Powershell - The Vision the Future

I am learning Powershell as much as my time allows.The importance of Powershell in Exchange 2007 cannot be underestimated. Powershell drives Exchange 2007. In point of fact the Exchange Management Console (the new graphical console for Exchange 2007) is built entirely on top of MMC 3.0 and PowerShell. It is very different from Exhange System Manager for Exchange 2003. It is very much based around the task and function you wish to carry out on your Exchange Oranganisation Server or Mailboxes.Powershell will mean an IT Professional will simply have to learn it, love it and get to grips with its very powerful array of functionality. So the challenge is IMHO how do we evangalise about Powershell in a positive way. From my experience through my day job and past life I have come across two types of Administrator . Those which embrace scripting and those that do not. With the advent of Powershell In Exchange 2007 the other (roughly) 50% are going to have to get used to a different approach of working - but the caveat being a very much more efficient and powerful way of automating those mundane administrative tasks plus so much more. Thinking around this subject I was reading Guy Thomas ComputerPerformance Web Site. Guy has put together The top four reasons he feels it is import to learn Powershell. Well putting my hat into the ring I can add another,

System Center Operations Manager 2007 - This product building a solution based on PowerShell. I am looking forward to more detailed announcements on this in the future. In the meantime I am busy working through all the great resources Paul Flaherty and Brett Johnson has put together, which Eileen Brown also blogged about recently. So command line here i come !.

P.S. I am trying to learn at least 2 new cool parameters per week for powershell. The couple I have come across so far is the out-html.msh/ps1 and out-ie.msh/ps1 (depending on the version of monad\powershell you are currently using Exchange RC0 or Powershell RC1. These cmdlets can take your command you are running against your Exchange Organization and display this in a clean easy to read html format. This has the potential to create some excellent useable output to be then repurposed in numerous ways...plus of course alot cleaner and easier to read the parameters. There are some great examples of this command and example scripts on Vivek Sharmas weblog. He also has a link to his excellent webcast as well on Exchange Server 2007 Management Shell and Scripting (Level 300) which has helped me get on the Powershell Highway.