TECH-ED IT FORUM DAY 4 - My 1st Session over and done with!

Well my blog was quiet yesterday as I had the usual last minute panic of - arghhh!  I hate my presentation - must change it! 

My presentation today was entitled 'How to deploy Windows Mobile and Exchange 2003 to 40,000 people'  - it used to be called 'Windows Mobile Enterprise Lifecycle Management' but no-one ever showed up for that talk ;)

Essentially it covered how to deploy, procure, provision, manage and even de-commission devices.  It's based on Microsoft's own internal adoption (which is where the 40,000 number comes from :) ) as well as my own experience working with customers.

One of the big questions is always how to provision devices and setup them up. 

I'm always staggered by the lack of awareness of Configuration Service Providers... or CSP's...

Unsuprisingly only 3 people in the 250+ strong audience knew what they were....

Well if you are among the 247 people who don't know - don't feel ashamed... CSP's are a very powerful way of configuring /provisioning mobile devices and settings. 

One of my colleagues Vik has written a great blog post about how to use CSP's to setup Activesync as an example... 

MSDN also contains an excellent description of all the different CSP options, the platforms on which they are supported and also the delivery methods by which they can be delivered. 

I'd really encourage you to take a look at these postings if you want to understand more about provisioning.