BrainShare 2013
February 26, 2013
It was great to be back in Salt Lake City for BrainShare a couple of weeks ago. I lost track of how many people I ran into between checking in at the lobby of my hotel - before the show even started - up through halftime of the Super Bowl party, but it was indicative of a great event for connecting with colleagues as well as learning what Novell has in mind for the next year.
Now the dilemma - I have far too many notes about cool stuff coming to the ZENworks family this year for a single mailing. So, divide and conquer. This month I'll provide some quick notes on updates that will arrive soon, and then cover major new features in the big ZENworks 11.3 release scheduled for late this year in more detail over time.
Coming Soon!
Bob Flynn, President and General Manager of the Novell business unit at Attachmate, told a partner breakfast that the 18 month period since Novell was taken private has been a time of repairing processes, establishing new standards and generally getting everything back on track. With that accomplished, we can look forward to a series of impressive releases over the coming weeks and months.
Mobile device management was a major point of emphasis in the endpoint management keynotes and in a number of sessions. Novell is making a major commitment to this important facet of the IT management realm. I've sung the praises of the ENGL imaging toolkit add-on previously, and their new version coming soon will include Windows 8 support. Another really cool ZENworks add-on appeared this year: Bundle Commander. Bundle Commander publishes "recipes" for packaging bundles incredibly quickly and easily that take into account all of the hidden "gotchas" that most of us learn by trial and error as we struggle to package software that will work every time without annoying our users. They also supply reference materials for finding the MSIs everyone needs to work efficiently with bundles. The product demo was really convincing - going to need to try to get my hands on a copy of this!
2013 IAITAM Conferences
Remember to sign up for one of the IAITAM conferences coming up this year - the best IT asset management events available!
IAITAM 2013 Spring ACE: Houston, TX | April 16-18, 2013
I'll be presenting a session in Houston on inventory technologies and the questions to ask when looking for an inventory tool.
IAITAM 2013 Fall ACE: St. Petersburg, FL | October 15-17, 2013
Next Up: Spring?
Not sure where the road will take me between now and the April IAITAM conference in Houston, but watch for a note from me sometime around the beginning of spring.
It was great to be back in Salt Lake City for BrainShare a couple of weeks ago. I lost track of how many people I ran into between checking in at the lobby of my hotel - before the show even started - up through halftime of the Super Bowl party, but it was indicative of a great event for connecting with colleagues as well as learning what Novell has in mind for the next year.
Now the dilemma - I have far too many notes about cool stuff coming to the ZENworks family this year for a single mailing. So, divide and conquer. This month I'll provide some quick notes on updates that will arrive soon, and then cover major new features in the big ZENworks 11.3 release scheduled for late this year in more detail over time.
Coming Soon!
Bob Flynn, President and General Manager of the Novell business unit at Attachmate, told a partner breakfast that the 18 month period since Novell was taken private has been a time of repairing processes, establishing new standards and generally getting everything back on track. With that accomplished, we can look forward to a series of impressive releases over the coming weeks and months.
- ZENworks version 11.2.3 is due to ship this month. It includes limited Windows 8 support, enhancements to Macintosh support, limited location awareness support without activating the ZESM drivers, and satellite-to-satellite server replication. There are also significant improvements for a number of inventory issues.
- ZENworks Reporting Server is changing significantly with a new engine from Jaspersoft replacing the Business Objects (SAP) engine. This will allow for much more flexible reporting across products and across multiple ZENworks zones. I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the new ZRS in the next month or two and starting to update my ATT class. More on the new ZRS once I've had some time to work with it and I can show some screens.
- ZENworks Asset Management 11.3 will feature a new "data trimming" functionality (Tally Systems and ZAM 7.5 customers will recognize this as a purge, but with better controls) as well as improved software recognition utilizing the Add Remove Programs and MSI databases. More on this release soon.
- There's a ZENworks Application Virtualization update coming along soon. It will include support for x86 and 64-bit Windows 8 packaging and execution, plus a web-based server for accessing virtualized applications. The server features a sandbox that is automatically synced as users move from device to device, as well as some license metering and application usage features that appeal to the software asset management guy in me.
- ZENworks Mobile Management 2.7 is due in March.
Mobile device management was a major point of emphasis in the endpoint management keynotes and in a number of sessions. Novell is making a major commitment to this important facet of the IT management realm. I've sung the praises of the ENGL imaging toolkit add-on previously, and their new version coming soon will include Windows 8 support. Another really cool ZENworks add-on appeared this year: Bundle Commander. Bundle Commander publishes "recipes" for packaging bundles incredibly quickly and easily that take into account all of the hidden "gotchas" that most of us learn by trial and error as we struggle to package software that will work every time without annoying our users. They also supply reference materials for finding the MSIs everyone needs to work efficiently with bundles. The product demo was really convincing - going to need to try to get my hands on a copy of this!
2013 IAITAM Conferences
Remember to sign up for one of the IAITAM conferences coming up this year - the best IT asset management events available!
IAITAM 2013 Spring ACE: Houston, TX | April 16-18, 2013
I'll be presenting a session in Houston on inventory technologies and the questions to ask when looking for an inventory tool.
IAITAM 2013 Fall ACE: St. Petersburg, FL | October 15-17, 2013
Next Up: Spring?
Not sure where the road will take me between now and the April IAITAM conference in Houston, but watch for a note from me sometime around the beginning of spring.
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