So it’s been a few day’s since the end of Microsoft Tech.Ed and I can say that I attended some fantastic sessions, and on the flipside, went to 2 sessions in particular that were marketing based, and didn’t offer me anymore insight that I can’t gleam from the PDF overview documents on the microsoft.com portal.
Vittorio Bertocci, Senior Architect Evangelist presented the session for ‘ARC204 Claims-Based Identity: An Overview’, and I have to say it would have been close to the most enjoyable session of the three days. Using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS 2.0), WIF, CardSpace 2.0 , Vittorio, in his unique and humorous Italian presentation style and Tablet PC to draw his explanations of the technology and how it can be used in real world scenarios. Those of you that know me, I prefer to use a whiteboard to communicate my ideas when I am developing solutions, particularly when I have a hare-brained idea for an infrastructure deployment, so it really re-enforced how this technology can be used.
As a Pre-Sales Solution Architect specialising in Microsoft technologies, I am constantly involved in company mergers and acquisitions, assisting clients to develop and deliver solutions that allow them to share corporate data, develop security models to allow application integration and what is always atop of their merger project plan, make disparate Microsoft Exchange environments work together.
Vittorio’s session opened my eyes to the possibility of allowing companies to bring customised application’s onboard quickly during mergers and with business partners, by using core AD security and federated security relationships. Yes, this technology has been around for a long time, but finally expensive middleware identity management platforms are not required to provision this capability. Key to this technology is the ability to develop applications that use ASP.NET or CardSpace, and leverage the existing corporate authentication mechanisms. This is not to say that third party authentication cannot be used. ADFS supports the WS-Federation, WS-Trust and the SAML 2.0 protocols so that authentication vendors such as Sun, Oracle and IBM can potentially interoperate.
I am currently working with a client with this technology in the forefront of my mind to help them close the gap to reduce project overhead and give them a strategic advantage on application delivery in the future. I hope that they sign-off so that I can assist them to implement this exciting new feature of Windows Server 2008 R2.
UPDATE: ADFS 2.0 has passed SAML 2.0 interoperability testing
The second session I wanted to highlight that I really enjoyed was the ‘UNC311 Telephony in OCS R2′. Purely and simply, this was a ‘minimal marketing’ demonstration session that showed why OCS R2 is gaining a lot more respect in terms of enterprise telephony features, and why Microsoft are ultimately trying to develop a replacement for the company PBX.
The presenters had this session right on the money. Kudos to John Smith and Brendan Carius from Microsoft. It’s great to see that the local guys can present as well as the imports!
My one complaint; the session I attended about OCS the day before. When Microsoft get partners to present, it might be an idea that they don’t just talk about how good they are, and actually give us some technical insight into real world deployments…I work for a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, and I don’t plan on using the competition to do OCS rollouts. If I had of known it was going to be a services offering session, I would have skipped and found something useful to attend!
Overall Tech.Ed 2009 gave me some insight into latest and greatest Microsoft have released in the last 6-12 months. Did I find it value for money? I paid out of my own pocket…unfortunately not, but it was an enjoyable week where there were some definite highlights. Was the free notebook a nice addition to the conference? Certainly, it’s set the bar for all future conferences as far as I am concerned. Facilities, surroundings and hospitality were fantastic. I may not attend next year, but if I do, I hope Microsoft raise the technical bar, and leave the marketing to the exhibition floor.
