Windows Server 2008

I went to the 6th Annual Financial Services Developer Conference today in New York City. This year’s focus was on High Performance Computing (HPC). I must say that I have enjoyed this conference a lot. It seems that SQL server is very prevalent on the street. The OLAP capabilities of SQL Server are making Sybase slowly disappear from Wall Street.

Financial firms are doing some very interesting stuff; there is a hedge fund which records am earnings call, runs it through some voice stress analysis software and based on the outcome of that will short or long the stock. You should hear the stories of how financial firms handle IT, the innovation is happening in the financial markets. I also saw a couple of very cool WPF applications. Check out the demos from Lab49: http://www.lab49.com/insidethelab/demos Visit http://www.financialdevelopers.com/ to download The Silverlight 2 Retail Financial Services Demonstrator

Carl Franklin from Dotnetrocks recorded a podcast at the event, this podcast was about concurrency and how to handle multi-core programming. You should definitely check it out when it becomes available on dotnetrocks. If you are interested about PLINQ and concurrent programming with .NET then visit this site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/default.aspx

Tomorrow there are three sessions at the same time that I want to attend

Software Engineering with VSTS

Parallelize you .Net applications with parallel extensions to the .NET framework.

Useful evolution: Programming the New features in SQL Server 2008.

I guess I'll pick the SQL Server one :-)

I have my blackcrackberry with me so if you are attending the event tomorrow then send me an email at FirstName.LastName@dowjones.com and maybe we can discuss about this event during lunch.

Lots happening in Orlando at the Convergence 2008 - the Microsoft Dynamics users' conference.  Steve Ballmer and vice president Kirill Tatarinov are speaking and the Dynamics team is making a number of announcements, including a partnership with EDS to extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployments, a preview of Dynamics AX 2009 (part of the ERP product portfolio), and more developments in hosted, online services.  Also announced - and one of the things Kirill is speaking about in his keynote -  is how Windows Essential Business Server and Microsoft Dynamics are an ideal combination for midsized companies.

Essential Business Server provides that reliable platform for line of business applications that is all too often a challenge for midsized businesses to set up.  All of the core infrastructure needed - Windows Server, Active Directory, SQL Server, secure remote access, etc. - is ready to go, configured to best practices.  And Dynamics solutions will be manageable as "Add In" apps within the Essential Business Server unified administration console, giving IT pros a more efficient way to manage everything in one place.

Software partners such as Citrix, CA, FullArmor, Mimosa Systems, Quest Software, ScriptLogic, Symantec and Trend Micro also plan to provide Add-In software solutions for Windows Essential Business Server. And HP, IBM and Intel will make hardware management Add-Ins.

Microsoft and HP are demonstrating Essential Business Server with Dynamics Add Ins at Convergence, and the EBS team is doing a number of sessions at the show.

Joel Sider