Day 1: TechEd USA: Steve Ballmer announces WSUS release

Top News: Steve Ballmer announces Windows Server Update Services and Microsoft Update release. Watch out on Microsoft downloads for it. Should be there shortly.

He also showed some great demonstrations of mobile device management with Exchange 2003.

The ability with Exchange 2003 SP2 to manage settings on a Windows Mobile 5.0 device and remotely wipe it clear if several failed password attempts occur was way cool! Also could now enforce policies on the device and do an always up to date function like BlackBerry has today.

The coolest thing I liked was the ability for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) to remotely manage a Solaris server using WS-Management web services. Showed a demo of a Sun server having a fan pulled out and saw MOM show the impact within seconds. Very cool for the “non-Microsoft” interop thing that people always ask for.

Went to the “Exchange Today and Tomorrow”session. It was a packed session! Standing room only. Very good overview of where we are today and whats coming in the SP2 release as well as futures. We will do this one at TechEd AU and NZ. Watch out for it!

Went to the “Servicing your application using MSI 3.x” session. I think people find MSI patching difficult at best. This session covers how to do this and how to address the common issues. Again this will be at TechEd AU and NZ.

They have this concept here called “Cabanas”. These are informal presentations with open Q&A to allow a topic to be discussed and questions to be asked at the same time. Very cool idea that Im sure we will be doing in TechEd AU and NZ in some form.

Also found a group of MSFT guys doing podcasting...check it out at https://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2005/podcast.mspx