News, Announcements, and Other Interesting Stuff

NEW! Microsoft Management Summit 2010 - 02/16/2010

If you want a sneak peak at the latest desktop, data center, and cloud technologies from Microsoft, join us at the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 in Las Vegas from April 19 - 23.  MMS 2010 will include deep technical sessions packed with new solutions and best practices.  This year's event is being held at the Venetian Hotel which has been a great location for past conferences.   Our team says they have one of the best poker rooms in Las Vegas; for a little R&R after a long day in technical sessions.  Hope to see you there!

 Check out the website for more details Microsoft Management Summit 2010 

NEW! Philadelphia Area System Center & Forefront Users Group - 02/02/2010

Planning is under way for a new System Center & Forefront Users Group in the Philadelphia Area.  Scott Stumpf, our Chief Technology Officer, is working with Microsoft and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers to plan the inaugural meeting for April 2010.  The users group will focus on all products in the System Center family including Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Data Protection Manager, and the upcoming Service Manager.  As a complement to System Center, the group will also feature topics on the Forefront family of products including Threat Management Gateway, Unified Access Gateway, and the "Stirling" generation of security products that Microsoft is launching in 2010.  If you are interested in participating at any level (organizing, presenting, or just attending) please contact Scott at scott.stumpf@softwarelogic.com.  We'll be posting links to the meeting schedule on our website and the users group website will be launching in the second half of March.

Get Your Hyper-V R2 Cluster On - 01/25/2010

With the release of Hyper-V R2 running on Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft is claiming they have an enterprise-class virtualization solution ready to take on VMware.  Being the skeptics that we are, we decided to take the plunge and put Microsoft to the test. Last fall we began a full transition from VMware ESX Server Enterprise to Hyper-V R2.  We built out a fault-tolerant, 4-node Hyper-V R2 cluster running on a Dell iSCSI SAN with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 running the show.  Is Hyper-V R2 a 100% feature-for-feature match with VMware vSphere?  No it isn't, but for less than 1/3 the price of our VMware licenses it sure comes close.  With live state migration capabilities and the management features provided by SCVMM, we're easily running more than 50 virtual servers with a variety of workloads including Exchange 2010, System Center, SharePoint, and select components of Office Communications Server.  If you would like to find out more about our experience, or if you are interested in a demo of the environment, please contact Larry Decina at larry.decina@softwarelogic.com.

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Betas Looking Good  - 01/20/2010

Our engineering team has been putting SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 through their paces.  Both products offer a wealth of new features.  With Office 2010, Microsoft has fully embraced the ribbon user interface that was introduced with Office 2007 by adding it all members of the office family.  The newest version of Office will ship in both 32-bit and a native 64-bit version for those of you looking to get the most out of 64-bit Windows 7.  The biggest news however is the list of new features available in SharePoint 2010 which will also host web-based versions of the new office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote).   Microsoft is going way beyond SharePoint 2007, introducing new collaboration, business intelligence, workflow, and platform development capabilities.  If you are interested in a sneak peak, Sathish TK will be demonstrating the new features at our Microsoft Technology Conference being hosted at New Horizons on Feb. 4th, 2010.  Registration is on the right side of this page. 

Exchange 2010 Delivers Significant Improvements in High-availability, Compliance, and Unified Messaging  - 01/12/2010

Over the holidays our team was busy completing our migration to Exchange 2010.  Exchange 2007 was a ground-up redesign of the Exchange platform and it has served us and our clients well for the past three years.  Exchange 2010 builds on that solid foundation by making it much easier to build highly available installations, adding new archiving and compliance features, and enhancing unified messaging with features such as personal auto attendants and voice mail preview.  The new features in Exchange 2010 combined with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 provide a truly first-class unified communications experience.   If you are interested in a demo or have questions about Exchange 2010 or Office Communications Server 2007 R2, please contact Larry Decina at larry.decina@softwarelogic.com.