Time flies....

Time flies when you don't pay attention to your blog. :) It's been a year, I figure it's time to update this puppy.

I'm with a different company now, having been terminated by my former employer for "not meeting my billable revenue target" and "not improving consulting skills to a level we think is appropriate". All talk and no action, that was their treatment of me. Talk about having a problem with me, but do nothing to help. The billable revenue target was garbage also - I'm not responsible for selling my services, the Sales team is/was. My opinion of my Practice Lead is, shall we say, somewhat derogatory and it was that way for many months prior to my departure. The guy has no clue, no leadership skills, and no communication skills. My departure was their loss, not mine - I'm working and making more than I was there, so I can't complain. I received an astounding amount of well-wishes from people within the company after I was let go, and I was humbled to know I had a positive relationship with so many people.

What else....

Exchange 2007 SP1 is out! I expect this to spur adoption of the Exchange 2007 platform, which is sad because Exchange 2007 RTM was a solid product out of the gate. Not perfect, but still really good. I hope to help companies roll this out in the coming months.

Vista SP1 is out! But.... it's not available to the unwashed masses yet. You need to be an MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriber to get it right now. GA is estimated as later this month. I did some beta testing with this and it definitely makes the Vista experience better, especially with file copying.

Windows Server 2008 is RTM! I think this is going to be something between revolutionary and evolutionary. Microsoft finally stripped the OS down to it's core components and let admins add in what they need. And I'm excited to be able to play with Hyper-V someday! I'm somewhat versed in VMware's ESX Server, so I'm naturally curious about a competing product and how they stack up to one another.

Shameless plug - see Kevin Remde's blog (the link is listed on the right column) for a code to get $100 off of a TechNet Plus subsccription. The code is good thru May 2008, I believe.

That's it for now. Have a good one... if anyone reads this. :)

Exchange 2007 is out!

Exchange 2007 is now RTM. Whoo hoo!!!

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/12/07/431782.aspx

Exchange 2007 Demo videos

The Exchange team posted a lot of new demo videos. Take some time and check some of the videos out at:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/preview/evaluation/demos.mspx

Excitement for Exchange 2007

I'm still having a hard time saying "Exchange 2007", because "Exchange 12" just seems to roll off the tongue much easier. Oh well, I'll eventually get used to it.

Anyway, after seeing a demo of Exchange 2007 at the local Exchange User Group meeting (http://www.mneug.org), I'm really looking forward to the Beta 2 release of this product, and obviously the release date sometime in 2007. To summarize some of what I'm excited about:

CCR and LCR (clustering technologies) - CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication) is going to be great for distributed environments or DR scenarios. LCR (Local Continuous Relication) looks good, too. :) More on these when I dig up some good information.

OWA - Near-Outlook level functionality. Every release seems to blur the line further between client and web-based e-mail interactivity. Granted, OWA in Exchange 5.5 was, shall we say, primitive, it still allowed remote access to e-mail without getting into the network (ideally).

Unified Messaging - It was awesome to see the Unified Messaging in action. With Speech Server integrated on the back-end, you can now interact with your mailbox on the phone. And, if you check your mail on a kiosk, or a workstation somewhere you don't want everyone within earshot to hear your voicemail, you can send the voicemail message off to any phone number - your cell, a nearby desk phone, whatever. More accessibility = more ways to stay connected! Wait, is that a good thing? ;)

And, if I may do a little advertisement - http://www.msexchangeteam.com - The Exchange team blog. A great resource, to say the least.