Fuel Your IT Strategy at These Breakout Sessions

A gathering like Ignite, the premier Microsoft tech conference, is the perfect place to get the big-picture overview of where technology is heading. And going to Ignite is also the fastest way to learn about the nitty-gritty details of implementation. While big announcements from the platform are exciting, the breakout sessions are where you can learn the fine points of specific tools and get your detailed questions answered.

Here are three breakout sessions poised to break through at Ignite in Chicago, May 4–8, 2015:

What's New in Microsoft System Center

This is a great overview of all the goodies we’ve packed into System Center 2012 R2, covering a litany of new features and much more.

But it’s really about the vision and direction that experts have for the datacenter of the future—which will also show where the System Center leadership team will be making significant investments and how they’ll collaborate with the enterprise ecosystem.

Microsoft Loves Linux: Better Together on the Microsoft Cloud Platform

Linux? Microsoft is a big fan. And so are our customers. In fact, 20% of all operating systems on Azure are Linux.

At this session, you’ll learn about the overall Microsoft strategy for Linux. We’ll get into the details, too. You’ll see what we’ve done with Windows Server, Hyper-V, System Center, Azure, Azure Pack, and Visual Studio—and how to get them working well with Linux. You’ll also learn how IT developers, IT admins, database admins, DevOps, and everyone else on the team can work smoothly across platforms.

Microsoft's New Windows Server Containers

At this session, you’ll learn more about the exciting new technology of containers. We’ll show you how containers work with Windows Server, plus how Docker will integrate with them. 

So what are containers? Windows Server containers give you an isolated, portable, and resource-controlled operating environment in which you can run applications. This is done so that containerized applications can run without risk of being affected by dependencies or environmental configuration. By sharing the same kernel and other key system components, containers can increase the speed of startup times and reduce resource overhead.

That’s all cool. But the great news is that now Windows Server also supports Docker containers¾the open source Linux container solution. Docker has done a fantastic job of making it easy to manage the lifecycle of containers in Docker Hub. And because the applications can be mixed, you can choose the technologies from both the Linux ecosystem and the Windows Server ecosystem that best fit your systems. In fact, many IT departments are already running a mix of Windows Server and Linux workloads. Windows Server containers can run in your datacenter, your hosted datacenter, any public cloud, or Azure.

Don't miss your opportunity to learn about containers and get the most out of this new technology using Windows Server, Docker, and Linux.

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