Flexible Work style, meet your new Office

Cyber Island Mauritius is getting more information on the latest technologies provided by Microsoft. Finally... ;-)

After attending "Driving Business Forward" by Knowledge 7 it was time to wrap my head around some off-line information on latest Windows platforms. Not that I am in lack of information or software products but simply for the exchange of experience and networking.

Windows 8 & Windows Server 2012

In corporation between Harel Mallac Technologies, MSL and Microsoft IOI I had the chance to attend a meeting at the Hennesy Park Hotel at Ebene to get a first hand experience on latest software applications like Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Office 2013. Mainly driven by the chance to win an Acer Iconia W520 - no, just kidding! - I was really eager to see some of the stuff in action. Well, I'm already using Windows 8 since the early previews from last year, experimenting quite a bit with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 as well as having a proper installation of Office Professional Plus 2013 on my development machines. But you never know... It's always nice to have new points of view and exchange some experiences. Plus, such events are always a great way for networking. Which is actually my main reason to attend. So, it was at no surprise to see familiar faces from the Microsoft Open Doors event that was organised back in October 2012 at Pailles.

Kudos to the live demonstrations

Despite the loud audio penetration I had a great afternoon, very interesting demonstrations and good insight questions and answers from the team at HMT. Thanks to Siddick and his team members - well done! And remember: If it breaks, blame it on Emtel! ;-)

One of the real interesting aspects was that they run the demos live! Just using an Emtel Home & Office router and Emtel 3G/UMTS connection they showed us the real experience of speed and delay times while administering Windows Server 2012 running in the cloud, okay at the local Emtel data centre, and accessing either App-V or VDI for the real desktop experience on any device. Consumerisation of IT is the buzz word nowadays. To my opinion it was a also a great pleasure to have this kind of interactive session with Siddick. He had a number of very good questions to the audience and vice versa. A couple of them, especially when related to either iOS devices or Android smartphones and tablets were even discussed between various attendees.

Goodies, goodies and even more goodies

As said earlier, there was great communication between the speakers and the audience. And I guess it was also very pleasant for some of us that there were goodies given out for either excellent questions or right answers. Personally, I had great fun this afternoon, and was very honoured to drive home with some extra goodies. I was given a nice leather etui for a laptop, unfortunately it's too big for a Surface, iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab but hey, it's great for an Ultrabook, and... tadaa... a Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000. Thanks again to the event sponsors!

Hopefully, more on Office 2013 and Office 365 soon

Yes, even though that Microsoft's Distribution Account Manager Virginie announced the general availability of Office 2013 Home & Student in Mauritius as FPP, I'm actually more interested in upcoming events around Office Professional 2013 and Office 365. Which is hopefully giving some more sense to 'Cyber Island' soon.

More to come, so stay tuned...