Tech-Ed: Review of Day 1

Mmhh, I intended to post more regularly, but there so much other things to do, see and absorb!

Day 1 started with keynote of Brad Anderson, General Manager Management and Service Division. System Center stuff and such. During the keynote they showed real nice management tools like System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, which even can interact and manage non-windows systems (think VMWare, SuSe etc., even with their logo's). That really put a smile on my face.

The technical sessions that I chose where both about Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Namely "UNC202 What's New in Office Communications Server 2007 R2" and "UNC201 What's New in mobility and web access with Office Communications Server 2007 R2". Both good sessions, it showed the direct of OCS: namely the replacement of the PBX and that the only phone will be your Windows Mobile phone. I think that could happen, but I still see some need for improvements. The Telephone from Work callback for instance feels a bit cumbersome to me.

The evening was spent at the Welcome Reception and exploring Barcelona at night.