Thursday, July 04, 2013

Server 2012 R2 is coming–read all about it

As announced recently, the next version of Windows Server, Server 2012 R2, is coming. Last week at TechEd Madrid, Microsoft rolled out a lot of information about this new OS version. There are some really cool features, including PowerShell V4.

In a departure from previous practice, MS is now rolling out key information about this new OS version via a series of blog posts.  Each week on Wednesdays, Brad Anderson, intends to publish a high level blog post on the In the Cloud blog about a part of the overall WS/SC 2012 R2. Brad is unlikely to be doing much actual writing – but should have “guest” content from some of the leaders across the WS/SC engineering team.  To some degree, this is a continuation of the approach Steven Sinofksy took to Windows 8.

Each blog post is intended to link to other more detailed content that describes the technical features that support that scenario.  Such additional, detailed content is planned to reside in various places such as our TechNet blogs (SC, SCSM, SCVMM, SCO, SCOM, WS, PS, etc.), TechNet wiki, Microsoft Virtual Academy and so on. Although the ability of Microsoft to create up to date information on TechNet has not been outstanding.

For the next 2 months at least, the technical information related to WS/SC 2012 R2 will only come from these blog posts and the related content that is released with them.  Microsoft believe that this approach should ensure a coordinated, smooth rollout of technical information regarding R2 instead of just having each individual team randomly posting information about their particular area of the product.

As you will read in the attached post, which is the first in the series, we are aligning everything we do from planning to development/test to release across WS/SC and that extends to include our go-to-market technical communication plan.

The first post in this series is now up. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/in_the_cloud/archive/2013/07/03/what-s-new-in-2012-r2-beginning-and-ending-with-customer-specific-scenarios.aspx.

This is an interesting departure but should serve to centralise the information in a useful way. It also stops teams randomly telling their story and provides a much more controlled approach. I just hope the Windows engineering team listens and hears the comments that these posts will undoubtedly generate. I hope they do a better job than Sinofsky did – indeed had he listened in the first place, the whole Start button thing would never have been an issue. I get the feeling, after meeting Brad, that he indeed is already doing a better job of listening – and that’s a good thing!

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