[SGVLUG] OT: Review MS "Heroes Happen {here}" event

[matti]

hi,

Quickie Review:

MS Heroes Happen Here...
(as in IT heros.. what a geek fest )

http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/events/los-angeles/default.mspx

LOTS of people at the Nokia theater
Free breakfest was good, Tom Brokaw
opened for Ballmer in the morning keynote.

Surprisingly Ballmer mentioned Open Source
in a non-negative way!!! Shocked me.

Throughout the day at various sessions open
source products and tech was mentioned..
again in non-negative ways. 

What's up?

I guess it's embrace time...

MS mentioned Novell Suse Linux a couple of times,
and Novell even had a "booth" (ok, more of a 
standup coffee table.. ) in the expo hall.

lunches ran out... but someone did come to
the rescue and brought out some nice lunch sandwich
supplies a bit later, tho you had to wait an
miss the first after lunch sessions.

I attempted to win as much as i could but
had little luck :(



so in the end, I ended up with a few too many
sugary snacks and soda in me, and a bag of
MS SW and assorted literature....

heres what SW the bag had:

MS Windows Vista Ultimate w/sp1
(promo kit w/90day trial of windows live
one care)

MS Expression Studio Eval Edition

MS Windows Mobile Dev Resource Kit

Limited Time Trial SW MS Forefront and
System Center

Voucher for MS SQL Server 2008
Eval only copy (standard edition)

SQL Server 2008 Community Review Ed.

Windows Server 2008 Promo Edition 1yr eval license
(blah!! I HATE SW which expires!!!! yuck!)
32bit

MS Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition


So, MS is giving greater support to running
PHP, Ruby, and other open source tech on 
their server! Hmmmm.. they want the PHP
developers to use MS servers.

Not any mention that I recalled about MySQL,
but the did mention Linux in variouis places
including supporting linux desktops in the MS networking
infrastructure, as well as running linux
servers in MS virtual hosts.

Well, that's my experiences.. and while I was
disappointed by some of the licenses provided,
I am happy from a consultant point of view I
don't have to spend money to get vista when
my clients ask me about it.

i still don't see the need to use MS server for PHP
when LAMP just is working so well in terms of
cost, performance and deployments.

I guess the big targets for MS are VMware
and Oracle ... and naturally if you are giong against
those you need to support Linux to some degree,
otherwise it's far easier for the cutomer to just
pick a non-microsoft solution.

best
matti

btw - there is another one of these events on April 8th
in Anahiem, in case you wanted to go.



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