CIO Summit Day 2

Day two of the Microsoft CIO Summit was another long day but thankfully not quite as long as the first day. I got back to my hotel around 6:00 PM and just crashed. So much information packed into such a short time...and a lot of sitting! I'm just going to throw-out some random thoughts from day two:

• Everyone that spoke at the Summit was a Microsoft manager of some kind but it's really hard to follow all the different titles...or make sense of them. There were Directors, Managers, Vice Presidents, Corporate Vice Presidents, Chiefs, General Manager's, etc.
• They liked to say how much they "eat their own dog food." They said that a lot. In fact, they even made a verb out of it, "we don't dog food our licensing but we've thought about it." Funny!
• They all seemed to have a good high-level strategy for their individual line of businesses and everyone seemed to have a prioritized roadmap. They're big on roadmaps. I couldn't help but think about how I could do a better job of that myself...documenting a strategy and communicating that strategy often throughout my organization.
• There's so much that can be done with Server and Desktop Management and we need to get better at both. And we will!
• They did a panel discussion with some of their own IT Manager's and it struck me how they have so many of the same problems we all have. Prioritizing projects, IT governance, etc. Of course, their problems are on a much bigger scale.
• Leading IT is, in fact, the toughest job in the world! I'm absolutely convinced of it now.
• Our ability to actually affect business change is the big challenge. Everyone has access to the same products and technologies. We can implement just about anything but we have to have the business change that comes along with the implementation or we've failed.
• There's a large and increasing role for Business Analysts...and we don't have any! At least not formal positions. But we've got some folks that do a pretty good job filling-in.
• Again with the SharePoint! We have to make that project a priority for so many reasons.

Overall, I was very impressed with the event. I was also somewhat flattered to be there. There were only about 300 IT professionals from across the country and it was an invitation-only event. So that was pretty cool to be invited! Hmmmm...what do you think they want? Lol!

Homeward Bound

I'm riding the train back down to Eugene now and, since it's after five o'clock now, I'm enjoying a nice cold Widmer Hef. My new copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS tells me we're about 15 miles north of Vancouver. I bought it when I went to the Microsoft Company Store yesterday at lunch. They let us buy up to $120 worth of software so I picked-up the Streets and Trips w/GPS ($60) and a copy of Flight Sim Deluxe ($15.) The prices on software were great but the hardware and other merchandise wasn't so great. Still cheaper than you could get anywhere else (probably) but not the discounts you could find on software alone. For instance, you could buy a copy of Vista Ultimate for $40.

I like riding the train because it allows me to relax and get a lot of work done. I have my notebook out with my Verizon wireless broadband card (can't do that on a plane) and I get to work from station-to-station. No one telling me to "shut-down, we're about to land." Sure, the train takes a little longer but it's really not that bad considering there really isn't much waiting around and you don't have to show-up early.

Take-Aways

This week I'm in Redmond, Washington at the Microsoft CIO Summit on the Microsoft campus. Last night I started to think about things I learned during the first day of the summit and just how much information was presented. The first day had informational sessions from 7:30 AM until about 5:45 PM so it was a ton of speakers, slides, and demo's. I'm starting to think now in terms of high-level take-aways that I can use in the future to move our business forward. Here's a few:

• Hosted Services - Microsoft is moving into SaaS big-time. However, they seem really committed to allowing customers to make a choice between on-site or hosted. I talked to a lot of peers here that, like me, were really impressed by their Hosted Exchange Service. Really cool stuff.
• Business Intelligence - I heard some good confirmation that we're heading in the right direction with our BI efforts. We've got a lot of work still to do and I'm looking forward to integrating better with our other applications and finding more value for our executives.
• Extending Value - We already own a lot of Microsoft "stuff" and we can do a better job of extending the value of those existing investments.
• Virtualization - Microsoft is pretty late to this market but they seem to be working aggressively to catch-up. And, they aren't ignoring VMWare because I saw some of their management tools that manage ESX just as well as HyperV.
• Unified Communications - If our current vendor can't demonstrate a better ability to integrate with Microsoft products we'll have to leave them. At one time, we were on the leading edge. Now we're falling behind.
• Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization Model - I plan to assess the maturity of our own infrastructure and operations when I get back.

More later...