First of all I would like to wish everybody an healthy and successful 2015!! I hope that all of your and your family’s whishes may come true. As every year I would like to start with looking back at last year, again a superb community year with some really cool things happening in the System Center and Enterprise Mobility (Suite) world.
The year 2014 was again an exceptional year for me, it was the year of:
- January: With our User Group, the Windows Management User Group Netherlands, we started hosting every two months a webinar starting this year with fellow MVP, Didier van Hoye. In January, CU4 for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 was shipped and my book Mastering System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager was ready to be preordered.
- February: In February I started a new blog series about the integration of Configuration Manager 2012 R2 with RES Workspace Manager 2014 also I released an update of my Cleanup Powershell script for Configuration Manager 2012. Microsoft released the Extensions for Windows Intune, I wrote a blogpost about it called Meet the Extensions for Windows Intune in ConfigMgr 2012 R2.
- March: the 10th of March was an exciting day, the day that my second book was released. After months and months of work Mastering System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager of Sybex was finally released. Together with Microsoft Premier Field Engineers Santos Martinez and Brett Bennett I was able to write this very nice book!
While preparing my (later cancelled) MDM session for Windows IT Pro I came across a new feature in Windows Intune, as from now you are able to remote lock a device and to remotely reset a passcode. Reminds me that I still have to do something with the prepared content. 😉 Cumulative Update 1 for ConfigMgr 2012 R2 became available and fixed a lot of issues.
- April: the first of April I received my third MVP Award for Enterprise Client Management (Configuration Manager & Windows Intune). What an honor to be part of this great community!
For the second time in a row, Kenneth van Surksum and I were able to speak at TechDays 2014 Netherlands. This session about the Application deployment across several devices with ConfigMgr 2012 and Windows Intune is still the most watched IT-Pro session of the event. What an honor!
- May: The month of TechEd America. I was one of the assistant-speakers (proctors) of Wally Mead his well-known Instructor Lead Sessions. Also I was able to give away and sign 50 together with Santos Martinez Mastering System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager books during this great event. .
Santos and me in the Myitforum Lounge Read my review of a week of Houston here.
- June: In June I was able to speak at the Configuration Manager User Group Switzerland, the community lead by my great friend Mirko Colemburg. During this session I spoke about managing Mac OS X devices with Configuration Manager 2012 R2. Especially for this session I created some Configuration Manager 2012 Configuration Items that I shared via a series of blogs. ( here, here, here and here) Cumulative Update 2 for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager was released and I got some relay nice news from IT/Dev Connections. I got the news that I was able to speak together with my fellow ECM MVP Greg Ramsey at IT/Dev Connections in September in Las Vegas. What a great honor!
At TechEd North America I came across the booth from Parallels and they were advertising with a product called Parallels Mac Management for ConfigMgr. A nice plugin that adds a lot of value to Mac OS X management via Configuration Manager 2012 R2.
- July: it was the month of the series about Mac Management via the Parallels plug-in but also another beta plugin was released. The Configuration Manager Servicing Extensions. A quick tip gathered from a project was Migrating MDT task sequences in ConfigMgr without deleting MDT tasks.
- August: was the month of finishing up the Mac OS X management series and preparing the session for IT/Dev Connections.
- September: IT/Dev Connections what a superb community event with a great lineup of speakers. If you are able to join next year? Be sure to do that!
What a great list of speakers next week. A busy month for Microsoft, new features were added to Windows Intune standalone and Configuration Manager 2012 R2 via the Intune Extensions, new clients were released for Mac OS X and Configmgr 2012 R2 CU3 released.
- October: Lots of new things to play with, Microsoft released vnext of Windows 10, Windows Server and System Center. October was also the month of preparing three sessions for the Midwest Management Summit in November. But also the month of, News from the ConfigMgr and Intune world and New beta version of Configuration Manager Servicing Extension released 🙂
- November: My third MVP Summit was a really good one, we got a lot of insight information about where the Enterprise Client Management world is moving to. Very excited about that! The Midwest Management Summit was the ultimate community event of the year, if you ask me the only conference that is really by the community for the community! Thanks again Brian, Steve (x2), Nash, Garth, April, Sherry, Kent, Kalsey, Greg and many others from the MMS team! It was worth taking some time off to be part of MMS 2014!! What a great event you have created, hopefully till next year!!!
Me and Kenny on the roll
Follow MMS here(!):
- MMS Website
- MMS Twitter
- MMS Scheduler
- MMS LiveI also released some new initiatives, so you are able to follow the Talk of Twitter :):
- http://msemstalk.com
- http://configmgrtalk.com
- http://cloudostalk.com
November brought also a lot of Enterprise Mobility Suite news. Read the latest here, here, here and here. Also ExpertsLive 2014 was on the agenda, Kenneth and me presented a session about Software Updates in the Enterprise.
- December: the SCCM User Group in Hamburg invited me to talk about Mac OS X management via native support and via the Parallels plugin. What a nice User Group! Microsoft released again a new version of Microsoft Intune and the final release of the Servicing Extensions. Two weeks ago I started a new blog series about the Microsoft Intune App-Layer protection which I will continue very soon.
2014 what a year! I was able to be very busy with a lot of nice Configuration Manager 2012 projects, the nice trips and was able to speak on very nice event around the world. 2015 is going to be again an exiting year! I have some really nice plans and as always some nice projects are in the pipeline.
Again happy New Year to you all, stay healthy!
Thanks for reading my blogs and giving feedback, hope to see you again this year! The ECM, EMS, ConfigMgr community rocks!
Cheers,
Peter