Microsoft TechEd Europe 2014 Day 1

I’m fortunate to be at TechEd Europe this year (at slightly short notice) and wanted to share some of the things that I’m picking up on at the event. There’s a few topics I’ll do specific blog posts about but here’s a general overview of Day 1 and some of the bits I’ve seen.

Themes:

The keynote was good; couple of hours but kept reasonably fast paced with some interesting announcements and demos. What was interesting was the areas that were touched on and what was left out. The key areas are:

• Data
• Consistent Device Experience
• Cloud (Hybrid and Public)
• Software Defined Datacentre

There was nothing really on traditional on-premises systems such as Exchange, SharePoint, etc which depending on your perspective is either because we’ve just gone through a major release of these products or because it’s a strong focus on cloud.

Data:

People who don’t understand the value of data often fail to understand why Microsoft is playing in the search space with Bing when Google has so much of the market covered however this is extremely short sighted. As pointed out in the keynote, there are now more connected devices on the planet than people and with the Internet of Things taking off, the ability for Microsoft to understand the internet and the huge amount of data contained becomes really crucial to delivering valuable services to users and this is what Bing enables. Cortana’s brain, for example, is effectively Bing.

Consistent Device Experience:

Obviously there’s a lot of information coming out about Windows 10 and Joe Belfiore did a great job of showing some of the features there and it’s a good middle ground between Windows 7 and 8. It’s also worth noting that security was a huge part of this. The subtext though is that Microsoft is clearly trying to push the experience right across the device spectrum from phones to the largest PCs. This also encompasses other breeds of devices including iOS and Android; Office is a good example.

Cloud:

Microsoft is showing a clear commitment to making every part of the software defined datacentre integrate with the public cloud as much as possible and to make that as easy as possible, whether it’s backup or remote desktop. Here are the areas from the Keynote:

• Management
• Virtualisation
• Identity
• Networking
• Data
• Development

SDDC:

Given my focus, this one has me really excited. The next versions of Windows Server and the System Center suite will have significantly enhanced capabilities in many areas, building on foundations that have been laid already. Of particular note:

• Storage Spaces now has built-in replication
• There is an SDN network role in Windows
• Major improvements to Hyper-V both in terms of functionality and scale
• Azure Pack is becoming integral and is replacing App Controller
• Cloud Platform System [CPS]

I’ll be posting my thoughts about CPS in the next day or as I think it’s a very strategic play by Microsoft. More to come!