TechEd North America 2011–What’s been announced on Day 1?

Here’s the no frills quick and dirty run down on some of what was announced today at TechEd 2011.

Windows Azure:

• New May CTP of Windows Azure AppFabric with new messaging capabilities for publication and subscription. Available today.
• Coming in June, a CTP of AppFabric Application Manager and Developer Tools with enhancements to Visual Studio, new runtime capabilities for automatic deployment and application monitoring, and a new AppFabric Composition Model. Expected availability in June.
• Coming later this summer to SQL Azure, an enhancements to the web based management portal, better schema management, new service to manage SQL Azure databases through OData, and the integration of import and export features in the management portal. Features coming in a service update later this summer.

System Center:

• Demoed System Center ‘Concero’ during keynote for managing private cloud resources and public cloud resources.
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 (Formerly Opalis) an IT process automation platform for orchestrating workflows across systems. Expected availability – Beta in June 2011
• Demoed System Center Connector for Visual Studio to quickly escalate issues to engineering teams for review and fixes if necessary. In beta today, final release date not yet known.

Forefront:

• Forefront Endpoint Protection 2012 announced today, built on System Center Configuration Manager, and designed to allow IT to use existing infrastructure to deploy and manage endpoints in their networks. In beta today, final release date not yet known.

Windows Phone 7:

• Lync 2010 for Windows Phone was shown off and will be available on the Windows Phone Marketplace around the time Mango is released.
• Out of box support in Mango for Office 365
• Conversation view, information rights management, pinnable email folders, complex password support and server side search for Outlook Mobile.
• All features coming with Windows Phone “Mango” around Holiday 2011

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010:

• Service Pack 1 for both Office and Sharepoint 2010 will be released in June, with improved Internet Explorer 9 functionality, improvements to Office Web Apps, support for Google Chrome, and updates for other products in the Office 2010 family. Service Pack 1 will be released June 2011.