David Mills on Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 at TechEd IT Forum
David Mills is an avid Star Trek fan as well as an enthusiastic and entertaining member of the System Center Essentials 2007 Marketing team. I had the chance to interview him this week. He even makes mention of an upcoming SP1 feature.
1) Tell me a bit about yourself; how you got into marketing, previous projects you have managed, favorite technologies, hobbies, etc.
Hmmm…let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I started my life as a newborn baby in a hospital in Jacksonville, FL. I moved around a lot after that and eventually found myself working at Microsoft (how’s that for an abridged version of my life?) But seriously, to cut to the chase I came to Microsoft over 7 years ago, joining the Windows Server User Assistance team as a core networking documentation lead. During my time on this team, I led teams in the creation and delivery of IT Professional technical documentation for Core Networking and Management technologies in support of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, R2, MOM 2005, WSUS 2.0 and Scripting. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to be more directly involved in conversations with customers about what products we build and to help influence the design and delivery of those products. That desire led me to join the System Center Marketing team as a Sr. Technical Product Manager for System Center Essentials 2007.
1. Favorite Technology: My favorite technology is actually one that hasn’t been invented yet - the particle beam transporter. I’ve seen it work on Star Trek episodes and I believe the practical implementation of this technology is right around the corner. No more showing up 2 hours early to check in for flights!
2. Hobbies: Riding my 1999 Triumph Speed Triple, playing guitar in a classic rock cover band, and…thinking about ways to speed along the practical implementation of the particle beam transporter
2) Tell us about TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona? Always a fun event! The attendance this year was a record 5,000+ and there just wasn’t enough time to talk to all the customers and partners I wanted to, but I did my best. Our midmarket presence was bigger this year; we presented two sessions, a product demo and an interactive session to good crowds. Our Essentials session demonstrated end-to-end management of critical resources like Email, Office applications, Desktops and Line of business applications. The new session we presented for IT Forum this year was one showcasing our remote IT management solution for partners who serve small and midsize customers – Remote Operations Manager 2007. This new solution is a special version of Operations Manager 2007, available via SPLA pricing, which connects remotely and securely over the web to Essentials 2007 installed at a customer site.
3) Describe the Essentials 2007 customers you met at the conference. What kinds of questions were they asking?
The Essentials 2007 customers I met were really the “classic” midsize business customers we’ve been talking to for several years while building the product. They have many of the same needs as Enterprise customers in terms of IT Management but they’ve been performing many tasks manually, like gathering inventory or installing software on desktop machines (the old “sneaker-net” method). We received good confirmation from these customers that the more automated and unified management experience Essentials 2007 delivers is what they’ve needed for quite some time. A few of the common questions they had were around potential for scale-up past the current 30 server and 500 client limits; and management of mixed-mode operations, like using a 32bit version of Essentials with a 64bit version of SQL Server 2005. There were also various questions around variations in setup and configuration for their specific environments. A great place to get these environment specific questions answered is our Microsoft TechNet forums for Essentials 2007
4) What was the most request feature in Essentials 2007 and why?
I would have to say the feature that came up most in my conversations with customers was a request for Essentials 2007 to manage workgroup-joined computers. Many midsize businesses have computers in a “DMZ” that need to be managed like the rest of their machines, but the current version of Essentials limits management to domain-joined computers only. Fortunately, we are adding this feature in SP1 which will be released in Q1 of CY 2008.
5) What has been the most difficult selling point for Essentials 2007?
That’s a good question – in my opinion the most difficult selling point has simply been getting the word out to midmarket customers! The sheer number of midsize businesses worldwide is staggering (millions!) and then trying to let them know there is now an IT management product designed specifically for them is no small task. This is especially true since Microsoft’s IT management products have traditionally been designed for enterprise size businesses.
6) Is there anything else you would like to add?
Yes! For anyone who is reading this, in addition to helping us get the word out about System Center Essentials 2007, please make a New Year’s resolution to spend a minimum of an hour a month thinking about how we can achieve the practical implementation of the particle beam transporter. J
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