Microsoft to Hold Data Center Technologies and Process Conference for customers

I just learned that Microsoft is planning on holding a Data Center Technology and process conference for its customers. The conference called “MDX” or Microsoft Data Center Experience is aimed at bringing its best practices to its customers.  Per Christian Belady, this event will be governed by Non Disclosure Agreements.

While Microsoft has been incredibly open on its data center techniques and approach this event marks the first time Microsoft is willing to bare all and share widely and openly with its customers.   What’s more interesting is that the actual conference is to be held in its soon to be opened facility in San Antonio, Texas!  I have never heard of a data center conference held in an actual data center before, which is kind of neat and different.   According to the document that was forwarded to me by our local Microsoft representative the event has tracks for electrical and mechanical design approaches,  physical and logical data center security, servers and hardware, interactive design panels, virtualization and utilization techniques, containers, Sustainable IT, Data Center networking, Data Center Tooling (featuring their Scry tool), Data Center Operations and management, open question and answer forums where customers can interact with MS experts on their own issues and most cool of all, tours of the facility!

I have been to many data center conferences and while they are all helpful, this one is aimed at actual approaches.  There is no sales efforts for Microsoft products or product pushes.  This is a down and dirty how-to conference.  As one of the two brochures on this  I have states:

The event will:

· Require a non-disclosure agreement (a company-wide agreement or specific event agreements for all attendees)

· Be geared toward mid/senior-level technical decision-makers, datacenter architects, and technology implementers

· Be held inside a working datacenter facility (please dress and expect facilities accordingly)

· Let you see behind the scenes in one of Microsoft’s newest datacenters via tours led by datacenter professionals

· Be focused on Microsoft’s datacenter best practices and how to integrate these practices into their own technical operations

· Allow time for networking with other datacenter professionals

The event will not:

· Be fancy

· Be a sales event

· Be a regular occurrence – available space in a working Microsoft data center does not happen often so we do not anticipate this becoming a regular event

The event will be held on September 29th and 30th.  I could find nothing about this event on any Microsoft Website, but it is available.  I found out about this event from My Microsoft Account Representative.  If you are interested in attending I would suggest you reach out to your account rep.

As for me, I will not be able to attend due to a pre-arranged vacation with my family.  However, if any readers out there do indeed get a chance to attend, I would be happy to give you posting rights to summarize what you can!