Trip to Tech Ed SEA in Malaysia

I just got back from an exciting trip to Microsoft Tech Ed South East Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was sent to get the word out on the newest addition to Visual Studio Team System – Team Edition for Database Professionals. I had numerous opportunities for this at the event. Team Data was featured in the keynote presentation, in 2 break-out sessions, and an instructor led lab.

 

I was happy to hear all the excitement about our product. One thing I noticed though was that the familiarity of participants with this latest edition of Team System in the region was much less pronounced than it was at Tech Ed US in Boston. In addition, familiarity with Team System overall seemed less than I expected. We clearly have work to do in getting the word out around the world about the expansion of Visual Studio from its focus on the developer to the entire development team.

 

Customers clearly saw the value of our toolset centered on managed database change and repeatedly wanted to see us take it to the next level. They clearly saw the value in, for example, our database rename refactoring tool. They loved how it could find all the appropriate references in our data tier. However, they dreamed of us taking it to the next level both in terms of automatically finding references in their application tier as well as supporting additional database refactorings, like change data type refactoring. I just wanted to say – don’t worry. We are dreaming the same dreams and definitely have huge ambitions for where want to take this product in the future.

 

If you ever have the chance to attend one of the international conferences, I would encourage you to take advantage of it. It was a great opportunity for me to learn about how Microsoft is perceived internationally and how our products are leveraged around the world.

 

But now I’m back in Redmond with full effort focused on getting this product out the door by the end of the year. I hope you are as excited about the release as I am J

 

Sachin Rekhi