TechEd 2006: See You in New Orleans

Well, another TechEd has come and gone. What did I take away from this year’s event? If I had to focus on three things they are:

• Exchange Server 2007 is going to be a must-have upgrade. The move to x64, the decrease in I/O, Calendar Concierge services, and OWA 2007, will all be important in our environment.
• Office 2007 promises to be an opportunity for our users to become more productive. The new interface is much more accessible and opens up the full functionality of the Office suite to users. The software works how people work, not the other way around.
• Forefront shows that Microsoft is going to be a serious player in the antivirus/antispyware/etc market. It will be interesting to see how companies like Symantec respond.
• Vista gets all the attention, but Longhorn Server is going to be a more compelling upgrade than people seem to think. The work in Terminal Services alone is reason enough to upgrade.

By next year’s TechEd, Vista and Exchange Server 2007 will have both been released. Longhorn Server will be closer and might even have name by then. We’ll have to wait and see. See you in New Orleans (assuming it survives another hurricane season).