Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Microsoft Security Update Guide is a valuable source of in-depth information and tools that can help you protect your IT infrastructure while creating a safer, more secure computing and Internet environment. We developed this guide to help IT professionals better understand and maximize Microsoft security update release information, processes, communications, and tools.

What’s included? Let us show you.

• Get to know the security update release process.
  Do you want to get a better understanding of the Microsoft Security Update release process? We’ll give you a complete rundown of the guidance and resources that accompany updates. We’ll also provide a reference guide you can use to develop a customer risk-management framework.
• See how to mitigate security risks
  When faced with a vulnerability, how do you mitigate the risk? We’ll point you in the right direction.
• Understand how quickly you need to apply updates
  How quickly should you deploy updates when faced with a security risk? We recommend that you have at least two timelines for handling security updates based on your risk assessment.
• Assess your update
  How well did your update go? What happens after you’ve deployed an update? What can you do to better manage updates in the future? We’ll show you methods to assess these questions.
• Get ongoing security
  What can you do to improve security, even when there aren’t any security updates available? How do you stay alert to threats in today’s evolving IT landscape? In this section, we’ll go over how you can get better oversight into your IT systems and how secure they are.

WHITEPAPER:  Microsoft Security Update Guide, Second Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/security/msrc/whatwedo/securityguide.aspx

IDC Research officially confirms Ovum’s original study that Windows Phone 7 is to be the #2 mobile OS in 2015 with 20.9%, behind Android at 45.4% with iOS in 3rd with 15.3%.

IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to Grow by Nearly 50% in 2011

29 Mar 2011

Nokia’s recent announcement to shift from Symbian to Windows Phone will have significant implications for the smartphone market going forward. "Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences," added Llamas. "The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform. We expect the first devices to launch in 2012. By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be number 2 operating system worldwide behind Android."

Worldwide Smartphone Operating System 2011 and 2015 Market Share and 2011-2015 CAGR (listed alphabetically)

Operating System	2011 Market Share	2015 Market Share	2011-2015 CAGR
Android	39.5%	45.4%	23.8%
BlackBerry	14.9%	13.7%	17.1%
iOS	15.7%	15.3%	18.8%
Symbian	20.9%	0.2%	-65.0%
Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile	5.5%	20.9%	67.1%
Others	3.5%	4.6%	28.0%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	19.6%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, March 29, 2011

Read the full report here:

• IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to Grow by Nearly 50% in 2011
  http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22762811

[taken from WMPowerUser – Ovum predicts Nokia/Microsoft will redraw smartphone market, overtake iOS by 2016]

Analysts are increasingly positive about the future of Windows Phone 7, helped especially by the Nokia/Microsoft deal.

Ovum principal analyst Adam Leach said the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft has redrawn the smartphone market as Nokia transitions to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform.

Read the whole story here:

• Ovum predicts Nokia/Microsoft will redraw smartphone market, overtake iOS by 2016
  http://wmpoweruser.com/ovum-predicts-nokiamicrosoft-will-redraw-smartphone-market-overtake-ios-by-2016/

At MMS 2011 we announced “Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V)” that is a feature of “System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012”, and will not be a separately sold product.

The importance of Server App-V has become very clear. If you’re developing for IaaS (private cloud) or PaaS (Azure/public cloud) Server App-V is a must.

Here’s some of the articles that have hit the wire about this new technology:

• Microsoft: Next level of virtualization unlocks server OS, applications – Network World article
• Microsoft Raises the Bar – Possibly Beyond the Reach of Others? – IDC article
• Private cloud computing: It’s all about the apps – Technet, March 22, 2011

System Center AVIcode delivers market-leading .NET application performance monitoring capabilities to help ensure the availability of business-critical applications and services, regardless of where they are deployed. End-user experience and application performance monitoring are critical in virtual datacenters and cloud environments.

[taken from the product page]

AVIcode delivers market-leading .NET application performance monitoring capabilities to help ensure the availability of business-critical applications and services, regardless of where they are deployed. End-user experience and application performance monitoring are critical in virtual datacenters and cloud environments. As more customers move to consuming cloud-based services, Microsoft will address concerns about the gap between existing applications and those designed for the cloud by providing unified management across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Today, you can benefit from AVIcode capabilities by:

• Simplifying management with automatic discovery of application dependencies.

• Addresses custom LOB monitoring without the need for extensive MP authoring
• Graphical application topology view displays dependency between distributed components

• Optimizing business productivity with always-on, real-time monitoring, and rapid error resolution of business critical applications

• End-user experience and application performance monitoring are critical for virtual datacenter and cloud environments
• Identifies precise cause of application error allowing delivery of actionable information to the proper support team for faster resolution

• Lowering the cost of managing datacenter services by establishing enterprise-wide standards to manage custom and disparate applications

• Distributed web services and outside-in monitoring
• Monitor and measure service-level delivery (SLAs)

Read more & download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/avicode.aspx

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 SP1 provides a comprehensive, cross-platform management solution for the virtualized data center that helps enable:

• centralized management of virtual IT infrastructure
• increased server utilization
• dynamic resource optimization of virtual IT infrastructure

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 adds support for Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, and is the gateway to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.

• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc793138.aspx

At MMS2011 this week, we announced Project “Concero” as part of the future System Center family.

The initial release of “Concero” will enable customers to deploy, manage and control applications and services deployed on private clouds built using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and in the public cloud offering of Windows Azure. This provides a consistent and simple user experience for service management across these clouds

Taken from the announcement page:

At the Microsoft Management Summit on Tuesday, 3/22/11, Brad Anderson announced a new capability in System Center 2012 called Project Codename “Concero”. Before I actually talk about what it is, let me first talk about what the word “Concero” means. It’s a Latin word which means “connected”, which is at the heart of what “Concero” does.

System Center 2012 cloud and datacenter management solutions empower you with a common management toolset for your private and public cloud applications and services, thus helping you confidently deliver IT as a Service for your business. Our goal is to help you consume the full power of and deliver private and public cloud computing on your terms. System Center 2012 provides the ability for customers to create and manage their “Private Clouds” using the virtualization infrastructure provided by Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V and other virtualization platforms. At his keynote, Brad outlined the key tenets for the cloud, one of which is “Self-Service”. This empowers the “Application Owners” to consume the cloud capacity in an agile manner. With System Center 2012, “Concero” provides a web based and simple experience for the application owner who will be consuming cloud capacity.

…

Read more here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/03/25/announcing-system-center-project-codename-concero.aspx

This week we announced “System Center Advisor”, a cloud service available with any Server on Software Assurance, which assesses the server configuration to enable IT professionals to proactively avoid configuration problems.

Taken from the product page:

Today IT professionals have to spend a great deal of time and effort dealing with problems related to servers that were configured incorrectly. They are often not aware of these issues until they cause performance and availability issues due the time lag from a configuration change, to awareness and exploration of the issue, to final resolution. This costs organizations time and money.

System Center Advisor (formerly Microsoft codename Atlanta) is a cloud service that enables IT professionals to assess their server configuration and proactively avoid problems. With System Center Advisor, support staff are able to resolve issues faster by accessing current and historical configuration data, all with the security features that meet their needs. Additionally, System Center Advisor helps reduce downtime by providing suggestions for improvement, and notifying customers of key updates specific to their configuration.

Proactively avoid problems

• Increase awareness around the state of server deployment through assessment of configuration, and alerts for configuration-related issues.
• Resolve issues before they become critical through ongoing assessments of the server environment for undetected configuration issues.
• Assess and understand server configurations from virtually anywhere from a cloud service with security features that meet customer needs.

Resolve issues faster

• Decrease time to resolve issues by easily viewing configuration changes over time with historical data.
• Decrease time to resolve issues with the ability to share server configuration data with internal support staff or Microsoft Customer Support Services.
• Accelerate problem solving with instant access to step by step guidance , self-help information and community forums related to identified issues.

Help reduce downtime and improve performance

• Increase performance and availability of servers by understanding configuration state and receiving suggestions for improvement to help ensure availability.
• Help reduce server downtime by getting notifications for key updates specific to the configuration of the server environment.
• Increase collaboration between IT professionals through centralized data of an organization’s deployment configurations.

REGISTRATION & FAQ:  System Center Advisor
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/Advisor.aspx

System Center Orchestrator is the official name for what we have been referring to previously as Opalis vNext.

Orchestrator which will be part of the System Center 2012 releases will provide a number of new features, functions and capabilities in addition to being rebranded and the codebase being moved into the Microsoft organization.

Taken from the announcement page:

There will be a lot of information posted over the coming weeks and months as we build to the Beta in a few months and the Final release expected later this year, however I wanted to provide a summary level list here.

• IT Pro – Authoring, Debugging & Scripting
  • The Opalis product will be rebranded to System Center Orchestrator. We are working very hard to ensure that your existing investments in Opalis are maintained.
  • A new PowerShell provider to allow Orchestrator to be integrated into scripts and provide a mechanism for remote execution of runbooks.
• Operator – Trigger, Monitor &Troubleshoot
  • A new silverlight based dynamic web console to provide an easy way to start, monitor and investigate runbooks.
• Developer – Application integration
  • A new rich OData based web service that exposes Orchestrator functionality and information in a standards based way.
• IT Business Manager – Report & Analyze
  • A new mechanism for connecting your existing reporting investments to Orchestrator to extract, report and analyze what is happening inside Orchestrator.

Read more at:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/03/24/welcome-to-the-family-system-center-orchestrator.aspx

Looks like this has gone public as of MMS 2011.

CORE CAL CHANGES FOR FY12
The Core CAL, in case you hadn’t heard, will be incorporating, as of August 1^st, 2011:

• Forefront Endpoint Protection CAL
• Lync Standard CAL

Softchoice (a large account reseller) has written quite a bit up about the change (even though we apparently haven’t said much outside of this.) and their write up is quite complete.

Today, Microsoft announced two product additions to the Core Client Access License (Core CAL), which will impact the pricing and functionality of its popular desktop licensing suite.

As of August 1st, Lync Standard CAL and Forefront Endpoint Protection will move to Core CAL. Previously these products lived on the Enterprise CAL “Step Up”, and made up part of the Enterprise Suite stack. Organizations who have Software Assurance on their Core CAL as of August 1st, will have access to the new features.

This is the first major change to Core CAL in ten years, and Microsoft says it reflects the evolving desktop environment, which has larger demands on collaboration and seamless security management. The change also helps Core CAL deliver essential capabilities to users, and aligns the on-premise platform with Microsoft’s online offerings, such as Office 365 and Windows Intune.

Lync Standard is an entry-point version of Microsoft’s next-generation instant communications tool, and allows for PC-to-PC calling, “rich presence” and conference calling, among several other features. Forefront EndpointProtectioncombines security and management at the desktop level.

• BLOG:  Core CAL Updates (from the Softchoice Blog)
  http://blogs.softchoice.com/microsoftnavigator/2011/03/21/core-cal-updates/
• DATASHEET: Microsoft Core CAL FAQ for FY11
  http://images.msgapp.com/uploads/95720/pdfs/Microsoft_Core_Cal_FAQ.pdf