TechEd Keynote

Keynote was delivered by Bob Muglia, starting with an awesome “Back To The Future” intro sequence, Dolorean, 640kb gags and all. The premise is that Bob was afraid of what he was about to go tell the audience and gets Doc to take him to the future to see how all the “visions” have panned out.

He is taken to the future of the visions like Hailstorm, WinFS, so on and so forth.

The premise is of course that none of those visions have ever worked out.

So Doc takes him to the far future, to see the visions that actually worked out!

Bob is then greeted by Microsoft BOB! of all things. This of course is the worst news, ever, for Paul Fitzgerald. BOB is back dude, and he’s after you!

Then clippy pops up, with the usual greeting.

Bob is then taken back to the past, to TechEd 2007 keynote in a smoking Delorean. Makes you wonder what the TechEd ticket would have cost for training only, without recreating decade-old sci-fi comedies. But I digress.

The Movie

Here are the first two minutes of TechEd 2007 keynote.

The Message

Jim Muglia of Microsoft and Tom Bittman of Gartner delivered the keynote, talking about optimizations and initiatives. The big message was that the most important thing at the moment is the ability to measure performance and optimize whats already there. The other big message was to focus on outsourcing – they even showcased Energizer outsourcing story – to prove that it makes sense to let some tech work be taken care of by someone else…. Still think you’re too small for TechEd, cause you’re missing out on a ton of stuff thats directly relevant to you.

This all, of course, is something Dave Sobel talked about over a year ago. Talk about ahead of the curve. 

Virtualization in 2008

Bottom line: Microsoft is moving hard against Vmware. Very flashy demo of completely integrated virtualization management, together with 64bit emulation, PowerShell integration, quick Physical-to-Virtual moves, so on and so forth. Sad part is, Vmware has had this for quite some time, big time yawner. Bob is talking about how integration is important here, how the value is in it being together. Granted, that’s valuable but when you’re behind the curve or (pardon the keynote punt) stuck in the past you’ve got to do a lot more than just hope to catch up later this summer or next year.

Models Capture Knowledge, Drive Consistency

Talk about modelling and losing people, fast.