Moving the Blog Back Here!

Well, after playing around with the blog on my local server, I’ve decided that it really does work best here on blogger. I have changed the url to http://blog.sqltrainer.com so hopefully that won’t confuse things too much.

 

I always say this, but I’m hoping to spend more time blogging about stuff here over the next year. Work has been exceptionally exciting and I’ve had the awesome opportunity to work with some very cool technologies that I’d love to spend more time educating others about. Time is always an issue though, so we’ll see how it goes.

It’s been awhile – and Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 is Released!

It has really been a LONG time since I’ve posted here. In my defense, I’ve spent the last year blogging about my dogs and their fight with cancer (See http://nikkitherott.tripawds.com and http://buddytherott.tripawds.com for more info). We lost Buddy a few weeks back, and Nikki seems to have beat it for now, so we’re a getting back to normal in a lot of ways.

A number of things has happened in my professional life since the last post (Which incidentally, I’m still not happy about, and have since had the need to replace my HP Tablet. Guess which brand I DID NOT buy?) and here they are in no particular order:

• My product, “EMC Ionix Configuration Analytics Manager”, was sold to VMWare, along with all of the former Configuresoft assets, including a number of my team members. My Product Manager, a couple of key architects and myself stayed behind at EMC and are now working to define a new Business Intelligence Product that is currently being called, “EMC Ionix Infrastructure Insight" or I3..  More on this in future posts, because it’s been an extremely exciting time and we’re really having some fun delving into the depths of the Storage Resource Management (SRM) domain.
• Due to the fact that the building we had occupied is now the property of VMWare, my team and I have relocated to a new office just a bit Southwest of where we were. My new office has a much better view of Pikes Peak, and given that I mostly work East Coast hours these days, I’m in the office early enough to enjoy the deer and other wildlife that roam through the grounds before most folks get in.
• I was re-awarded the Microsoft MVP Award (They have retired the “Visual Studio Team System” name, so now I’m a “Visual Studio ALM MVP”) for another year. As I told my lead, I didn’t really deserve it, but they gave it to me, so I’m dedicated to earning it this year.
• I was able to speak at a number of Visual Studio launch events, most notably the “.NET Forever” event in Stockholm, Sweden. (Thanks Tibi!)
• EMC announced the acquisition of Greenplum, Inc. If you haven’t heard about Greenplum, you might want to read up on them. This is definitely a major game changer in the world of Cloud Computing. I really can’t say much at this point about the acquisition, but don’t be surprised if you start seeing a lot more “Massively Scalable Data Warehouse” type posts here in the future.
• This may be the first year since the mid 90’s that I have not flown enough to maintain top-tier status on my airline of choice (American Airlines). I’m not yet sure how I feel about this.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of that.

On to the real reason behind this post.

Today marks an important day for developers who practice agile development. Microsoft has release version 1.0 of the Visual Studio Scrum template and guidance. The reason that this is an exciting and important announcement is that Microsoft has finally seen fit to release a template that can be used with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server out of the box! (This is a point of debate for many people I know, but I’ve always seen the existing MSF guidance as a starting point that must be customized. Now we have a solution that is good to go from the first install!).

This template was developed from the start by Microsoft, who engaged with some very well-known heavy hitters in the scrum community. This means that the template and guidance provided is not something that won’t hold up to real world development, but rather has been vetted by those who live and breathe Scrum on a daily basis.

Check it out! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aaronbjork/archive/2010/07/19/announcing-microsoft-visual-studio-scrum-1-0.aspx

More on the transition to EMC

If you follow this blog, you know that I’ve recently become an employee of EMC. As a matter of fact, I just got my badge today. (As a side note, why do badge photos have to be so horrible?) It has been a whirlwind transition, and has actually been only my second experience of being part of an acquisition by a larger entity.

I realize that it’s early in the game, but I have to honestly state that I have been impressed by the attention that I’ve received by various folks throughout the EMC organization. From the management of my new organization, down to bloggers and tweeters who’ve sent their “Welcome Aboard” messages, I’ve felt as if I’ve personally been welcomed to the EMC family.

Which brings me to the point of this post..

Joe Tucci (CEO of EMC) wrote an open letter to Data Domain employees basically telling them what life at EMC would be like. (If you haven’t heard the story, EMC has made a bid for Data Domain – read about that here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/01/emc_bids_for_data_domain/ ) and several EMC employees have added to the conversation by stating why they feel EMC is a great place to work. (See Polly Persons blog here: http://www.pollypearson.com/main/2009/06/emc-folks-add-to-the-discussion-why-do-i-work-at-emc.html). As a brand-new-to-the-EMC-culture person, I feel that I don’t really have much to add to the discussion, but I can say one thing for sure, if all people that EMC have absorbed through acquisition are treated as I have been (yeah yeah, I know that it’s still early!) then the folks over at Data Domain are in for a very pleasant surprise!