn’t make Offi ce 365 will allow viewing and content creation with a this year’s roadmap is a new version of Windows. A new Web browser or a smartphone. Offi ce 365 will be available

IMAGES FROM SHUTTERSTOCK | Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 39 Roadmap

inin the following SKUs: Offi ce 365 for Small Business, the product features, the monthly subscription will Offi ce 365 for Enterprises and Offi ce 365 for Education. include upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise for every Offi ce 365 for Small Business: Targeted at shops covered desktop and an option to buy the otherwise hard- with one to 25 users (it maxes out at 50), this Web- to-get Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). enabled release will appeal to those that don’t have IT When the fi rst limited beta of Windows Intune arrived organizations, don’t want to host their messaging infra- in April of last year, Microsoft described it almost exclu- structure on-premises and don’t need or want the native sively as a midmarket IT-focused offering, with a slightly Offi ce software. Employees within an organization can lower-end core audience than the System Center suite of maintain mailboxes up to 25GB each and can send products reaches. Core capabilities of Windows Intune attachments up to 25MB each. Exchange Online for include the ability to centrally manage the deployment of e-mail is available with mobile offi ce, calendaring, contact updates and service packs to PCs, manage protection of management and message discovery, and has antivirus PCs through the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, and antispam tools built-in. In addition to Exchange receive alerts that help administrators proactively monitor Online, the small business version includes Offi ce Web PCs, provide remote assistance, track hardware and soft- Apps, SharePoint Online with support for team sites and ware inventory, and set security policies. public Web site building, and Lync Online with instant For users familiar with other Microsoft product families, messaging and the ability to conduct virtual meetings. Windows Intune combines a Web-based management Pricing will be $6 per user per month. console with the desktop malware protection and reporting Offi ce 365 for Enterprises: This will be available in of the Microsoft Forefront Protection Suite and the two slices. Existing BPOS customers can pay $9 per user update management and hardware/software/licensing each month and receive the same services as they did in inventory capabilities of System Center Confi guration the past. Everything included in the Small Business Manager 2007 or System Center Essentials. edition is part of the enterprise package, plus 24x7 IT- Among the 1,000 participants in the fi rst beta were some level support by phone, Web and e-mail. The complete managed services providers (MSPs) who provided feed- package, priced at $24 per user per month, consists of back about what the tool needed if it was going to make Offi ce Professional Plus desktop software and complete the jump from being focused on the needs of midmarket functionality of Exchange, SharePoint Online and Lync IT departments to functioning as an MSP management Online. Among some of the advanced services included tool. The result is the Multi-Account Console, which with the latter SKU are support for advanced sites for allows an MSP to see all their customers from one screen. collaboration in SharePoint Online, InfoPath Forms, Access, Visio and Excel Services. Lync Online users get Microsoft Dynamics CRM 11 on-premises voice capabilities. Anticipated Release: Q1 2011 Offi ce 365 for Education: Similar to the Small Business Dynamics CRM 2011, code-named “CRM-5,” looks to edition, users get 25GB mailboxes with support for Outlook, erase many common competitive objections. It will have Word, Excel and OneNote. Students can use Offi ce Web support for improved data visualizations, real-time Apps to view, share and perform light editing of documents. dashboards and cloud development. Perhaps its most Students also get 25GB of online storage via SkyDrive. important new feature is an online marketplace that will Also available are Kiosk plans, which are targeted at let customers and partners fi nd, download and implement those in larger organizations that don’t have a need for a custom and packaged extensions for Dynamics CRM. dedicated PC. Microsoft calls such workers kiosk workers. In an atypical move, Microsoft is releasing the online This version lets those employees have subscription plans version fi rst and is set to release the premises-based soft- to access e-mail, view SharePoint sites and have support ware later this quarter. The goal is for the two versions to for Offi ce Web Apps, depending on the plan. The lowest- work hand-in-hand, allowing those in the fi eld to take cost plan starts at $2 for those requiring just basic e-mail advantage of the Web-based features and those in offi ces access with only 500MB of storage. to use the premises-based version. Because it supports the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Windows Intune and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Anticipated Release: 2011 Dynamics CRM 2011 will be appealing to those who Windows Intune is a cloud-based version of the desktop- want to integrate it with existing .NET Framework-based management capabilities customers could previously get apps and the rest of the Microsoft software portfolio. by deploying Microsoft System Center technologies. Rather than hosting a System Center server on-premises Windows Small Business and managing desktops from the server, administrators Server (SBS) 2010 using Windows Intune load a client onto the desktops. Anticipated Release: Q1 2011 Administrators can access via a browser the manage- The 64-bit software, formerly known by its code name, ment software and tools in the cloud and manage and Windows SBS “7,” was initially made available as a “public secure those desktops through the cloud. In addition to preview” back in July. Now the code is being imaged by

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Untitled-13 1 2/2/11 4:08 PM Roadmap

Microsoft’sM server hardware partners, which will include extender for Windows Home Server Code Name ‘Vail’ Acer Inc., Dell Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co. and early in the New Year.” others, according to a Microsoft blog post in December. When released, Windows SBS 2011 Standard will offer Microsoft Dynamics SL 2011 management, backup and restore capabilities, network and Anticipated Release: Q2 2011 client security, plus remote access to e-mail, calendar and Microsoft Dynamics SL 2011 will be marketed toward mid- contacts data for organizations with up to 75 users. size organizations. It’s designed to support project accounting, Microsoft also announced in December that the order management and inventory-control functions. Windows SBS 2011 Premium Add-on software was The product will feature a customizable, role-tailored released to manufacturing (RTM). The Premium Add-on user experience that shows what’s important to each is a supplement available for both Windows SBS 2011 specifi c user. Role-specifi c dashboards also can be cre- Standard and Windows SBS 2011 Essentials (formerly ated. Information can be searched using “50 predesigned code-named “Aurora”). It adds “support for SQL Server- search options,” which Microsoft describes as its “quick based [line-of-business] applications and access to query” capability. Window Server 2008 R2 technologies,” according to a The search-history capability in the product works Microsoft description, as well as remote desktop services much like the function seen in a Web browser. Users can and virtualization through Hyper-V. click to see past screens they’ve visited and then jump to The December RTM announcement did not specify them. Print-screen images can be made and shared with when these two server products would be available on others. Data can be exported to Excel for analysis using hardware. However, Microsoft earlier suggested that that program. Microsoft added a multiple login capability Windows SBS 2011 Standard would be available this that allows users to work with different entities and then month through systems builders and original equipment compare the data between them. manufacturers (OEMs). The retail price for the SBS 2011 Standard product is Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2 expected to be $1,096 plus Client Access License (CAL) Anticipated Release: First Half of 2011 costs of about $72. The retail price for the Premium Add-on This incremental product release will have three main product is expect to be $1,604 plus CAL costs of about $92. feature improvements. Microsoft claims that these improvements have already saved Dynamics GP 2010 Windows Home Server customers money by improving business processes and Anticipated Release: First Half of 2011 reducing the need for customizations. Microsoft back in August released a “preview build” of Microsoft plans to improve the UI for accessing “role- Windows Home Server (WHS) code-named “Vail” to specifi c information” in Dynamics GP 2010 R2. The test participants. Since then, HP disclosed it would not workfl ow approval process will be enhanced as well. release a server based on WHS. HP was regarded as a Finally, there will be improved informational fl ow to “fact leading WHS partner, and its withdrawal from the roster boxes” and “action shortcuts,” which provide information appeared to be a major blow to the product’s prospects. about people during IM chat sessions. The “preview build” of WHS Vail provides backup and The latter improvement appears to be associated with storage capabilities for home and small business users, Lync, the Microsoft UC product. According to a Microsoft but it omits many other useful server features, such as blog post, users of Dynamics GP 2010 R2 will be able to out-of-the-box printer support and terminal server sup- create “sales orders, purchase orders or sales invoices port for remote access. directly from Microsoft Lync.” In November, Microsoft announced that it was removing the “drive extender” feature from WHS, which lets users Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 easily pool multiple hard drives into a single volume without Anticipated Release: Q3 2011 having to resort to RAID approach, which isn’t supported For this new release of the Microsoft enterprise resource in WHS Vail. The removal of support for drive extender by planning (ERP) solution, Microsoft is promising it will Microsoft caused an uproar among WHS users. have an improved architecture and better support for devel- “Microsoft continues to work on delivering ‘Vail’ to our opers and partners through improved integration with customers,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “We are working other Microsoft software, as well as a model-driven, layered very closely with our partners such as Acer, Tranquil and architecture that offers better controls and less coding. many systems builders to bring the best solution to market.” In addition to making things simpler for developers via Microsoft did explain its decision to remove drive extender. modeling, Microsoft has a tighter integration between A blog post hints that Microsoft’s OEM partners may Dynamics AX 2012 and other Microsoft products, such offer some sort of “storage management and protection as Microsoft Offi ce 2010, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server solutions” offerings, presumably instead of drive extender. 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010. This integration reduces The blog states that “target product availability is still H1 the need to use middleware with Dynamics AX 2012, 2011, and we expect to deliver a new beta without drive according to Microsoft.

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Untitled-1 1 2/10/11 1:45 PM Roadmap

“Dynamics AX [2012] has a model-driven-layer architec- “Windows Storage Server Essentials is specifi cally ture that will accelerate the application development developed to address the storage needs for small businesses process for our partners, enabling them to write more up to 25 users without the need for specialized IT skills,” quickly, to do less coding and to deliver the solution more wrote Garcia. “Confi guring Windows Storage Server quickly,” said Crispin Read, general manager of Microsoft 2008 R2 Essentials is easy: remove from box, connect to Dynamics ERP, in an interview. “[Developers] are network, power up and access the device from a browser modifying models versus writing code—that’s a big new to confi gure it.” capability, a very signifi cant capability,” he said. The Storage Server Essentials is designed to handle Read noted that ISVs will be able to use this modeling server and PC backups, as well as centralized storage for capability to better extend their products to additional data sharing, including remote Web access. The company markets. He claimed that the new model-driven, layered is also positioning Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 architecture approach was “unusual” in the ERP software Essentials as complementary to Windows Small Business industry. Traditional ERP software products tended to Server 2008 and Windows Small Business Server 2011. drift more toward “spaghetti code” when it came to product upgrades and expansions, he claimed. Internet Explorer 9 Earlier versions of Dynamics AX have been based on a Anticipated Release: Q1 2011 layered architecture, but they haven’t included this Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 9 beta in modeling capability. The modeling is based on a SQL September. Internet Explorer 9 is the company’s next- Server-based model store, Read explained. generation Web browser, based on HTML5 and other World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developing standards. Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 The launch of the Internet Explorer 9 beta comes as Anticipated Release: March 2011 Microsoft vies to retain its supremacy in the browser Geared for classrooms, labs and libraries, Windows market over upstarts such as the Google Chrome browser, MultiPoint Server 2011 will be available through Microsoft as well as the longtime open source contender Firefox volume licensing channels in March and will be offered from Mozilla. by various OEMs in the second quarter of this year. One of the key operational features of this new browser A number of features were baked into the release is hardware-accelerated HTML5, which helps Internet candidate, including support for thin clients over LANs, Explorer 9 unlock “90 percent of a PC’s computing management of multiple “pods” through a single console, power,” Microsoft claims. Company offi cials contrasted split-screen capability at terminals and a domain-join that fi gure with the standard “10 percent” of computing feature for Active Directory integration. The Premium power tapped by earlier iterations of Internet Explorer edition of the product will enable domain joins; Microsoft and other rival browsers on average. also will offer a Standard edition without that capability. The HTML5 spec is still developing as part of a standards- Windows MultiPoint 2011 creates a shared computing making process, but it promises native video and graphics environment in which one PC connects with up to 20 processing in the browser. It will allow Web developers to dumb terminals, each consisting of a screen, keyboard and create experiences that previously required plug-in exten- mouse. The Standard edition supports 10 stations, while sions, such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. In that the Premium edition supports 20 stations, according to vein, ahead of the Internet Explorer 9 launch, questions Microsoft. The system can be set up quickly using a video were raised as to whether Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5 port, USB 2.0 hub or new multifunction USB devices. make Silverlight redundant. The system has an automatic-discovery capability that’s “What happens is that the game gets raised for plug-ins capable of linking up with other MultiPoint servers. such as Silverlight and Flash,” said Brian Hall, general Microsoft partners will have user-experience customiza- manager of Windows Live and Internet Explorer, speaking tion opportunities to build on top of the product. Existing at the September launch event. “We’ve been working closely Windows 7 Group Policies will work with Windows with our Silverlight team on how this gets integrated and MultiPoint Server. what this all means and they’re excited about the possibilities, but it’s defi nitely a new game with higher stakes.” Windows Storage Server Those higher stakes may include a lightning-fast video 2008 R2 Essentials capability, global positioning system services via the Anticipated Release: First Half of 2011 browser, and dragging and dropping items into a browser The new network attached storage software, previously session from a desktop on a Windows 7 OS. There also code-named “Breckenridge,” provides centralized fi le may be built-in-browser applications that work offl ine. storage and backup capabilities on an appliance for small businesses. Joel Garcia, Microsoft senior product manager Jeffrey Schwartz is editor at large for Redmond magazine. for Windows Servers, gave some more details, including Kurt Mackie is the online news editor for the 1105 Enterprise its offi cial name, in a blog posted from Tech·Ed Berlin Computing Group. Scott Bekker, Jabulani Leffall and Chris back in November. Paoli contributed to this report.

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Social media has opened a whole new can of worms for companies, just as they were getting e-mail under control. Despite the challenges, it’s possible to get social networking applications under control, too.

By Paul Korzeniowski

he Information Age is in full bloom, and they’re not properly tracking all of their employee commu- communication is now a 24x7 phenomenon. nications,” says Ted Ritter, an analyst with The Nemertes In companies large and small, individuals Research Group Inc. spend much of their days answering e-mails, sending co-workers instant messages (IMs), Paying for the Backlash Tposting blogs and tweeting. The issue of compliance became more important at the turn While these developments have helped some companies of the millennium when employees started to rely more on streamline business processes and increase productivity, they e-mail to complete their work. In addition, there was a also raise new management issues. Bits of corporate data infor- backlash to how companies reported their fi nancial information are fl ying around in cyberspace like children darting mation. In response, government regulations such as around an amusement park. In order to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley emerged to provide more guidance about various government and industry regulations, companies need appropriate and inappropriate business processes. In 2006, to safeguard their data. To do this, IT departments need to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure established that com- track an ever-expanding array of communications options and panies must establish protocols for capturing electronically then block, collect and archive employee exchanges. stored information prior to civil court cases. Violations of So, how well is IT doing this right now? The answer such regulations can lead to costly penalties. In 2002, the depends on the type of communications vehicles examined. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fi ned fi ve Businesses seem to have a good handle on employees’ e-mail fi rms a total of $8.25 million for not properly monitoring usage; however, the level of control available with IM and and capturing their e-mail traffi c. social media systems is not as well developed. Perhaps fearing potential fi nes and lawsuits, companies “Many companies may unknowingly be leaving themselves quickly and willingly ponied up the money needed to buy open to embarrassment and possible lawsuits because e-mail management and archiving tools.

IMAGES FROM SHUTTERSTOCK | Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 47 Social Networking “Most have put procedures in place so they can monitor In addition to such losses, companies may face fi nes their e-mail systems,” says Michael Osterman, principal at because regulatory agencies are starting to demand that Osterman Research Inc. corporations put checks in place and monitor social net- For instance, MobiTV Inc. delivers more than 100 working exchanges. For instance, in January 2010, the television and video channels from more than 50 content Financial Industry Regulatory Authority—the enforcement providers—including NBC, ABC, ESPN Mobile TV, arm of the SEC—issued Regulatory Notice 10-06, which Disney Channel, FOX News, Comedy Central and Bravo— mandated that fi nancial services companies oversee social to mobile subscribers. “We rely on Symantec products to networking communications in the same manner that they ensure that our e-mail communications are secure and handle e-mail. The Offi ce of Thrift Supervision, a bureau archived,” says Chad Kalmes, IT Director at MobiTV. of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that regulates the Kalmes says that MobiTV specifi cally uses Symantec nation’s thrift industry, and the Financial Services Authority, Enterprise Vault and Endpoint Security applications. an independent and non-governmental regulatory body for the United Kingdom fi nancial services industry, have issued Ready for New Challenges? similar rulings. Now that corporations have management of their e-mail As a result, security professionals face a signifi cant chal- systems under control, new challenges have arisen. “Busi- lenge. Controlling social networking communications is nesses don’t have as good a handle on instant messaging complex because IT pros need to monitor communications and social networking communications as they do with that often occur in a hodgepodge manner and sometimes e-mail,” Ritter says. even outside their systems. Consequently, they’re not sure The results can be damaging. For instance, hedge-fund which—if any—spots to examine on their enterprise net- managers with the Galleon Group were charged with insider works. For instance, how does a company monitor Facebook trading in 2009. The evidence that cracked the case open? A updates that employees do on their cell phones? single text message. Texting and social media have become quite popular A De Facto Endorsement? among consumers and have been working their way Compounding the challenge is the type of communica- steadily into businesses. Increasingly, social media com- tions typically done on these sites: The sites themselves munications account for a significant portion encourage personal opinions and endorse- of new business opportunities in ments. If an employee becomes a many organizations. “We fan of a company and notes However, the recent, rapid block social that on Facebook, does it uptake—often in violation of networking connections become a de facto corpo- companies’ written rate endorsement? Some policies—has left many because we need to be would say yes. Another enterprises inadequately sure that we’re in example comes from prepared from both a compliance with LinkedIn, which pro- data-leakage and a compli- vides the ability to send ance perspective. In fact, government regulations.” a message to as many as some observers think Steve Heller, CTO, Graubard Miller 50 recipients. Would these that companies may have more communications then be clas- to fear from accidental data leakage sifi ed as sales materials that need on social media sites than from to be reviewed by the fi rm beforehand? hackers. The reason is that social Again, some would answer that question in the affi rmative. networking communications often occur without employees So, what’s a company to do? Around the turn of the cen- considering the consequences of collaborating in what are, tury, IT departments were becoming overwhelmed with in effect, public places. e-mail traffi c. As this electronic medium became popular, a pattern emerged among businesses: Many fi rms simply A Multimillion-Dollar Joke blocked all external electronic communications. The same In April 2009, two Domino’s Pizza employees created a video scenario occurred with IM and is now unfolding with social where they prepared sandwiches for delivery while one networking applications. employee put cheese up his nose and violated other health- In business since 1948, Graubard Miller is a 40-person law code standards. In a few days, the video had been viewed fi rm that focuses on fi nancial exchanges, real estate and com- more than a million times on YouTube and the pizza chain mercial disputes. “We block social-networking connections faced a PR nightmare. Quickly, the company fi red the two because we need to be sure that we’re in compliance with employees, and the local police department brought felony government regulations,” explains Steve Heller, CTO at the charges against the perpetrators. In addition, the local health fi rm, which has been using an e-mail archiving service from department told the company to discard all open containers Proofpoint Inc. to monitor its Microsoft Exchange messages. of food. The prank cost the pizza chain millions of dollars in In other cases, companies discourage such communica- brand recognition and lost productivity. tions because they don’t see a fi t between their businesses

48 | March 2011 | Redmond | Redmondmag.com | and the social-networking sites. Midwood Financial controls allow posts to be pre-approved, logged and Services Inc. has 20 employees and distributes $1.2 billion archived. Its moderator controls allow organizations to in fi nancial products and services to 400 U.S. banks, examine communications and hold them for evaluation regional brokerage fi rms and independent broker dealers. prior to posting. If communications don’t meet company “Because we operate mainly in a business-to-business policy, the application blocks them. market, social-networking sites, such as Facebook and Cloud services provider Socialware Inc. is also trying to Twitter, don’t have much of an impact on our business,” help companies bridge the gap between enterprise and social says IT director Tom Przybylak. The fi nancial services network functions. company uses AppRiver tools to secure its Microsoft With the Exchange e-mail communications. “Businesses don’t have as Finding a Way to Skirt “Many Security Checks good a handle on of our But blocking sites like Twitter or Facebook instant messaging customers want to use with techniques such as URL fi ltering may and social networking social media sites not be effective. Tunneling applications to market their can get around such controls. In fact, communications The Wall Street Journal services.” Lifehacker.com, and as they do Julie Gebert, Assistant VP of other sites have published items such as the Compliance, Cambridge with e-mail.” Investment Research Inc. “Top 10 Ways to Bypass Social Networking Ted Ritter, Analyst, The Nemertes Security Controls,” which outline the process. For Research Group Inc. example, employees could simply install proxies on their home computers and connect them to the Internet. While at work, they can use the company computer company’s Compass software, customers are able to out- to access the home IP address, circumvent the corpo- line and implement social media policies. IT professionals rate fi lter and visit social networking sites. can manage user access in a granular fashion, and the Another problem is that most valuable employees are often system will keep an archive of each individual’s social- the ones trolling the social networking sites. Rather than networking activities. discourage such activities, many fi rms view their use as Such features appealed to Cambridge Investment Research valuable and productive. Consequently, organizations need Inc., which has 350 employees who provide services to more to strike a balance. They want employees to use the sites but than 1,800 fi nancial planners nationwide. The organiza- don’t want such access to create new problems. In effect, tion’s New Century Council brings together advisors under companies need tools that can scan all traffi c, both inbound the age of 45. Council members asked Cambridge Invest- and outbound, for confi dential or restricted content and ment Research to help them develop social media outlets for ensure that the use of social media in the workplace doesn’t their services. create a backdoor where confi dential and business critical “Many of our customers want to use social media sites to data can leak out. They need to make sure that if employees market their services,” explains Julie Gebert, assistant vice talk about engineering glitches, they share enough informa- president of compliance for Cambridge Investment tion to solve the problem but don’t tell outsiders what the Research. company plans to come out with next year. In the fall of 2009, the organization searched for a tool to A number of vendors are trying to address the issue with help monitor those connections and eventually opted for software that limits what users can do on social networking Socialware. One reason was the ability to pre-review infor- sites. For instance, the products may allow users to view mation before advisers post it to social networking sites, Twitter messages but not post them, update a Facebook such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. status but not play games, or post to LinkedIn but not rec- “We’re seeing movement toward managing social-networking ommend anyone or anything. These products are coming transactions in industries where protecting confi dential from vendors in a variety of industries, such as Astaro information is paramount, such as fi nancial services and GmbH & Co. KG, an e-mail archiving supplier; Palo Alto health care,” Osterman, of Osterman Research, notes. Networks, a fi rewall provider; Dexrex LLC, a mobile text These organizations will vet the new tools so, eventually, message archiving fi rm; and ZL Technologies Inc., a sup- they’ll become easier to deploy, more functional and maybe plier of archiving and e-discovery software. even as common as e-mail monitoring tools. The tools are there to harness social networking. With Leaders Start to Emerge good policies and the right software, you can control social A few products have been gaining some market traction. networking and not be controlled by it. FaceTime Communications incorporated social network compliance features into its software, so it controls Facebook, Paul Korzeniowski is a freelance writer base in Sudbury, Mass. Linkedin and Twitter communications. Designed to help who can be reached at [email protected]. He has been covering organizations meet regulatory compliance demands, the various IT issues for more than two decades.

| Redmondmag.com | Redmond | March 2011 | 49 DecisionMaker by Don Jones It’s Time to Invest in Your Team

s we near the end of the fi rst quarter of 2011, telecoms and manufacturing fi rms) do, Windows PowerShell could well be the you’re probably getting those new IT projects most important IT investment you’ll A make in the next fi ve or six years. Some moving, allocating this year’s budget and so forth. of my customers have documented clear As you do, don’t forget one of your most important IT assets: returns on training investment in just a few months, simply by automating tasks your team. But where should you focus? I suggest three areas. and freeing up administrator time for other projects and issues. Troubleshooting Skills In the Microsoft world, that means In my practice as a strategic consultant, I investing in Windows PowerShell. A A New Version see an incredible lack of troubleshooting solid understanding of command-line Finally, make sure every one of your skills within organizations. That means administration also engenders a better team members becomes well-versed in when problems occur, those organiza- understanding of the technology you’re the latest version of at least one product tions spend an unacceptably long administering … which leads to better or technology that he works with, amount of time resolving issues and troubleshooting skills, too. along with details on how to deploy it. stabilizing the production environ- I’ve been careful to write command- Even if you’re not planning to actually ment. Unfortunately, troubleshooting line administration and not scripting. A deploy that version of that product, get skills are hard to teach. lot of Microsoft-focused admins have a someone up to speed on it. You can, however, encourage your huge fear of, distaste for or disinterest You never know when you may sud- team to deliberately develop and refi ne in “programming,” and they correctly denly have to change your mind about its experience, which leads directly to see scripting as a kind of lightweight that version, and having an expert on more effi cient troubleshooting. Have a programming. No problem: A major staff will make things easier. Also, the brief meeting every month (and no, I benefi t of Windows PowerShell is that “skip a version” mindset might work well from a fi nancial perspective, but it results in a huge skills defi cit. Skip ver- Make sure every one of your team members sion 4, and your team will be even less becomes well-versed in the latest version of at prepared for versions 5 and 6, which will least one product or technology. doubtless build on version 4. So if version 4 is what’s new right now, at least have someone gain a basic familiarity can’t believe I’m recommending more you can be extremely effective without with it. Today’s cheap virtual machine meetings rather than fewer) where you learning to program. That’s a main technologies make it easy to create a test review the problems of the previous focus of the classes I teach, and it’s a lab where someone can spend some time month and ask one team member to message that’s been going over gang- with the new technology. Make this describe what went wrong, what fi xed busters with hundreds of administrators project a part of each team member’s the problem and why the fi x worked. every year. Sure, for those admins who formal goals for the year. do have some programming experience Automation Skills and who enjoy scripting, Windows Don Jones is a senior partner and principal It pains me every time I see someone PowerShell steps up and lets them be technologist at Concentrated Technology. performing some rote task, such as cre- extremely powerful—but it doesn’t Contact him through the company’s Web ating new user accounts using a GUI leave you out in the cold if you’re not site at ConcentratedTech.com. Jones will be console. C’mon, it’s 2011 —surely we ready to fi re up Visual Studio, either. speaking at TechMentor Spring 2011 in can start letting the computers do the Based on what I’m seeing some of my Orlando; more information is available at mundane, repetitive stuff, right? largest clients (banks, pharmaceuticals, techmentorevents.com/orlando2011.

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Pre-Conference Tutorials - Monday, March 14, 2011 9:00 - 12:30 p.m. EPC Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp -Don Jones

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. Lunch (for PowerShell Boot Camp Attendees Only) 1:00D - 5:00IS NEY’p.m. S YAPRE1C ESXpertHT StrategiesCLUB in Constructing, ORLAND and O,PRE2 F FourL Hours of the Very Best Windows 7 PRE3 Windows Crashes and Hangs: Simple Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp Administering VMware vSphere -Greg Shields Tips, Tricks, and Tools on Earth Steps in Finding Every Root Cause Don Jones March 14-18, 2011 J. Peter Bruzzese Bruce Mackenzie-Low

Conference Day 1 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 8:30 - 9:30 a.m. Keynote: Cloud Computing: A (Lapsed) Economist’s View - Mark Minasi, IT Consultant, Author, Speaker, MR&D

9:45 - 11:00 a.m. TU1 HA & DRS Gotchas that Will Kill TU2 Designing High Availability into TU3 How Well Does Your Active TU4 Windows Failover Clustering: Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp Your ESX Infrastructure your Exchange Organization Directory Stand Up to Microsoft’s? Five Reasons Why You Should Stop Don Jones Greg Shields J. Peter Bruzzese Laura Hunter Ignoring It! -Bruce Mackenzie-Low Sponsored by: SAPIEN Technologies, Inc. 11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. TU5 Tips & Tricks for Creating Good TU6 Smart Tricks and Big TU7 RODCs: Here’s Why You Need TU8 Application Crash? Quickly VMs. It’s Not as Easy as You’d Think! Gotchas in Virtualizing Microsoft Them. Here’s How to Implement them Troubleshooting that Hung Application Greg Shields Exchange -J. Peter Bruzzese Correctly! -Laura Hunter Bruce Mackenzie-Low

12:30 - 1:45 p.m. Geeks Showdown Lunch

1:45 - 3:00 p.m. TU9 ESXi 4.1 Command Line Tricks TU10 Capacity Management for TU11 How Microsoft Does IT: Tales TU12 How to Troubleshoot & Prevent You Absolutely Must Know Exchange: Lessons from the field in the Trenches from a Microsoft IT Windows Print Spooler Outages Greg Shields J. Peter Bruzzese Architect -Laura Hunter Bruce Mackenzie-Low Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp 3:15 - 4:30 p.m. TU13 How to Locate the Source of TU14 Setting Up Exchange Unified TU15 10 Things You Don’t Know (and TU16 Tracking Down the Network’s Don Jones any ESX Performance Problem Messaging in Seven Steps Can Implement Immediately) about Biggest Problems with Microsoft in Ten Easy Steps -Greg Shields J. Peter Bruzzese Windows Server 2008 R2 -Mark Minasi NetMon -Ed Liberman

5:00 p.m. Dine-Around Orlando

Conference Day 2 - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:00 - 9:15 a.m. W1 Windows Power Tools Treasury: W2 Microsoft’s Free Deployment W3 Completely Control Every W4 Using Microsoft RDS to Best of the Power Tools Tools: Making Sense of the Acronym Application with GPOs and GPPs Securely Extend Applications into Mark Minasi Alphabet Soup -Justin Rodino James Conrad the Cloud -Ed Liberman

9:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. W5 The Network Files, Case #53: W6 Automating Pre-Deployment W7 How to Customize and Rapidly W8 17 Things You Can Implement Exclusive PowerShell Diagnosing Diseases of DNS Tasks with the Microsoft Assessment Deploy Microsoft Office Using Now to Speed User Logons Boot Camp Mark Minasi and Planning Tool -Justin Rodino Free Tools -James Conrad Ed Liberman Don Jones

11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. W9 The Secrets of Technical Talks: W10 Windows 7 Application W11 PowerShell Scripting W12 Tips and Tricks for 100% How to Explain Tech without Tucking Compatibility Problems and Easy Best Practices WSUS Compliance...Overnight! Mark Minasi Solutions -Justin Rodino Jeff Hicks Ed Liberman

12:15 - 2:45 p.m. Luau Lunch On The beach sponsored by Train Signal

2:45 - 4:00 p.m. W13 Notes from the Field: Locking W14 Building and Deploying OS W15 Top 10 Active Directory Tasks W16 What Cloud Computing Means Down Microsoft Office and Outlook Images with Windows Deployment with PowerShell to You the IT Professional with Group Policy -James Conrad Server -Justin Rodino Jeff Hicks Yung Chou Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp 4:15 - 5:30 p.m. W17 Using Free Tools to Control who W18 How to Create a Single Deploy- W19 Getting Started with W20 Building a Microsoft VDI Don Jones Gets on your LAN. It’s More than Just ment Image that Works Everywhere PowerCLI and VMware -Jeff Hicks Solution with Software You Already Security! -James Conrad Justin Rodino Own -Yung Chou

5:30 - 7:00 p.m. Exhibit Hall Reception

Conference Day 3 - Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:00 - 9:15 a.m. TH1 Tools & Techniques for Managing TH2 The Final Step: Completely TH3 Group Policy Settings You TH4 MCITP: Configuring Active Wireless Networks Automating Windows Deployment Must Use (…and Some You Must Directory Mike Danseglio PART 1 -Justin Rodino Avoid!) -Jeremy Moskowitz -Bruce Rougeau

9:30 - 10:45 a.m. TH5 Restricting Devices from the TH6 The Final Step: Completely TH7 Group Policy Troubleshooting TH8 MCITP: Configuring & Corporate Network. Why Haven’t We Automating Windows Deployment Essentials -Jeremy Moskowitz Maintaining AD Objects Done This Before? -Mike Danseglio PART 2 -Justin Rodino Bruce Rougeau

11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. TH9 Securing the Back Door: Preventing TH10 Smart Server Hardware TH11 Using Group Policy to TH12 MCITP: Configuring AD’s Attacks from Employee Home Configurations for Microsoft Implement Security Settings Additional Services Wireless Networks -Mike Danseglio Hyper-V -Alan Sugano Jeremy Moskowitz Bruce Rougeau

12:15 - 2:45 p.m. Hot Topics Lunch & Expo Hall

2:45 - 4:00 p.m. TH13 Easy Steps for Enabling Portable TH14 ESX versus Hyper-V Showdown TH15 How to Automatically Migrate TH16 MCITP: Planning your Data Security: Laptops,USB Drives, ROUND 2! the User State During a Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 Environment and More -Mike Danseglio Alan Sugano Upgrade -John Baker PART 1 -Bruce Rougeau

4:15 - 5:30 p.m. TH17 Dangerous Documents: TH18 Top Reasons You Must TH19 Super-Advanced Customizations TH20 MCITP: Planning your Windows Identifying and Protecting Data Implement Exchange 2010 SP1 with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Server 2008 Environment from Malware -Mike Danseglio Now -J. Peter Bruzzese John Baker PART 2 -Bruce Rougeau

Evening Slam Session

7:00 - 8:30 p.m. ES1 MCITP: Exchange Administrator Exam Prep (70-662 & 70-663) ES2 MCITP: Server Administrator Exam Prep J. Peter Bruzzese Bruce Rougeau

Post-Conference Tutorials - Friday, March 18, 2011 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. POST1 Considering Hyper-V? Fully-Functional Production Virtualization in Seven Simple Steps POST2 MCITP: Configuring a Server 2008 Network Infrastructure + Final Exam Prep Alan Sugano Bruce Rougeau

TechMentor Exclusive PowerShell Boot Camp Virtualization Active Directory Management Orlando Tracks and Architecture MCITP Server Administrator Certification Architecting and Administering Mini Boot Camp Microsoft Exchange Automated Windows Deployment Windows Deployment University Security and Malware Protection Getting More out of your Existing IT Investment Becoming an ESXpert! Mastering VMware Advanced Troubleshooting for vSphere in Your IT Environment Servers and Applications Windows PowerShell

Untitled-13 2 2/11/11 12:54 PM March 14-18, 2011 Disney’s Yacht Club Orlando, FL TECHMENTOR HAS RETURNED

11 FOCUSED TRACKS DEEP DIVE CONTENT EXPERT SPEAKERS

Join forces with your fellow IT heroes for 5 full days of IT training focused on: BONUS Windows PowerShell CONFERENCE Virtualization FEATURES: Architecting and Administering Microsoft Exchange • EXCLUSIVE 3-DAY POWERSHELL BOOT Security and Malware Protection CAMP Active Directory Management and Architecture • EVENING SLAM SESSIONS Advanced Troubleshooting for Servers and Applications • ONE-ON-ONE Automated Windows Deployment CONSULTING • EXTENDED TUTORIALS CHECK OUT THE FULL • NEW SPEAKERS 60+ SESSION AGENDA NOW! • AND MUCH MORE!