MMS : Day Four

Today begins with a great keynote session involving a breakout discussion among four major CIO / IT Manager types : Carnival Cruise, Dell, EDS, and Virgin. The discussion around their needs and different environments, and how they are each using the System Center product line, provided a lot of insight into what going on in the real world.

We had the discussion that, five years from now, System Center will be the product line everyone is using in the management space. I'm not even sure that catch-up is the right term for what everyone else will have to do. Interoperate is more like it.

Then it was off to the 911 Case Studies session. Best session of the week by far. Finally, a chance to get in front of an SMS Support Engineer and delve into real problems that affected real people. The case studies were great, the support tools presented were well displayed. Can't say enough about how good this session was.
Looking forward to Assett Management and Internet Client Management after lunch.

UPDATE: Let me just say it now: Service Manager is going to rock. If the pre-release stuff looks (and works) this well, the final product is going to be great.
With auto-incident creation, deep hooks into SCCM07 and SCOM07, Service Manager is going to be the asset / incident / change manager of choice for many, many companies. Can't wait to get me hands on the next beta.

UPDATE: The next item to get a round of applause (and a "That's TechSexy!" from someone) was Internet Based Client Management. This is something that has been plaqueing our company for years now. What do you do when a laptop user doesn't come in the office for two months? How do you distribute new software, patch the OS, etc? We finally have an answer in the Internet Based Client in SCCM07. This is just going to be a HUGE help in our environment.