Tech Ed - Day 2

Party day! But more about that later. The first session I attended was 21st Century Networking by the ever entertaining Steve Riley. Suggested that we should approach all business applications like we do email - it's too important NOT to be available anywhere, anytime from any machine. He suggests a combincation of IPv6, IPsec, NAP, and group policy to build a replacement for VPN gateways.. His blog explains his step by step plan: http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/
Developing an Active Directory Disaster Recovery Plan was a little disappointing - I was expecting a technical how to on what to do if AD goes down, instead we got a session on DR planning and assessing risk.
I attended an MVP session on ADO.NET data services. Our developers are working on a project needing synchronisation and I thought this would be a good start. I felt a bit sorry for Angel, the awesome presenter. He had just two of us in the room to start with and both of us had blank looks as he explained JSON, ATOM and REST. The other guy was a systems admin and I realised how far behind I am in the developer world after not being in it for the past several years. However, the new EDM tools look very useful and make coding against databases much simpler. I then trotted off to a lab to exercise my new found knowledge and found the ADO.NET data services lab very useful (once I could get a development lab PC - they were popular!)
IE8 Application Compatibility - What Every Developer Needs to Know to Get Ready was very useful and gave some good tips about using meta tags in order to start using IE8 without having to ensure that all your pages are compatible. Basically you can tell each site or page which version of IE to render the page in. Go -on, download IE8 - I know you want to! - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx. (if you are on XP still, upgrade to SP3 first)
Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, formerly from Kidaro went over Microsoft's answer to VMWare VDI - I gotta say I am not convinced that they have caught up just yet. Also the desktop optimisation kit which contains the virtualisation product is only available to software assurance customers.
The party was held on site this year. I seem to always miss the Lunar Park, Movie World parties - whenever I have gone it's been the nightclub ones. This was kind of similar without the dancing or the free mixed drinks on offer (maybe a good thing!) The theme was carnival and the place was decked out like a 1930s fair complete with sideshow alley. I was thrilled to actually win on one of the games (getting balls into a bucket) and proudly showed off my prize - a sparkly pink cowboy hat. (We shall not talk of my lack of prowess at the pinball machine). There were also several boys (as there are at Tech Ed) who were similarly chuffed with their pink sparkly cowboy hats. Ah, techs - you will say one thing for 'em - they really don't care what other people think! Overhead: "What's the point of a party with 3000 guys and no chicks. They could have at least bussed in some strippers." Ladies, we have some way to go!

Corporate uses for iGoogle

I am not sure if I will be excommunicated from TechEd for blogging about the G-Word on a TechEd CommNet machine, but I have been meaning to post about iGoogle for a while now. A few of our lawyers have asked for a tool to manage RSS feeds. Outlook would seem the obvious choice, but with document management it's just way too busy in there. iGoogle provided a great solution for us and we are now looking at ways to incorporate a CGW themed iGoogle into our intranet. Google is a familiar interface for our lawyers and they find it easy to use. The tools like the meeting planner gadget, which allows them to easily plan meetings with overseas attendees, have also proved popular.

"Geek" Girls

I felt that I needed to explain my position against attaching the word "Geek" to every women focused group in IT. Now, a few years back when I was programming full time I wore that geek badge very proudly and I know lots of other women in IT do too - and that's cool - I understand that. But I can be technically great and not feel that I need to call myself a "Geek." I personally love fashion and art and whenever I tell anyone I work in IT they tend to do a double-take. When we talk to girls in schools I don't want to just appeal to the quiet, perhaps socially awkward girl who excels at Maths & Sciences. I want to appeal to the dreamer at the back whose life is about art and music. I want to appeal to the overachiever at the front that excels at both sport and school but feels that with her guaranteed OP 1 she should go into medicine or law. I want to appeal to the slightly rebellious girl who isn't sure what she wants to do, but knows it will need to change all the time to be exciting for her. I feel strongly that if you talk to a group of a young women and only present this "geek" personality you will alienate more than half the room. I get that "Geek Girls" etc. is fun and cute and tongue in cheek, but we just need to avoid creating a stereo-type that will ultimately defeat the purpose of many of those groups - to attract more girls into IT.

Tech Ed - Day 1

I attended four sessions today as well as the women in IT luncheon and the ask the experts dinner. Relational Engine SQL Server 2008 Improvements was an interesting topic, but unfortunately the presenter lost quite a few of us - not because the concepts were too difficult to understand but they weren't presented clearly. However, the new merge capability will be useful for our developers. Merge allows you to compare new data with existing data in a table. If a portion of the data exists you can choose one option (e.g. update) and if the data doesn't exist you can choose another path (e.g. insert). The art and science behind creating a great user experience was a great session with Deep Zoom providing some very cool visuals. The basic message there was simplify the functionality in your applications. Unify Your Communications! was presented by Eileen Brown, and was both useful and incredibly entertaining. Eileen relied on a live demo of office round table where we got to meet some of her team in the UK plus their laundry. She also used the following to demonstrate unified comms - check it out:

How to get Social in the Office with Office talked social networking using the Microsoft tools. They are obviously trying very hard to be leaders in this market but I am still not sure why you would pay for some of these tools when there is so much available for free. Microsoft has obviously conceded this and joined the open source universe with http://www.codeplex.com/ . The women in technology lunch was great - there are more than 6 of us! It should have been at least half an hour longer as there was a lot to talk about. The one thing that concerned me was the continued promotion of "Geek" girls. As I have blogged before, I think that this approach alienates quite a number of girls that would be interested in IT if the "geek" idea wasn't part of the promotion. Again, the focus was on maths and science, which ignores the holistic nature of the IT profession. Girls that are a great at art and design are needed by the IT industry just as much as those with more traditional technical skills.

Tech Ed 2008

I am at Tech 2008 and have just attended the opening party which was above all things, blokey. Picture this - around 700 people, mostly male, mulling around, drinking beers and checking out some pretty cool new technology as well as some pretty old technology by way of classic arcade games. In sharp contrast to PacMan and Space Invaders, a Guitar Hero competition saw some very impressive hand-eye co-ordination. I am looking forward to attending a good variety of sessions, mainly focussing on development streams and unified comms. Tomorrow they are also hosting a women in IT luncheon which will be interesting, considering I think I spotted around 6 other women tonight. Looking forward to the party on Thursday night, although sadly I will have to leave the champagne drinking to those 6 other ladies.

The Data Centre continued....

After thinking about the business pros and cons for outsourcing the data centre, I started to collect some pricing. It's become very clear that the only way that outsourcing makes sense is if you have several offices - otherwise data outsourcing is simply cost prohibitive (even compared the rent in Brisbane city). So we will be keeping our data centre in house and I am looking forward to having my "toys" nearby.

Outsourcing the data centre - pros and cons

Next year our firm moves to new premises in a building currently being constructed, which means the IT team has a challenging and exciting project ahead.
As we are utilising an integrated fit out, decisions around the data room need to be made within the space of a few weeks.
Inevitably, the issue of outsourcing our data centre has come up.
Historically, we have kept our servers in house and there is a certain level of comfort that we derive from that.
However, we are a law firm - IT is not our central service offering so I am keeping an open mind about whether outsourcing the data centre is for us.
There are two models we are considering, co-location, where we still own the equipment and just house it remotely with a dedicated organisation and true outsourcing where we simply "rent" server space.
I found a conversation on Tech Republic very helpful in this area: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11179-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=188756&start=0
An interesting thing to note is that outsourcing/in-sourcing is a cyclical trend with pendulum currently swinging back in the in-source space.
What has become clear to me through researching our options is that outsourcing will only work if your data centre provider is truly a business partner who understands your needs. From this kind of relationship innovation can grow. Many outsourcing projects appear to have failed due the lack of flexibility and agility compared to administrating servers in house.
Another point is that outsourcing may not necessarily save you money in the long run if your current IT team is running the system well and within budget.
However, as city space becomes rarer and rarer and rents continue to rise, companies do need ask themselves if housing servers is the best use of square metres. An off-site dedicated facility will undoubtedly have better cooling, power and security than you can provide in a city high rise. There are number of issues that I have not yet resolved in my mind:
1. Introduction of critical point of failure in your link back to the offsite facility.
2. How to maintain proprietary products that may need maintenance at a server level by third parties.
3. How agile can outsourcing be? Am I prepare to wait several weeks for changes to be made?
4. How will this mind shift affect the partners (the owners of the business) and IT team.
I am not discounting out-sourcing, but at the moment I haven’t fully realised the business case for it.