Article by Rob West<\/p>\n
As my esteemed colleague Jorge points out, it has been a busy summer (and now autumn) for us on this team, and as such, our posting frequency has not been, shall we say, \u201coptimized.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been on the road a bit, and speaking at a number of Windows 7 Launch events, where I get the opportunity to speak to groups of IT Pros on the features and benefits of Windows 7. That, in itself, should be cause enough to celebrate my good fortune. But, because I\u2019m a creature of habit, I cannot let these opportunities go by without extolling the virtues of my favorite topic: optimization.<\/p>\n
And let me begin (again) by saying the reaction to the enterprise features of Win 7 is overwhelmingly positive. I can\u2019t remember the last time I felt such a crackle in the air (or saw so many full houses!) over an operating system. But once the shine of the OS that will displace XP and bring us all to a fighting stance with those increasingly strident (and \u2013 some would argue \u2013 inaccurate) commercials coming out of Cupertino is absorbed, we get the chance to get down to brass tacks: what will this do for me, my department, and my company?<\/p>\n
The answer, it would seem, is at once simple, and rather complex. Folks in the IT world are facing tough challenges today. The usual ones: shrinking budgets, constrained resources, fewer headcount, etc. But also a host of new ones: XP\u2019s looming end-of-life, virtualization opportunities \u2013 there to be missed, and new modes of delivering data and services to end users \u2013 both on premise and in the cloud.<\/p>\n
IT Pros are sizing up Windows 7 and wondering if it is time to approach their management (or, more likely these days, their CFO) with the proposition that it\u2019s time to bring the workforce into the 21st century. Microsoft touts this, with the broad brush of marketing, as \u201cThe New Efficiency\u201d and is poised for a barrage of new releases that threatens to make our jobs easier (or at least destroy those few places of refuge where we don\u2019t do any work ;-).<\/p>\n
Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are just the beginning, and the IO folks among us know that these great releases are simply a foundation, and that one must, as a forward-thinking, new-world-of-work adherent consider the benefits of unifying their communication, virtualizing their workloads, and creating a user-centric infrastructure of people-focused data and services, while at the same time perpetually seeking ways to lower costs and improve efficiency not only in the workforce, but among IT staffers.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve seen through my ruse, naturally, and will immediately identify my larger project \u2013 one that I put forth at my speaking engagements. The Microsoft stack offers a ton of \u201csynergetic value\u201d (take that, search engines) in the simple act of combining products that work well together and evoke new paradigms for how we work. I promise you: I\u201dm not just a shill for Redmond. I\u2019m a believer \u2013 I\u2019ve seen the benefits of zero-touch image deployments of Windows 7 that leverage the easy application delivery that App-V provides. I\u2019ve seen the look of relief on the faces of administrators who feared SMS, but now love SCCM. IT leaders love the word \u201cfree\u201d and as such, are starting to realize that a hypervisor is a hypervisor, but a free hypervisor is good business. The list goes on.<\/p>\n
So what does this all have to do with my Win 7 Launch engagements? A lot, actually. I wrote earlier that IT Pros are excited about Win 7, but that once that excitement dies down, they want to get into some pretty deep technical discussions about how to deploy it, how to leverage MDOP, and how to watch it all carefully with System Center.<\/p>\n
A quick show of hands at these events \u2013 something that surprised me \u2013 was that 90% of the folks in attendance were already running some version of Win 7, and many were actively experimenting with Office 2010. These folks came not to hear about how great 7 is, but to hear best practices for making it freaking HAPPEN at their company.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when my excitement stirs. I can get past the PowerPoint and Pastries part of the day, and get my hands on the whiteboard, where I can draw a vision of the future NOW.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why I get up in the morning, put on pants I don\u2019t really like, heft my two laptops onto a plane, and stand in front of my colleagues and speak. Almost nothing makes me as happy as watching a room full of smart folks stop working on their laptops and start asking the more difficult, off-slide questions.<\/p>\n
I hope I\u2019ll see you out there, and that our conversations prevent me from ever getting to that last slide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Article by Rob West As my esteemed colleague Jorge points out, it has been a busy summer (and now autumn) for us on this team, and as such, our posting frequency has not been, shall we say, \u201coptimized.\u201d I\u2019ve been on the road a bit, and speaking at a number of Windows 7 Launch events,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,441,468],"tags":[234,76,467,409],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journey","category-tech-talk","category-thoughts-ramblings","tag-application-virtualization","tag-desktop-management","tag-musings","tag-windows-7"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":17,"label":"Journey"},{"value":441,"label":"Tech Talk"},{"value":468,"label":"Thoughts and Ramblings"}],"post_tag":[{"value":234,"label":"Application Virtualization"},{"value":76,"label":"Desktop Management"},{"value":467,"label":"Musings"},{"value":409,"label":"Windows 7"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/jorgep-BlogPostGeneric.jpg",1024,512,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Jorge Pereira","author_link":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/author\/jorge\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":17,"name":"Journey","slug":"journey","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":18,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":318,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":17,"category_count":318,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Journey","category_nicename":"journey","category_parent":0},{"term_id":441,"name":"Tech Talk","slug":"tech-talk","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":451,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":678,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":441,"category_count":678,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Tech Talk","category_nicename":"tech-talk","category_parent":0},{"term_id":468,"name":"Thoughts and Ramblings","slug":"thoughts-ramblings","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":478,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":230,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":468,"category_count":230,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Thoughts and Ramblings","category_nicename":"thoughts-ramblings","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":234,"name":"Application Virtualization","slug":"application-virtualization","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":244,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":29,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":76,"name":"Desktop Management","slug":"desktop-management","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":80,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":16,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":467,"name":"Musings","slug":"musings","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":477,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":115,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":409,"name":"Windows 7","slug":"windows-7","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":419,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":11,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}