This session provides an in-depth look at the underlying storage technology that is used by Exchange Server. Learn about the changes made in Exchange 2007 SP1 that optimized the Extensible Storage Engine providing the necessary groundwork for enhancements that are coming in future versions of Exchange.

In this session you'll get an inside look at new Windows virtualization features, including dynamic virtual memory, live VM migration, hypervisor power management support and new hardware-assisted guest memory management. VHDs are taking on a more key role in simplifying systems management and Windows 7's integrated VHD mount and boot from VHD are a major step toward standardization on VHDs as a common container format for physical and virtual machine images. Learn how Windows 7 implements a native VHD stack and how the boot architecture has changed to accommodate booting from VHD images.

In the first part of this session, discover all the benefits and value of deploying Project Server on top of Windows Sharepoint Server, in terms of functionality and capabilities. Then learn the technical aspects, including how to install both products from scratch or adding Windows Sharepoint into an existing Project Server file. The session also includes discussion of best practices on organising site collections.

For 18 months, Andy Malone has worked with security services and has discovered how easy it really is to steal someone’s identity – just by visiting a few simple websites. He now shares his experiences – providing demos of the tools that can do the damage, including information-gathering sites and encryption tools that can enable fraudsters to acquire and hide information. Learn how many of these tools were designed for good, but have been leveraged by identity thieves for their own ends.

This is the session for all you regular IT folks – not developers – who need the latest toolkit to make your applications work in Vista. Listen to how shim technology can be applied to keep applications working – perfect if you are managing a huge portfolio and just can’t go and get all brand new apps. You’ll learn how the application compatibility toolkit will help you to keep things working, accelerate your adoption and reduce costs.

The Small Business Server provides a one-server solution or at most a two-server solution (with the premium package). Microsoft’s Essential Business Server, however, looks to the bigger mid-market business, with up to 75 users or devices. This three-server solution has a messaging server, security server and edge security server – the premium edition also includes a full version of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server. Learn why this is a key solution for core mid-market firms or small businesses that need more of an enterprise solution.

The Small Business Server provides a one-server solution or at most a two-server solution (with the premium package). Microsoft’s Essential Business Server, however, looks to the bigger mid-market business, with up to 75 users or devices. This three-server solution has a messaging server, security server and edge security server – the premium edition also includes a full version of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server. Learn why this is a key solution for core mid-market firms or small businesses that need more of an enterprise solution.

Find out about Windows Azure – a runtime environment in the Cloud, which runs in Microsoft data centres and includes compute resources, storage and additional network resources. This will enable you to create your own application and publish them to the Cloud; they will dynamically scale themselves based on your resource needs and provide you with high availability.

Interview with Brocade

In the Exhibition Hall Rob Kypriotaks, Technical Marketing Engineer at Intel discusses the latest innovations showcased on their stand. Look out for improvement in CPU architecture and virtualization of 40 virtual machines.

Richard Garsthagen, Senior Evangelist EMEA from VMWARE discusses their Hypervisor and their accessibility offer – which includes the software sitting on top of the product. Hear how this is an important aspect which allows you to work with the tools once set up.

Listen to how two new launches – Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 and Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 – are aiming to provide Microsoft customers with built-in rather than bolt-on solutions that are integrated, comprehensive and simplified.

Discover all the latest info on Microsoft’s suite of free automated tools and best practices to provide guidance for IT professionals to accelerate different planning, like server deployment, virtualisation, SQL migration and desktop deployments. The session also covers the announcement of Microsoft's new release – the Assessment & Planning Toolkit 3.2, which was revealed at Tech·Ed 2008.

Learn how you can use the power of System Center Data Protection Manager to back up and resource your Exchange environment. Listen to why you should change usage certificates and how you can use the change-management shelf to import and enable a new certificate for Exchange services and keep track of all certificates in Exchange 2007.

In this first part of a two-part series, explore many of the compatibility issues that the Windows team has experienced at customer sites in the context of what we can fix without updating the application, and how to fix it. The Windows Application Compatibility Infrastructure (Shim Infrastructure) is a powerful tool for resolving compatibility issues and unblocking Windows Vista deployments, but understanding where and how to leverage and configure shims can be daunting until you learn some of the tricks and subtleties, many of which we expose!

Understand the Web page model and how it takes advantage of common SharePoint features to deliver rich Web pages and learn how authors can create Web pages in-context, using applications such as Microsoft Office Word that stay in synch with your Web site's look and feel. Also see how site managers can control what content gets published, using features like workflow and scheduling. This session will give you the foundations you'll need to take SharePoint to the web.

Blackberry is currently seen as the gold standard of mobile security in the enterprise. Windows Mobile devices are as secure (if not even more so). This session covers the key concerns of Enterprise organizations when it comes to deploying Windows Mobile, and how to overcome them.

In this session, learn what constitutes a security boundary; get a tour through core Windows technologies, including user sessions, Code Integrity, PatchGuard, Service Security Hardening, and User Account Control, to learn where Windows currently defines such boundaries. Also gain insight into why application compatibility and user experience make defining boundaries much more difficult than it might seem.

This session focuses on how to remotely administer both clients and servers throughout your enterprise, using PowerShell V2. Firstly, this session will cover the infrastructure requirements necessary to successfully use PowerShell V2. The session will then introduce and explain PowerShell scripts that solve real world administrative challenges on an enterprise scale.

Just what are the most disruptive trends that will shake the IT industry in next 10 years or so? We will look into the commoditisation of IT, industrialisation through virtualisation and cloud computing, and the effects of off-shoring IT workforces. We'll also examine the possible impact of social networks to next-generation employees and finally we'll investigate the most probable developments in ubiquitous computing and software engineering. Come prepared for a fascinating and strategic tour of the changing face of the IT industry in our immediate future.

Your database is corrupt - what do you do? Well, it depends! How critical is the data? Do you know what's really wrong with the database? What does all that DBCC CHECKDB output mean? Should you restore or repair? It's all about limiting downtime and data-loss when a corruption occurs - from knowing the tools to understanding the implications of choices you make. In this demo-heavy session Paul will give you insight into how to recover from corruption without making things worse.

How do you leverage Operations Manager 2007 for cross-platform monitoring? At the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2008 in Las Vegas, USA we announced the Cross Platform Extensions Beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007, which extends the capabilities of Operations Manager 2007 to cross-platform management and monitoring. Join us to learn more about this exciting new development, and discover how the Cross Platform Extensions deliver clear value and an improved ability to meet the IT infrastructure monitoring and management needs across your heterogeneous environments.

What a week! 5,000 people came to Barcelona to be a part of Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professionals - take a look at just a few of the many highlights and make sure to look out for Tech·Ed EMEA 2009 in Berlin.

Lately there has been an increase in attackers attempting to monetize user's naivety. One of the methods currently in vogue is the use of fake anti-malware software, for which the user is expected to pay. This method permits the attackers to not only install malicious software on an unsuspecting user's computer, the victim also pays the attackers for the privilege. In this presentation, Jesper Johansson will demonstrate one such attack and show how to tell that it is fake.

PowerShell V1 delivered a radically simplified approach to the traditional problem of interactive Shell, Scripting and Admin GUIs. Come and learn how V2 makes it easier to create and debug your scripts with a graphical environment, write production quality scripts using script cmdlets, modules and transactions, manage large distributed environments using WSMAN, improved WMI support and the new Unified Code Execution Model, and write smaller simpler scripts through improvements to the language and new/improved cmdlets.

Come hear Mark Russinovich, the master of Windows troubleshooting, walk you through step by step how he has solved seemingly unsolvable system and application problems on Windows. With all new real case studies, Mark shows how to apply the Microsoft Debugging Tools and his own Sysinternals tools, including Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and Autoruns to solve system crashes, process hangs, security vulnerabilities, DLL conflicts, permissions problems, registry misconfiguration, network hangs, and file system issues. These tools are used on a daily basis by Microsoft Product Support and have been used effectively to solve a wide variety of desktop and server issues, so being familiar with their operation and application will assist you in dealing with different problems on Windows.

Okay, all of you Vista haters - it's here! You've been saying "um, I'm not really sure about Vista, so I'm going to wait for SP1", so let's ask: Is it good enough yet? Join a Windows techie, an unabashed and unrepentant Vista liker, in a steely-eyed look at Windows Vista SP1. First, learn the easiest ways to roll it out and how it affects Windows new nifty deployment tools. Then, really dive down with a look at how it affects performance and compatibility. Following that, see what completely new things arrive with SP1. Does SP1 make things better? Worse? Will it actually take so long to download that Windows Vista SP2 will be out before you get it? Join Mark for this session and find out!

Dimitry puts on a great show to claim equal second place in the Speaker Idol competition. Take a look at Power shell for optimisation and debunk a few myths along the way.

Microsoft's desktop optimisation pack for software assurance. Joint second place finalist Marel Topalian gives a very technical presentation and interesting presentation regarding Asset Inventory Service

The winner!! Join Rhonda Layfield on stage and learn about Network Monitor. A great presentation by a great Tech·Ed EMEA speaker of the future!

Take a fast paced tour of the show. See the highlights from a packed day. Feedback has been fantastic in the session rooms and the Exhibition Hall has been buzzing too

Join the Dutch at their Wednesday night country party. As one of nearly 30 Tech.Ed EMEA IT Pro parties that night, get a feel for the fun!

Citrix are Platinum sponsors at Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professionals. Meet Barry Flanagan from Citrix and hear about their virtual desktop infrastructure solution with HP, AMD and Microsoft. Citrix is the global leader and the most trusted name in Application Delivery Infrastructure. For further information go to www.citrix.com

After a night out at one of 30 country parties held in venues across Barcelona; there was still plenty of energy on site Thursday morning. Check out the highlights of the day as well as the amazing presentations in the Speaker Idol final - well done to Rhonda Layfield who won a speaker slot in Berlin next year!!

Wednesday's daily wrap focuses on the technology behind Tech·Ed EMEA 2008 IT Professionals, including the network infrastructure, the Self Paced Hands-on Labs, speaker evaluation scores, Tech·Ed online and don't forget Tech·Ed EMEA TV.

This short piece contains interviews with various product managers from HP. They talk about SQL and Hyper V in conjunction with blade systems. Also hear how HP are 'green' with their IT.

By Wednesday the Exhibition floor was in full swing. Check out this short montage of all the buzz, including simulations, demonstrations, panel discussions from the community stage.

Daniel Wessler from Germany stepped in at short notice to talk about the slide library within Sharepoint and using meta data to search through his presentation.

Rohnda delves into Network Monitor 3.2 to address network security issues concerning newtork packet data documentatiion.

Vladimir takes to the stage and discusses his agenda of "Disaster Recover". He creates awareness for it's importance with Exchange, SQL Servers, Virtualization and Sharepoint.

This is part 1 of a two-part session which drills into both upgrade and greenfield installation and configuration of SCCM 2007. Over these two breakout sessions you will learn how to prepare for deployment of SCCM 2007 in a new or upgrade environment, considering sizing, performance, security and network issues. The session will drill into SCCM 2007 server roles, security modes and the configuration steps required for management of Internet Based Clients. By the end of these two sessions you will understand how to design SCCM 2007 deployments and the various steps needed to complete an upgrade or new installation.

Get a sneak peek at System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, the newest version of VMM. Learn about all the new features of VMM 2008, including support for Hyper-V and VMware ESX management. This is a must see session for Hyper-V and VMware users to see the latest Microsoft System Center virtualization management tool.

Building upon security foundations of Windows Vista, Windows 7 provides security capabilities that are simple to use, manageable, and valuable. In this session we will discuss the core security of Windows 7, explore related usage scenarios, and look into how to manage these in an enterprise environment.

Windows Server 2008 is released, but what's next? Microsoft is making the management of Windows a priority and Active Directory is no exception! Come to this session and see how, with Powershell and the new Active Directory cmdlets, you can get the best of the UI and the best of the CLI! You will also see the upcoming Directory Service Administrative Center and its new UI concepts such as progressive disclosure and task oriented navigation. Last but not least, we will also show how the core of Active Directory has been enhanced to support new scenarios for service accounts, offline domain joins and recovery of deleted Active Directory objects more easily than it has been for the last 8 years! Come to this session to understand our future plans and to prepare yourself for an enhanced day-to-day Active Directory management experience!

What does "your" network of the future hold? How far away is it? Find out in this demo session on Windows Server 2008. This session, which is intended for people who plan, deploy, and manage IT infrastructure, will show you how all the different part of Windows Server 2008 come together to give you a network that is easier to manage and maintain, less complex, more sure, and higher performing. This is not about slides, slides are easy. This entire session is a demo based tour of the features of Windows Server 2008 that give you your Next Generation IT Infrastructure. Tours include Hyper-V, NAP, Branch Offices, SSL based VPN's, TS Gateways, Clusters, RODC's, Server Core machines, WinRM, Active Directory, Command Line and all the tools and technologies that are included in Windows Server 2008 that make these easy to implement, manage and maintain. At the end of this session you will have a clear understanding of how all these technologies work together to create the network of tomorrow. What's more, you'll have done more than hear that they work, you'll have seen them in action, running on a set of Hyper-V VM's, which are clustered on Server Core.

What a great day. Content is king and the feedback scores are extremely positive! Join Tony and Daniel who've summarised the day in just five minutes. Get the shopping list from the event management, meet some of the partners and get the low down from Steve Riley. See you tomorrow!

Steve is one of the most popular speakers at Tech·Ed EMEA. Find out why. Hear how connecting with the audience and driving an emotional response is key to success. We also talked to a few of his audience to get their feedback too!

Hear about the panel discussion, the big name speakers as well as the perceptions and challenges faced by women in IT! Join the discussion and explore the debate around the role of women in technology and talk to a number of attendees to get their views.

Daniel takes a tour of the Self Paced Hands-on Labs room with 250 machines and 500 monitors loaded with 250 demo labs covering stacks of Microsoft products. Ronald Beekelaar talks about what’s new, including many of the Labs running on Hyper V as well as the central server with the same memory as all the machines combined that can run the labs remotely. Also hear about the Instructor Led Hands-on Labs offering another 100 machines in two rooms as well as an expert to walk attendees through the sessions and get the very best learning experience.

Speaker Idol – What's it all about, take a five minute tour of Tuesday's heat. Meet the 4 contestants and hear the feedback from the panel!

Arnold Hagens from Jalasoft explores the four worst things you can do when monitoring your network with System Center Operations Manager 2007.

Andrew Bettany takes a quick preview at Windows 7; its corporate value, availability and some useful resources for further information.

Paulina Januszkiewicz is one of the many MCT's working in the Hands-on Labs and has taken time out to explain why you should not use Task Manager and the advantages of Process Explorer

Dmitry Sotnikov from Quest Software deep dives into the speed of PowerShell - Let's speed it up! How to identify the bottleneck and identify alterative solutions with the flexibility offered by PowerShell.

Meet Tony and Daniel, your hosts for Tech·Ed EMEA TV and watch an energetic update of all the days’ excitement on site. Get backstage at the keynote, see Brad Anderson in action and find out just how much content there really is on offer! See the Exhibition in build, get down with the VJ and take a tour of the labs!

What happens at a Tech·Ed EMEA Keynote. Check out our montage and get a whirlwind tour!

Get the keynote summary in just five minutes. Brad Anderson talks about all that happened in his presentation and an overview of all the announcements – there were many! From Windows Server 2008 R2 to Online Services and the next release of SQL hear how a software plus services offer gives IT professionals the freedom of choice to leverage Microsoft solutions and drive their agenda forward. On a personal note Brad also tells us just how much he likes to visit Europe.

The hosts from Tech·Ed EMEA TV talk to Hans Verbeeck, the Business Owner for Tech·Ed in EMEA. Find out what it takes to make this event possible. From logistics to floor plans; but most importantly content. Its about getting the very best speakers to share their knowledge and best practice and then finding the best ways to connect the attendees with these experts and their solutions. Also find out how to connect with your colleagues through all the community activities on site as well as the many opportunities to come together online.

Watch the winning presentation from wave 1 – Maral wins the heat with her presentation on Microsoft Desktop Optimization and software assurance. We look forward to Maral's presentation in Thursday's final!

Sander Berkouwer takes part in Speaker Idol wave one and tells us about working and playing with Microsoft employees, products and technologies as well as his obvious passion for Xbox!

Gert Baeke takes part in Speaker idol wave 1 and gives a fascinating talk on Hyper V virtual machine migration.

Alex Dejong takes part in Speaker Idol Wave 1 and wants to talk to you about pain!

Be a part of the conversation and watch Brad Anderson kick start Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professionals with his keynote presentation. Hear how changing business conditions have affected IT priorities today and what IT professionals can do to leverage Microsoft solutions to drive their agenda forward. With a focus on Microsoft's Dynamic IT initiative, Brad discusses how IT leaders can reduce costs, increase IT innovation and deliver new capabilities to the business through optimizing IT processes and technology infrastructure.

Karen Young talks about Women In Technology at Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professionals. Here about the panel discussion, the big name speakers as well as the perceptions and challenges faced by women in IT! For everyone at Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professionals come along to room 125 at 18:30 on Tuesday 4 November.

As track owner of one of the annual Tech-Ed hot topics, Michael promises extensive content, starting with the network stack, where delegates will learn how to build and design a network-access-protection infrastructure. His track will also cover exciting announcements in the Microsoft security product suite, including the new version of the ISA server, the internet application gateway.

In Seffen’s data management track, the message is unsurprisingly SQL, SQL, SQL! Seffen promises a track covering all the features from the SQL 2005 and 2008 versions, but also content exploring business intelligence – or getting what you need out of your data.

It’s all go as we move into the final weeks before this year’s Tech·Ed 2008. Meet some of the key contributors to this year’s event, and discover why content plus community are the drivers for Tech·Ed success.

Management is by far the largest track in the Tech·Ed event, so management track owner Frank knows that the content has to deliver. He talks about how delegates will learn about System Center products for the desktop and data centre, as well as exciting new launches, including the Systems Center Configuration Manager R2.

Jason invites delegates to enter the exciting world of Windows mobile, with a track that includes all the latest Microsoft mobile advances, including the System Centre Mobile Device Manager, Microsoft’s new mobile device platform. Jason also provides a teaser for the ‘Mobility Smackdown’, a Tech-Ed showcase of all the latest and greatest business and consumer mobile applications.

There’s a whole lot of new technology to discuss this year, according to Arlindo, track owner of Tech·Ed’s Windows Server sessions. Focusing on three areas, Arlindo promises delegates sessions on Windows Server 2008 core services; details of new products in the virtualisation space; as well as news on the anticipated launch of Windows 7.

In his unified communications track, Damien promises a balance of existing and new technology discussion to meet Tech·Ed attendees’ current and future needs. Track sessions will cover existing technology such as Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007, as well as new releases such as Exchange 14 and OCS 2007 R2.

This Panel presents an overview of what is required to develop for Windows Mobile Devices. We show you the tools you need to install to develop Windows Mobile-based applications. We also describe why we love developing for Windows Mobile and show you some easy ways to develop your first application. We also provide an introduction into the online tools and community that are available for Windows Mobile developers. With Constanze Roman, Andy Wigley, Neil Roodyn, Maarten Struys, and Paul Yao.

In an online world, why are we building offline apps? Because networks are only occasionally available, or occasionally not available. However, building Offline apps is a bit more complicated. Listen to this panel of speakers that works on enabling offline apps from the storage, sync, programming model, and UI stack. The panelists discuss what we’re working on today, and what’s coming in the future. With Rob Tiffany, Rob Relyea, Steve Lasker, Liam Cavanagh, and Ginny Caughey.

Have you heard of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tool (MAP) from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team? The MAP tool offers quick and agent-less inventory and migration assessments for many Microsoft technologies including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Microsoft Application Virtualization and more. Listen to the inside scoop on what new features will be rolled out in the next few months. With Baldwin Ng, Jay Sauls, and Kevin Remde.

Listen in as Daniel provides insights on sharing code between different .NET platforms and cool new VS2008 features for Smart Client development. With Daniel Moth and Richard Campbell.

"Use SQL Server, not Access", is advice commonly handed out when the Jet database engine outgrows its usefulness. However, that’s often easier said than done. Each database application is unique; some may have salvageable components, whereas others may need to be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch. In addition, there are substantial differences between the Jet and SQL Server database engines that can make a straight port unworkable in many situations. This panel discusses criteria for deciding whether to migrate data from Access to SQL Server, and for determining the optimal migration path once the decision is made. The panelists will share their real-world expertise to help you determine a successful strategy that best suits your business needs. With Mary Chipman, Armen Stein, Luke Chung, Paul Sheriff, and Stephen Forte.

We'll talk about what it's like to write tests in the real world where we have lots of dependencies, and how to replace them for testing purposes. We'll also talk about where a tool like Typemock can come in handy. With Denny Boynton and Roy Osherove.

In this panel discussion you will have the opportunity to hear directly from the team building Visual Studio Team System, including Brian Harry–Technical Fellow. Come and meet the team, and get all your questions answered. With Brian Harry, Peter Provost, Norman Guadagno, Gert Drapers, Habib Heydarian, Neelesh Kamkolkar.

Join Network Specialist Stephen Rose as he discusses Windows Vista deployment, and offers tips and tricks based on real IT Pro deployment experiences. Stephen talks about BitLocker and other laptop tools, secure deployment, improvements in SP1 and his thoughts on why Windows Vista over Windows XP. He’ll also talk about how the Springboard Series and Windows Client TechCenter can help IT Pros with every angle of adopting and managing Windows Vista in a desktop environment. With Stephen Rose and Kevin Remde.

Joe Stagner from Microsoft talks on secure development guidance for developers, the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle, and his new "How Do I" security videos. Joe is a Program Manager in Microsoft Corporation’s Developer Tools and Platform Group and has been with Microsoft since 2001, focusing on highly scalable and performant web application architectures, multiplatform interoperability and software security. Joe brings 30 years of technical and business strategy experience to Microsoft which affords him a unique experiential perspective. With Joe Stagner and Georgeo Pulikkathara.

You dream in curly braces and end your sentences with semicolons. With Visual Studio 2008, you've seen the power that LINQ brings to your relational data. However, not all of your data is relational; a lot of it is XML. VB 9 introduced has XML Literals, which drastically improve the LINQ to XML experience. However, if you are a C# developer, you may not be familiar with all the capabilities of XML Literals as they are only available in VB. This panel explores the uses of XML Literals and how you can leverage this powerful technology in your applications, even the curly braced ones. With Erick Thompson, Shyam Pather, and Beth Massi. Hosted by Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin.

Tony & Daniel take a fast track look at the highlights of the last five days. From the Keynote to the content, from Speaker Idol to an interview with José in the kitchen as he prepares the delegate catering! What a fantastic week it has been!

It's Thursday and we are racing through the week. Cheesey provides some behind-the-scenes insights into the nerve centre – 9km fibre-optic cable, 60km wired cable, 250 switches, 1,300 PC's, gigabytes of data... it’s massive! Our TechEd IT Forum First Lady becomes Speaker Idol 2007. Sadly only one day left...

A brand new day – Tony and Daniel sum up the highlights of Day 3. The ever-popular hands-on labs, queues for the instructor-led labs, current top demo speaker, Women in Technology initiative... and getting ready for the Country Party tonight.

Things get going on Day 2. Extra rooms are laid on to accommodate the high demand, delegates sign up for lunch-time demos, the Ask-the-Expert area is buzzing with attendees seeking information, speakers are competing for the top speaker slot... all that in a day! Be sure to ‘Connect’ tomorrow for more of the action.

Our hosts Tony & Daniel welcome 5,000+ delegates for an action-packed week... breakout sessions, interactive sessions, Self Paced Hands-on Labs, instructor-led labs, fish bowl interviews, diary room recordings and more. They toast the start of the week at the Welcome Reception and catch-up with wave 1 of Speaker Idol.