We Got Served

Tuesday was Day 2 and CES, and I still feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of this show - all the articles you read about the size and scale of CES - it’s true, but then double the size and scale you actually think it is. Then add aching feet and 150000 people in your face. Great fun.

So, over the past couple of days I’ve had the great privilege of hanging out with Andrew Edney, fellow Brit, fellow WHS MVP and noted author of the Windows Home Server User’s Guide (which is available from all good bookshops and many bad ones too). I helped Andrew out on his book as a Technical Reviewer, so we swap a lot of emails, but it’s been great sharing adventures and generally supporting each other through intense lack of sleep. Partying in Vegas? Nope, jet-lag.

On Monday night, we had dinner with a few of the guys (Todd, Joel S, Joel B and Dave) from the WHS team. One thing I’ve learned being here at CES is just the sheer graft these guys put in every day talking to the press  through the show. Most of the larger exhibitors here have big booths where the products are demonstrated, but then there’s a suite of private meeting rooms where in depth 30 min press and analyst briefings are happening pretty much back to back for 3 days. Fun night out and great at last to be able to put faces to names and email addresses.

Tuesday started bright and early with a breakfast meeting with Microsoft’s Oliver Niedung, who manages OEM Accounts for Microsoft’s Server products (which includes WHS) in Europe. We talked through some of the products that we’re going to see in Europe early this year from Fujitsu-Siemens and Medion as well as units later in the year from MaxData and Belinea. Oliver was optimistic about us seeing units from Iomega and Lacie next year, so fingers crossed that comes to fruition - again, Oliver has been a great supporter of WGS in Europe this year, so it was great to shoot the breeze and hopefully we’ll do more together over in Europe in the Summer.

I had a very quick opportunity to snatch quick conversations with the guys at Sonos and Netgear before heading over to HP’s mammoth booth for lunch with Carlos Montalvo. Carlos is Vice President of Marketing for HP’s Managed Home business unit. These guys look after HP’s suite of MediaSmart products, including the Server, TV, Receiver and Media Vault. Carlos talked through the history of the MediaSmart Server project, their partnership with Microsoft which enabled development of the home server over the past two years as well as some of the challenges faced over the holidays with product supply and support. I fed back some of the experiences I’d heard from some of you on dealing with HP Support recently - It’s clear that HP have a strong desire to hear and resolve these kind of issues quickly, and I’m hoping that we can find ways this year to work together to ensure the community has a more direct line to the Mediasmart team.

Following lunch it was back on the show floor to check out Sony’s Home Media Servers. They had a giant floor-standing ”media server” tower on show which couldn’t be networked (!) as well as a prototype Linux-based Home Media Server which looked a little familiar to those of you who remember Microsoft’s “Hockey Puck” design from CES last year. The unit offers some of the functionality we see in WHS, including backup of an attached home computer. One nice feature was a media card reader which automatically places files on an inserted card in the appropriated folders in the machine. Single drive machine though, which will need to be re-thought.

Intel were showing off their Storage Server reference hardware both at the Intel booth and on display within the Microsoft booth. This will be better known to you soon as the Velocity Micro NetMagix Home Server and the Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo Home Server (although with slightly different configurations). As you’ll remember, this is a multi-drive (up to 4 drives) system, which I think will do the job pretty well. When you see it in the metal though, it is a bit chunky (Intel call it “robust”) compared to what we’ve seen from HP and Tranquil PC, but from what I understand, the power consumption is low and it’s very well ventilated (it’s air-cooled) which should keep it cool and quiet. I had no chance on a noisy show floor trying to hear how noisy it is. I should hopefully have a review unit soon, so stay tuned.

Andrew and I had arranged to meet up again with the WHS team in the late afternoon, this time accompanied by Charlie Kindel, and we managed to spend a couple of hours talking planes, tigers, Blackburn Rovers, tutus and the Beatles. Pretty much everything except Windows Home Server, which, given the fact that we’d all spent most of the day talking to various people about WHS was fine with me.

A mad dash back to the hotel then ensued by tram and monorail (after a taxi driver quoted us $40 each for a 3 mile trip) before dinner with Allen Buckner, Jeff Kraft, Josh Peterson, Pat Kinley and Frederik Hamberger from HP. Jeff looks after the day to day management of the MediaSmart Server, whilst Allen managed the development of the product and is now focused how it evolves over the next few years (both with software updates as we’ll see in February with PVConnect and McAfee’s anti-virus offering, and how the hardware evolves in the future). We talked a lot about the WHS community and it’s growth, thoughts around the highs and lows of the existing product as well as future plans for the MediaSmart Server (though not much was shared, other than it will go to market in a few more countries (my assumption is Q2/Q3 this year) and the future will involve in house add-in development, third party add-in partnerships (like McAfee and Packet Video) and a hardware roadmap).

So a busy day all round with lots of walking and talking - thanks to everyone who spent time chatting yesterday from Microsoft and HP. It was great to be able to meet many of the people behind the products we’ve been talking about here on the site for the past year.