TechEd Preview: Hot Products To See From Microsoft And More

It's TechEd Time

Microsoft's TechEd conference this week in New Orleans brings together thousands of IT professionals and enterprise developers, giving them the opportunity to explore and get hands-on learning with new products around the world of Microsoft. It's a time when many vendors launch new products and services around Microsoft's solutions. Here's a detailed look at what attendees will be checking out.

LSI

LSI plans to unveil a new solution at TechEd that allows high-availability storage clusters to be built with commodity hardware and Microsoft's Windows Server 2012.

The new LSI Syncro CS solution allows high-availability storage clusters with shared storage and storage controller failover, by modifying the company's RAID controllers, to actually talk to each other.

The storage solution comes in two versions. The first of which is the Syncro CS 9286-8e, a kit that includes two Syncro CS controllers with brackets and two energy cells for protecting data if power is lost. The second, the Syncro CS 9271-8i (pictured here), allows OEMs and system builders to use the Syncro CS controllers to build a two-node "cluster-in-a-box" solution for high availability in a single self-contained system.

sTec

sTec plans to showcase its new sTec s3000 storage appliance, which utilizes solid-state technology with Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 storage clustering, virtualization and management features, according to the company. The s3000 stores up to 96 terabytes of data per appliance and features performance as high as 1.2 million IOs per second. It also can extend hypervisors such as Hyper-V and file-based storage for application workloads such as SQL Server and SharePoint, according to sTec.

AvePoint

AvePoint, developer of governance, compliance and management solutions for social enterprise collaboration platforms, plans to announce a slew of new apps at TechEd, including Pipeline (pictured here), which displays an aggregated view of all CRM opportunities managed by an individual sales person or an entire sales team; Timeline, which generates a view of Microsoft Dynamics CRM account history for mobile devices including Android, available now, and iOS, coming soon; and DocAve Analytics, which simplifies the monitoring and reporting of SharePoint site usage by alerting users to spikes or outliers in browsing history based on typical usage of the SharePoint site.

Dell

Dell Software plans to announce enhancements to its Quest Software portfolio for the management of Microsoft environments, including email management, new mobile SQL Server monitoring and SQL Server health checks. Enhancements to the new MessageStats Business Insights 7.2 include data leak protection features that enable organizations to control the flow of sensitive information for on-premise versions of Exchange 2013. Dell Software also plans at TechEd to unveil Spotlight for SQL Server Enterprise 9.5, which allows administrators to monitor the health and performance of SQL Server environments from anywhere on any device thanks to new Windows 8 and Android mobile apps to complement the current iOS app. And, the company will formally introduce Spotlight Project Lucy, an Azure-based set of productivity tools that enable SQL Server users to take a full performance and system health check for free.

A10 Networks

A10 Networks plans to detail its A10 Thunder Series of unified appliance service gateways at TechEd, according to the company. The A10 Thunder appliances, including the 6430 pictured here, are application delivery controllers that provide unified application service gateway functionality by consolidating premium solution modules for intelligent cloud services in the most efficient form factors, according to the company.

Microsoft Windows Server/Systems Center

Microsoft plans to detail news on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Systems Center 2012 R2, previews of which should be available by the end of June with general availability later this year, said Mike Schutz, general manager, product marketing for Windows Server.

The R2 versions of both products incorporate the design and principles of Windows Azure, making it easier to integrate with cloud-based solutions, Schutz said. For example, customers can do live migrations from Windows Server 2012 to R2 with no downtime, he said.

Microsoft SQL Server 14

Microsoft will also offer some details on SQL Server 14, which will be available in previews later this summer. The update allows users to do backup and recovery to a Windows Azure data center right from the SQL Server Console, Microsoft's Schutz said. Customers can backup servers and data bases through Azure and recover from that as a "seamless extension of their own environment," he said.

Azure BizTalk Services For Enterprise Integration

Microsoft plans to release at TechEd a public preview of Azure BizTalk Services For Enterprise Integration, which helps customers make enterprise applications more cloud-enabled using the same technology used with BizTalk, Schutz said. "We're seeing a lot more focus on bringing it all together in the world of [mobile] devices and continuous cloud services. We think this offers tremendous flexibility and choice to get into the cloud game," he said.

Visual Studio 2013

Finally, Microsoft introduced Visual Studio 2013 Monday at TechEd, demonstrating new capabilities for improving the application life-cycle, both on-premises and in the cloud. A full preview, which includes enhancements for agile portfolio planning, developer productivity, team collaboration, quality enablement and DevOps, is planned for release near at Microsoft's Build conference June 26-28 in San Francisco. Visual Studio 2013 comes less than a year after the release of Visual Studio 2012 (pictured), which was launched Sept. 12, 2012.