DPM 2007 is on the horizon - and everybody is starting to figure it out!

These last several weeks have been very exciting - starting with the release of Beta 2 for DPM 2007 at Tech-Ed ... and am writing this from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC).

When I joined Microsoft two years ago, people would come up and ask either:

1)  Why is DPM part of System Center (management products)?

2)  What is DPM?

The last one hurt  :-)  but to the first one, I explained that " Backup is a management task, and like its brethren Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, aided IT Pro's in managing, monitoring, deploying and yes, backing up, the rest of their Windows infrastructure. blah, blah, blah ..." (it's true, I just got tired of explaining it)

But these days, no one is asking "What is DPM? " ... they all seem to be asking "When is DPM 2007 going to ship? " - and that's a very good thing.  That's the excitement that I had when I saw the potential of DPM two years ago - and signed on.  Now, everybody is figuring it out that DPM really is a very cool thing.

I've been in data protection for over 15 years, with integrators, backup vendors, replication vendors, and now Microsoft.  You used to always buy your OS and Applications from one vendor, and back them up with another.  DPM offers protection for the Microsoft OS (Server 2003, Server 2008, XP and Vista) ... along with Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Virtual Server ... FROM MICROSOFT.  That really changes the game !!!

And more and more people are starting to see that.

So, no one is asking "What is DPM" (which is a good thing) ... and most folks now understand that Backup is part of IT management, so it is reasonably a System Center product.  Although a few months ago, just to keep things interesting, Microsoft interally merged the DPM folks with their Storage buddies who make Windows Storage Server and manage the file capabilities within Windows Server OS.  So now, most of the folks at Microsoft who think about disks, and tapes, and files, and data ... are all marching to a single drummer.  Its a good thing for the new team, as well as for partners and ultimately customers, and something I'll add more to in another blog.

In the meantime, good night from WPC in Denver ... and get ready for DPM 2007