Conference call

What it lacked in new Microsoft products, this year’s TechEd made up for in interesting announcements, not least its Certified Master training programme and the release of TechSmith’s SnagIt 9.

In June I found myself in Orlando for Microsoft's TechEd 2008, now divided into two events, one for developers and one for IT professionals.

This year coming (Microsoft's financial year began on 1 July and runs through to the end of June 2009) will be interesting as there's no huge new wave of software on the cards. True, we've seen the release of Hyper-V and soon SQL Server 2008 will arrive (and there was a lot of buzz in Orlando about that). We should also see Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (effectively SP1 for OCS 2007). But the next big wave won't really start until Microsoft's next business year (July 2009–June 2010) with Windows 7 due out early in 2010 (probably later for the server version). The tsunami that will be Office 14 (including Exchange 14, OCS 14, etc) will see the light of day during next year.

The keynote speech
The keynote this year for the IT Pro edition of TechEd was delivered by Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. You can see Muglia's talk and get a transcript at the Microsoft TechEd Press Pass site at www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/default.mspx.
As usual, the keynote had some interesting demos of key upcoming Microsoft products, including Information Life Cycle Manager 2, Virtualisation (especially Hyper-V) and SQL Server 2008. The keynote opened on the theme of IT Heroes, and featured a chap named Hunter Ely, who assisted in New Orleans with the direct aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was an inspiring story that shows the power of technology.

Apart from the opening, the keynote was nothing to get very excited about. Sadly, Hyper-V wasn't finished on time for Muglia to announce it on stage (you should be able to get it now) and TechEd was a bit too early to start talking about OCS R2.

The exhibition at the IT Pro edition of TechEd was as usual very useful. It's great to meet the people behind the products we use every day – or want to use every day. Software and hardware were on display, and there were vendors from both the education and publishing fields.

What's new?
The coolest device I saw was Dell's Latitude XT tablet PC, although it's still not quite powerful enough for me. The fastest CPU is the Intel Core 2 ULV clocked at 1.2GHz and maximum RAM is 3GB. The disk options include a 5,400rpm, 120GB disk drive, or a 64GB solid state disk. The connectivity options look good. With an additional 9-cell battery slice, Dell says you'll get an 8-hour battery life.

The Dell representatives at TechEd promised that Dell is planning an updated version of the XT later in this calendar year that will bring the model up to the standard I need, without compromising on weight or battery life. The device I saw looked sturdy enough and wasn't too heavy.

The new Zune was good to see (I have since acquired one and love it), and the community lounges were great places to meet and greet friends and to network.

As usual the product stands were gold mines of information. The break-out sessions were excellent as were the hands-on labs. The sheer amount of content provided was quite amazing. And the food wasn't bad either!

However, the two main things that stood out for me were the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) programme, and the release of SnagIt 9 by TechSmith.

The MCM programme
Microsoft describes the MCM programme as providing "advanced technical training and certifications on Microsoft technologies that go beyond any product training offered outside of Microsoft today. IT professionals who successfully complete the programme and certification testing validate their skills as product experts who successfully design and implement solutions that meet the most complex business requirements".

I'd argue about some of the hyperbole in this description, but the programme is nonetheless adventurous. To obtain your MCM certification, you need to attend something like three weeks of intensive hands-on training. For the coming year, this takes place in Redmond, but from "next" year, MSL plans to roll this out into the CPLS channel. The training runs on enterprise class hardware (large servers, SANs, etc) and is taught by some of the best in the field.

The training will be expensive at US$18,500, although with the weak dollar this is not bad given its depth and quality. The class lasts three weeks and the fees do not include travel or accommodation.

MCM candidates must already be knowledgeable in their subject, as Microsoft's web page at www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/default.mspx clearly states. There won't be many eligible candidates – this training is definitely not mainstream. There might be one or two people in many small to medium-sized organisations, with more in larger firms, especially in IT consultancies and big systems integration firms. For these few organisations, making their best staff even better may prove very worthwhile. It's great to see some real in-depth training at last and early indications are very positive. I look forward to seeing this programme mature and I really want to do the MCM for OCS.

There will be three Master-level certification areas to start with: Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. OCS is expected to be added to the list in the coming year. If you are interested in this training, contact your Microsoft Learning Solutions Partner(s) who can help organise your place.

SnagIt 9

Generating screen shots for my columns has traditionally been a lot of work – first using the built-in PrtScn method of screen capturing, then using Microsoft Paint to save the graphic. This is slow, tedious and a lot of work. TechSmith used TechEd to launch a new version of its amazing SnagIt screen capture suite. For more information on SnagIt, check out www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp.

From the main window, you specify how you want SnagIt to carry out a screen capture, with a wealth of built-in methods, or profiles as they are known in SnagIt. You can select a profile to capture a region of your screen, a specific window, the text from a window, all the images from a web page and even contents from a scrolling window (ie, an entire web page that doesn't fit in your browser window). I especially like the window capture profile – bring up the window you want to capture, and after hitting PrtScn, you just tap the window you want to capture and SnagIt does the rest.

Another really useful capture profile offered by SnagIt is the menu capture – after hitting PrtScn, you have a few seconds to get up a menu and then SnagIt grabs just the menu. This is very useful for documenting user interfaces for training purposes. With SnagIt, you can just capture your image and worry about saving it later. SnagIt places each capture into an internal library (which persists across reboots and application restarts). For this article, I just snagged the screen shot, then used SnagIt's library function to save the file.

SnagIt also enables you to draw on top of the capture (adding text, lines, arrows), but do so intelligently. After dropping text or an arrow onto a capture, you can subsequently change, move or remove it. This is very helpful for annotating captures.

SnagIt is a rich, powerful application that I'm very pleased to have discovered. It's making my monthly column easier to develop. To top it off, the support on both the Learning Center web site (www.techsmith.com/learn/snagit/default.asp) and from the company itself is first class. TechSmith also makes Camtasia Studio, which enables you to record your screen to create great videos. Finally, you have to love a company that hires a chief evangelist as cool as TechSmith's Betsy Weber. Her blog, The Visual Lounge at http://visuallounge.techsmith.com/, provides great insights into how the company developed SnagIt 9 and how the company works.

All in all
As the keynote underlined, the coming year is more about consolidation than loads of new products. This will give organisations a chance to take a break from all the changes and maybe catch up with deploying the last round of products.