Powershell: The first six months

PowerShell is six months old this month having RTW last November.  So where is our favourite automation, scripting and integration technology after this time.

 

The answer is that is doing very well.  Lets look at the highlights of this period

 

Microsoft have released Exchange 2007 and SC Operations Manager 2007 both of which use PowerShell for administration.  There are a number of other products in the pipeline that will utilise PowerShell.

 

There is an extremely healthy set of third party software either available, in beta or being shown as demos.  This includes:

• PowerGadgets
• Quest AD cmdlets
• Quest PowerGUI
• FullArmor
• /nSoftware

There are a number of books either already on sale or being prepared – including books from leading members of the PowerShell Team.  When do we get a book from Mr. Snover? – Bets thats one lots of people would love to see.

PowerShell has been featured at a number of Microsoft conferences and more importantly has been well represented at a number of non-Microsoft conferences – including Directory Experts Conference.  Microsoft, especially in the UK, are featuring PowerShell in a number of events this year.

There is also a thriving Community around PowerShell:

• PowerShell Community Extensions and the other Powershell related projects (well over a dozen last time I looked) on codeplex
• A number of very active blog sites – including the PowerShell Team blog site
• A steadily building User Group based in the UK

These activities together with the number of downloads of PowerShell suggests a thriving and strong interest.  Long may it continue!

NB  This list is not meant to be definitive – its just the things that came to mind while I was writing.