As many of you would know by now, these days I am attempting to summarize my experience at Tech-Ed 2012 (India) held from March 21-23, 2012 at Bengaluru, India.

Day 02 was not very good for me. I spent most of the first half outside of the sessions, over the phone and connected to the VPN, working . Still, I am thankful that I was able to attend the keynote and some of the sessions.

Day 02 – Keynote – Embracing the future of technology

Keynotes are always exciting. We have industry leaders or Microsoft seniors sharing their vision, speaking about their passion in technology and providing direction to the community.

My advice: Whenever you go to any event, do not miss out on the opening and closing keynotes. They are a goldmine.

The Day 02 of TechEd 2012 was opened by a keynote from the IIT (Kharagpur) distinguished alumnus 2010 and now MD, Microsoft R&D Pvt Ltd, Mr. Amit Chatterjee. He has spent 23 years in Microsoft and was a key member of the Windows team that shipped Windows 2.1, 3.0, 3.1 and Windows 95.

He talked about the key consumer, developer and business trends and how Microsoft is responding to these trends.

Key Consumer Trends

• NUI – Natural User Interface – the advent of Touch
• Staying connected
• Consumerization of IT
• Becoming social
• Moving towards cloud and cloud based services

Microsoft is responding to these via development of Immersive applications, providing continuous services and a flexible infrastructure.

Key Developer Trends

• Need for agile development
• Quality Enablement
• DevOps
• Continuous Delivery

This was discussed via a demo showcasing how Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 11 can help in turning these continuous delivery impediments into enablers.

Key Business Trends

• Agility, Faster innovation
• Flexibility, Scalability and Availability
• Cost, Operational Efficiency
• Modern workstyle enabled solutions

Microsoft is responding to these by encouraging cloud computing, that provides pooled resources, self-service, elasticity and usage based costing model. It also provides private cloud – a cloud that is dedicated to the business which allows for higher levels of control and customization.

Just as the keynote was getting over, I got a call on my cell phone that changed the day. It was from the office, and so, I headed over to the hotel lobby to start working.

Day 02 – Visiting the Showcase area & Socializing

After work was over, I headed over to the showcase area, where I planned to visit booths from all the sponsors of TechEd India 2012, namely: Pluralsight, Intel, Telerik, Nokia, Plantronics, Microsoft Virtual Academy and many more. (Get the full list here).

Pluralsight Booth: Book Signing by Pinal & Vinod

The Pluralsight booth was perhaps the busiest booth on Day 2. After all, it was hosting a booking signing event – visitors could have their copy of “SQL Server Interview questions & answers” signed personally by the authors: Pinal Dave, a.k.a. “SQLAuthority” (B|T) and Vinod Kumar, a.k.a. “Extreme Experts” (B|T).

The pluralsight booth with Vinod Kumar, a.k.a. “Extreme Experts” (B|T) & Pinal Dave, a.k.a. “SQLAuthority” (B|T)

After spending some time at the Pluralsight booth, I headed over to the Intel booth, where it was time for some fun (more like becoming children again). They had a small glass chamber with a huge fan underneath and some balloons. All one had to do was to collect 3 blue balloons and win a very cool Intel baggage tag. I won!

At the Intel booth – Within the glass chamber after collecting 3 blue balloons.

As Tejas Shah (a.k.a. “SQLYoga” – B|T) and I were coming out of the Showcase area, we ran into Manas Dhash (B|T) and Sudeepta Ganguly (B|T). We discussed at length the recent happenings at our respective user groups and future plans. After about 30minutes (maybe even more!), it was time for some photographs:

(Left to Right:) Manas Dhash (B|T), Sudeepta Ganguly (B|T), Tejas Shah (a.k.a. “SQLYoga” – B|T) and Nakul Vachhrajani (B|T)

Day 02 – Session

Notice that I used the singular – “session” above. That’s because I could not attend the following because the rooms were full by the time I made my way from the keynote hall to these sessions:

1. Introducing Visual Studio 11 – What’s new for developers? by Kiran Balijepalli
2. Working on an agile team with Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server 11 by Nahas Mohammed

The following I could not attend because I was working!

1. Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11: MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone by Abhishek Agrawal
2. Demystifying IntelliTrace with Visual Studio 11  by Tejaswi Kumar

I am looking forward to the recorded sessions to catch up on these. Now, about the session I attended…

Designing Secure Enterprise Applications using on-premise SQL Server

Speaker: Vinod Kumar, a.k.a. “Extreme Experts” (B|T)

Vinod dealt with multiple common security pitfalls and discussed their mitigation. Issues like protection of the backup data against intentional manipulation while “in-transit”, login security and auditing were discussed. The following cartoon says it all:

Here’s a teaser: http://blogs.extremeexperts.com/2012/02/06/teched-india-2012-architecture-track/

Day 02 – Demo Extravaganza

The Day 02 of DemoEx was focused on two products – the Windows 8 phone and SQL Server! Here are some photographs:

Nahas Mohammed and Harish Vaidyanathan kicking off DemoEx – Day 02

Did you know that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip powers these windows devices?

Pinal Dave & Harish Vaidyanathan

Time for some….um…..er….Entertainment with SQL Server spatial data-types

Pinal Dave uses technology and SQL Server spatial data types to prove that Lord Rama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama) was not wrong – the “Ram Setu” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam’s_Bridge) is the shortest way from India to Sri Lanka

That’s it for Day 02. Day 03 was the SQL Server day. Stay tuned for my summary of the same in the final part of the TechEd 2012 series.

Until we meet next time,

Be courteous. Drive responsibly.