Microsoft recently announced at the annual TechEd conference being held in New Orleans from June 7-10 that they are preparing to release a Beta of the maintenance update for Windows 7 called Service Pack 1. This will be a minor update containing roll ups of all updates that have been released for the OS since October 2009. “We are pleased to announce that by the end of July we will be releasing the public beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7,” said Gavriella Schuster, Senior Director, Product Management for Windows Client.

“While the new features for Windows Server 2008 R2 benefit Windows 7 by providing a richer VDI experience, SP1 will not contain any new features that are specific to Windows 7 itself. For Windows 7, SP1 will simply be the combination of updates already available through Windows Update and additional hotfixes based on feedback by our customers and partners. In other words, customers can feel confident about deploying Windows 7 now!” Schuster added.

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Tell us who you are?
I am simply put a professional GEEK and Gadget nutter (I have a remote for my remote) which is probably why it was inevitable that I have ended up working for Microsoft in the MVP program. I came from the development environment where I was a C# MVP and ran the South African .Net community called sadeveloper.net for many years. These days I spend most of my time engaging with MVPs, attending tweetups, creating community opportunities and whenever I get the chance riding my motorcycles.

What country(s) do you look after?
I look after MEA (Middle East & Africa) as a whole and along with a great chap by the name of Baransel we look after around 20 countries that have MVPs residing in them.

Tell us about how you came to work for Microsoft?
I was heading up one of South Africa’s leading communities and we were starting to expand into the academic space. This is when Microsoft and I become more interested in each other and I came to work for Microsoft as an Academic Manager sharing the great Microsoft products with students in the many Universities in South Africa.

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Microsoft Gulf today received an honorary plaque from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing/ Dubai Convention Bureau in recognition for its efforts in hosting the first Tech-Ed Middle East in the UAE with the aim of developing the region’s technology industry.

Tech-Ed, Microsoft’s premier, three day technical education and networking event was one of the main highlights of Dubai’s extensive exhibitions calendar and it attracted over 1500 IT professionals from across the UAE and 38 other countries. Attendees benefited from world-class speakers demonstrating the latest in technology solutions, designed to enhance business productivity and meet the demands of tech-savvy consumers.

Charbel Fakhoury, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf said, “We are glad to have hosted the first Middle East edition of Tech-Ed in a global city like Dubai in association with the Dubai World Trade Center. Bringing Tech-Ed to the Middle East for the first time underlines the company’s long-term commitment to creating meaningful partnerships with organizations and technology professionals in the Middle East. In addition to substantial regional attendance, we also had a sizeable representation of Emirati delegates from both the private and public sectors. Microsoft is investing in the region to foster local talent and develop the skills of the IT populace to help them compete in the global arena. We are very pleased that the event was successful in bringing together the region’s best and brightest IT professionals to discuss key technology trends and share best practices that will transform and drive the success of businesses in the region.”

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Tech.Ed Middle East is Microsoft’s premier, global platform that provided hands-on learning, deep product exploration and opportunities for IT professionals to connect with the industry and Microsoft experts. It is Microsoft’s technical education event that takes place across selected locations globally as shown in this video. This event was held from March 1-3, 2010 at the Dubai World Trade Center.

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At the inaugural edition of Tech.Ed Middle East which is Microsoft’s premier technical education and networking event in Dubai which concluded recently, Etisalat executives presented attendees with insights into its comprehensive Managed ICT & services portfolio to showcase how customers can benefit from such services with enhanced business performance while optimizing capital investment and operational costs.

In a presentation entitled “Enhancing performance through High Speed IP networks”, Haider Khan, Business Development Manager, Etisalat and Rehan Sami, Solution Architect, Etisalat talked about the significance of MPLS IPVPNs to help attendees understand how Etisalat’s IP network can facilitate collaborative business models by converging voice and data and hence improve performance and operational efficiencies. With IP being the de facto protocol worldwide, Haider highlighted Etisalat efforts to set up its own IP nodes worldwide which would provide business customers with advantages like single point of contact and price guarantees in addition to a reliable quality of service(QOS). The service can also be offered as a Managed Service by Etisalat with end to end network management through Etisalat’s Managed Router Service which has 24x7x365 proactive monitoring thereby enabling UAE based companies to lower their TCO ( Total Cost of operations) and deal with a single vendor.

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Tech.Ed Middle East is Microsoft’s premier, global platform that provided hands-on learning, deep product exploration and opportunities for IT professionals to connect with the industry and Microsoft experts. It is Microsoft’s technical education event that takes place across selected locations globally as shown in this video. This event was held from March 1-3, 2010 at the Dubai World Trade Center.

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Double-Take Software, a leading provider of affordable Workload Optimisation products, demoed at Microsoft Tech Ed Middle East 2010. Double-Take Software provides affordable software products for high availability and data recovery. The company’s products and services enable customers to protect and recover business-critical data and applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint in both physical and virtual environments.

Microsoft Tech Ed was a perfect platform to promote Double-Take Software’s technologies and the company announced major shifts within the virtualisation domain with specific solutions for Windows 2008 and Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Event attendees had the opportunity to learn more about the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V architecture, discuss features for high availability for Hyper-V and find out how organizations can prepare disaster recovery solutions ahead of time by implementing this pioneering software.

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Raqmiyat, a leading UAE-based systems integrator, is showcasing cutting edge technologies at the ‘Microsoft TechEd Middle East 2010‘, Microsoft’s premier technical education and networking event that brings together more than 1,500 leading senior decision-makers, CTOs and CIOs from across the globe.

The company is highlighting the latest Microsoft technologies in unified communications, virtualisation, collaboration and the System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) at the three-day event at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. With aims to capitalise on the growing need for streamlining IT infrastructure and communication costs to counter the effects of the economic downturn, Raqmiyat is highlighting the benefits being offered by these solutions in terms of total cost of ownership and return on investment to regional companies.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Raqmiyat is firmly committed to driving the growth of the world-leading IT vendor in the region, thereby leading to its strong support for ‘Microsoft TechEd Middle East 2010‘, which is being held for the first time in the region. Among the solutions to take the spotlight at the event is ‘Microsoft Unified Communications’ (includes ‘Office Communication Server’ (OCS) and ‘Microsoft Exchange 2010′), which help integrate various modes of communication like voice, data and video for high-end communication experience at much lower costs. In addition, ‘Microsoft Virtualization’ (Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V version), a solution that helps customers reduce their IT infrastructure costs through server consolidation, disaster recovery, re-hosting of legacy applications and software test and development, will also take centre stage at the event.

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Microsoft Gulf showcased its next generation of infrastructure and application platform products at Tech.Ed Middle East 2010 including Internet Explorer (IE) 9; Microsoft Office 2010; SQL Server 2008 R2; Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Together with its partners in the region such as Dell, Intel, HP and AMD, Microsoft leveraged Tech.Ed to demonstrate a slew of advanced technology offerings to IT professionals, developers, partners and customers.

Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf said, “The essence of Tech.Ed is to showcase our current and future offerings and what makes them the most powerful platforms that businesses today are looking for to achieve significant productivity and efficiency gains along with a dynamic technology infrastructure. This is our largest technology event globally and bringing it to the Gulf for the first time is proof of our commitment to the Middle East. Together with our partners, we aim to develop leading-edge technology and increase opportunities for skills development to spread the value of information and communications technology in the region.”

Microsoft also announced the launch of two new offers for Visual Studio customers looking to upgrade to the 2010 version. The first offer enables customers who purchased Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Standard Edition to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 (without any level of MSDN) at the previous Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition USD $299 retail price. This offer will be available for six months, starting April 12, 2010.

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Etisalat announced its partnership with Microsoft Gulf for Tech.Ed Middle East 2010 as a Strategic ICT partner. Set to run from March 1st -3rd, 2010 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, Tech.Ed is Microsoft’s premier technical education and networking event held across 10 global locations. At the event, Etisalat will showcase its comprehensive end to end ICT and Managed Telecom product portfolio.

Etisalat and Microsoft are collaborating on emerging technologies to create compelling solutions for customers by sharing and reviewing respective product roadmaps. The collaboration involves the development of solutions across several areas such as On-Premise and Off-Premise Unified Communications, Mobility, Hosted Business Applications and IPTV (TV over Broadband) in addition to many others.

Abdulla Hashim, Senior VP, Business Solutions, Etisalat said, “We are proud to partner with Microsoft for this event. With our end to end Managed telecom, ICT expertise and state of the art infrastructure, Etisalat can provide a very strong value proposition to drive productivity and optimize efficiencies across the value chain. Our participation at the first edition of Microsoft Tech.Ed demonstrates our commitment to drive the use of ICT for better business outcomes in association with Microsoft. This event is also an excellent opportunity for us to raise awareness about our ICT offerings for the benefit of technology professionals and demonstrate the role we play in helping companies deploy innovative solutions that enhance business performance while reducing operational costs.”
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Wish you could get training directly from members of the Microsoft product development teams? Tech·Ed Middle East 2010 is the place to meet and learn from Microsoft product team members, international industry speakers and local experts in one environment. So, what are you waiting for? Register Today for Tech.Ed!

Aaron Skonnard - Aaron Skonnard is a Microsoft MVP and 10-year columnist for MSDN Magazine as well as co-founder of Pluralsight, an industry think-tank focused on instructor-led training for Microsoft developers. Lately Aaron has been recording Pluralsight On-Demand! courses on Cloud Computing, Windows Azure, WCF and REST. Aaron is a frequent speaker at industry events like Microsoft PDC, TechEd, and VSLive! He is also available for private instruction and consultation at your company. Reach him at http://pluralsight.com/aaron.

Abdurrahman Al-Qahtani - Abdurrahman Al-Qahtani is Architect Evangelist at Microsoft Saudi, working with the Developer and Platform Group. He works with communities to raise the awareness and adoption of new technologies and architectures from Microsoft. He also works with enterprises to show Microsoft platform value and drive adoption to address business needs.

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We recently launched a competition where you have to tell us about the reason “Why you want to attend Tech.Ed Middle East ?“. So, here is the result. Baraah M. Omari, 22 year old student from Yarmouk University, Jordan has won the Free Entry Pass for the first ever Tech.Ed in Middle East. She won a Single Entry Pass whose current value is $825.00 US (AED 3 025.00). Now, she has the chance to immerse herself in 3 days of intensive technical learning and discussion at Tech•Ed Middle East 2010. Here is what she commented:

Hi, my name is Baraah Omari, 22 years old student from Jordan. Attending Tech.ed is a dream to me, I’ll be in Dubai soon, and I just can’t wait to visit ur related places guys, I’ve been a big MS fan since 3 years, and the more I know about it the more I love it..
I’m working on myself really hard to get a job within MS after graduation!!!!
I wish I can win this free awesome event!!!!!

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It has been confirmed that Walid Abu-Hadba along with Soma will be the Launch Product Keynote speakers on Day 2 of Tech.Ed Middle East. Walid Abu-Hadba is corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group, where he leads efforts to build a vibrant solutions ecosystem through evangelism, community engagement and audience marketing.

Prior to leading D&PE, Abu-Hadba was vice president of Enterprise Specialist Sales (ESS) in the Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG) at Microsoft, where he defined and executed strategies for the specialist team that helps customers meet their business needs using advanced technologies.

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Tech.Ed Middle East is getting exciting day by day. Eric Rudder has being confirmed as the Opening Keynote speaker. In September 2005, Microsoft announced that Senior Vice President Eric Rudder will be taking on a new role working directly for Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect. Rudder focuses on some of the company’s key advanced development efforts as well as overall technical strategy.

Rudder most recently served as senior vice president of Servers and Tools, and was also responsible for leading the company’s outreach to the developer community. Rudder and his team focused on coordinating the overall programming model for the client and server, creating the best tools for the .NET platform and fostering synergies between Windows and the Windows Server System offerings. In addition, the division evangelizes the extended Microsoft platform through a variety of content offerings including providing effective web-based training for developers and IT managers.

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In an exciting development for the first ever Tech.Ed in Middle East, Somasegar is comfirmed as one of the keynote speakers. Yes! our very own Soma will be here. He knows how to win the hearts and minds of the software developers and designers. So, what are you waiting for? Register Today for Tech.Ed!

Somasegar is the Senior Vice President of Developer Division at Microsoft. As senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, S. Somasegar leads the teams responsible for providing tools and developer platform technologies targeted at developers, designers and teams involved in software development. This includes the Microsoft .NET developer platform that provides a consistent programming model spanning client, Web, server, device and services platform, Silverlight, the Visual Studio family of products, and Expression Studio.

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