Tech-Ed: Review of Day 5
The last day of Tech-Ed…
Ilse van Criekinge started with certificates and Exchange in "UCN315 – Certificates and Exchange 2007: Best Practices and Lessons". Although I already encountered expired self-signed certificates (those things are only valid for a year….), it was very nice to see this confirmed. As Exchange Server 2007 relies more on encrypted communications, it is imperative to know how certificates come in play. Very good start of the day!
The second session was "UNC317 – Exchange Server SP1 and Hyper-V". Most of the things I already knew (intuitively), but hearing some Exchange Server roles perform better on Hyper-V than direct on the hardware was very good to hear. Microsoft's ability in catching up with other Virtualization products also impressed me.
During the lunch sessions slot I decided to follow "UNC03-PD Benefits of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in the daily business", as I felt like I had to give OCS the benefit of the doubt. That was a wise decision, the product demo was a good example of how companies can benefit from OCS. In the demo it was integrated with Exchange Server 2007 and more importantly with Microsoft CRM. The CRM client interface immediately showed the customer information using CallerID when he/she phoned this company. Brilliant!
I recently had a customer that really wanted Blackberries in their environment, even when I explained that Windows Mobile could be an alternative. Not really knowing what the differences was I attended "MBL402 – Windows Mobile as Secure as Blackberry – are you Joking?". The session was fun and very informative and in my opinion not at al bashing at Blackberry. Let's just say that I was surprised with some of the security issues of Blackberry devices, but also of ActiveSync enabled devices (like the iPhone, so not Windows Mobile). This will definitely come back in my consulting assignments.
The last session by Mark Russinovich "SEC307 Windows Security Boundaries", was quite illuminating in the internal processes of Windows and when an issue will recieve a fix or not. A good explanation of wether something is a security boundary or not. This is valuable knowledge when engaged in an OS security discussion (which probably will come up in a Windows versus "A much better OS" discussion)!
Overall
It was a rewarding, fun, interesting but also exhausting week. That's why I didn't update this blog immediately…. Unfortunately I didn't get to see Barcelona as much as I would have liked to. But I did see enough to want to return on a holiday.
Next year in Berlin. Will I be there again? At the end of this week I really do want that. Not just for Berlin, but mostly for acquiring knowledge and new viewpoints.
In my humble opinion, Tech-Ed really did lift me up a bit and made me a better IT Pro!