Ross Peat (NZ MD)
Usual ra ra and blah blah. Spoke about forthcoming technology wave. Announced a new partnership with Incubators NZ worth NZ$3.5 mill. This is good. Directly affects me.

Iain McDonald (Director in Windows Team Redmond)
Wanted to piss take about the rugby couldn't. Didn;t want to talk about the cricket either

Michael Kleef (Aus D&PE- IT E from Perth) came out for Demo.

• Showed split token admin privs. Eaiser to run with lower priv.
• Showed event log that can in turn trigger other jobsand tasks
• Showed new policy stuf
• Showed virtualised HKEY local machine. I.e. apps write to user specific apps while still able to write to HKEY local machine. Old stuff will thus keep running under new Longhorn Security
• Search
• Spoke about metadata tagging of file system objects. But what about WinFS? That is what they SHOULD have done.
• Browser Security. Support for talking about certificates and other security stuff in IE. Anti phishing stuff. Little bit of demo hell

Back into PPT with Iain.

Longhorn Ship Date H2 2006.

Now talking about VS2k5 and SQL2k5.
SOme figures

• Up to 70% CODE REDUCTION
• Up to 40% better performance

Prishant (some VS PM from Redmond... don't know him) showing VSTS.

• Showed applicaton designer.
• System designer
• Validation. Both pretty uncompelling demos IMHO. Sorry guys.
• Unit testing. Feeling rushed. Not enough detail given as to what is going on. Showed the code coverage support- this was VERY cool. VSTS can enforce 100% code coverage.
• Security. Showed a CPP demo. Showed security warning around potential buffer overrun. Basically the same tools used for security analysis internally.
• Web Load Testing. All runs within VSTS. Can generate work items directly from within test envrionment. Looks good but again..... not keynote RA RA sort of stuff.... the crowd has yet to really go *WOW* to anything.

Back into PPT. Talking about SQL Server.

Showed the 'death by PPT' slide listing new features in SQL.

Demo with (Andrew Coates another Aussie DPE guy from Sydney) showing reportng services. Showing end user reporting. Clickonce application. Hooray real world Clickonce.

1. Asks t choose datasource- pre cnfigured by DBA
2. Drag and drop report designer. Looks quite nice.
3. Very nice drag and drop simple reporting.
4. Showed a good 3 minute report build.
5. Showed ability to save report back into sharepoint. Showed reporting services web part.
6. Allows paremeters to be passed into report from the web part.
7. Thought this was a pretty good demo. Still not super *WOW* factor though.

Now we're into WIndows Server. Talking about being non disruptive around updates. Help users to better manage updates. Spoke about 4 yearly majors releases and 2 yearly update releases. Trying t show value in Software Assurance.

Speaking about Windows Server 2003 R2. Sharepoint Services, .NET 2.0, Unix Interop tools.

• Better support for management of Branch offices- remote backup, management, file and print. Minimal bandwidth requirements.
• Better Web Single sign on support. E.g. Fidelity uses Web Single SIgn On for MS Staff with the MS AD authentication.
• Storage. Speaking about archival of documents. Better SAN support. Better quota support- not allow JPGs, MP3s etc... Better UNIX NFS support.

Now talking abut 5 major windows server strategy areas

1. Distributed Applications - Indigo
   Coudn't remember the new 'Foundation name'.
   Spoke about new Connected Systems Division (Biztalk, AD and Indigo teams). Spoke about how WIndows Server sits in here.
   Spoke about WCF. Interop play all based around web services.
   Easy service and management models. 
2. Storage
   More and more storage is on edges of network. Smartphones, notebooks. Better replication of file system for these devices. Looks GREAT. Not sure if he made the case as strongly as he could have.
3. Integrating the Edge
   Dealing with machines at the edge. Less control. How do you use plicy to define and protect the edge.
1. Federated identity
2. Multifactor and improved auth.
3. Universal addresability-IPv6.
4. Define the boundaries. Good IPSec cert based
5. Network access protection. When laptop returns to physical network after being out in internet land. Quarantine and re-connect scanning and automated patching. Anti malware being built in.
6. Per application VPSs and Firewalls.

Dynamic Systems Initiative
A move to model based management and development.

Virtualization.
Building virtualization into the core of windows. All very much about management. (Not cost me thinks).
Licensed the VHD format for Virtual Server.
Virtual Server R2 end of 2005. Will support Linux and other *nix's. BIG step for MSFT.
Longhorn will have Hypervisor and will support new virtualizaton chips from iNTEL AND amd.

Wrap Up
Showed product waves.
All finished.
In the end a not too bad keynote.