Is Microsoft Winning the Cloud Services Race?

You should go and grab a copy of the Cloud and Infrastructure Review 2016.  Its  well put together report on the state of the market and will help you in leading dialogue with clients when your trying to reinforce their cloud first strategy.

There are some very revealing confirmations within it, although you need to do a deep read of it as it has some excellent stats and business considerations in it.

“Fifty-two per cent of respondents told us that their cloud strategies were part of a wider digital transformation strategy”.  Most businesses don’t approach implementation like that, its all bottom up and revolves around discussions about VMs, storage volume etc, even if the intent is to be top down.  Make sure your conversations are about business change and enablers.

“SaaS was still ...

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Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and the Brexit problem

While we knew this was coming along, the actual formal release of Microsoft Azure and Office 365 hosting in UK only data centers can be seen as a game changer in light of future Brexit strategy for most organizations with a UK presence or European presence who want to use Azure or Office 365 at scale and as devolved Cloud services in a Hybrid or dedicated Cloud strategy.

Coupled with the recent General Data Protection Regulation which activated in May 2016 and will apply to all business from May 2018;  Alongside this the Privacy Shield replaces Safe Harbour complicates the matter and will force many businesses to reconsider their hosting strategies.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/09/07/microsoft-azure-and-office-365-now-available-from-united-kingdom-datacenters/#sm...

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SharePoint Goes Mobile

Many would argue this isn’t really a new thing and some will even tell you they spent a fortune on making SharePoint responsive and thus have a great mobile experience.  Its all tosh as we have kinda struggled with mobile access to SharePoint since its inception as a product.

Well, its set to change with SharePoint 2016 with a suite of new SharePoint apps for iphone and Android.  We could finally see full access to files, calendars, announcements and news feed, from any device.

One to read about: http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-sharepoint-cvp-jeff-teper-interview-2016-5?utm_content=bufferafd5c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer?r=US&IR=T

 

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IT Community Roadshows

The IT Community Roadshow is a series of free training events focusing on next-generation technologies including Microsoft Azure, Windows 10, and DevOps. The sessions will focus on real-world challenges, along with a comprehensive set of solutions and expert guidance.

What you’ll get:

These unique events are led by the community, and designed to offer all who attend the skills and real world knowledge to work with tomorrow’s technology. All sessions will feature live demos, and you may receive a free Microsoft Azure pass for some courses.

Hear about the latest technology from some of the best technical community experts in the country:

In just one free, half or full day technical training event, you’ll discover how to build a more flexible infrastructure with Open Source (OSS), Microsoft...

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PowerApps is here

I’ve been involved in the closed pilot around PowerApps and finally the information about it is going public.

PowerApps is an enterprise service for innovators everywhere to connect, create and share business apps with your team on any device in minutes. And PowerApps helps anyone in your organization unlock new business agility.

PowerApps will dramatically accelerate how business apps are built, reducing time to solution from weeks or months to minutes and empowering a new category of app creators. It balances power between IT and business users, arming those closest to business needs with tools and services to not just envision but also implement the solution...

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Supporting material for the Rethinking Project Cost blog posting

Supporting material for the Rethinking Project Cost blog posting:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2015/11/03/rethinking-sharepoint-project-cost-estimation-with-azure-machine-learning.aspx?linkId=18482750

Zip File

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Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) provides a solution to help protect your organization from advanced attacks. Its sofyware, that sits within your network and monitors your users and systems normal usage patterns and alerts you for something that appears to be out of the ordinary.

It can do Behavioral Analytic analysis by learning the normal patterns of users and the devices they use. Patterns outside the normal are flagged such as using different devices than normal or a user working longer hours than typical, or unusual hours implying a change to a pattern of behaviour...

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SharePoint 2016 Preview is available for download

SharePoint 2016 Preview – finally:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48712

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Tech Days Online UK

There is a very special edition of Tech Days Online coming up.  If you are unfamiliar with these sessions it is a series of free digital events about the latest Microsoft technology.  This time delivered from the Microsoft UK Campus on June 2nd, 3rd and 4th:

As well as a keynote, there are at least 15 deep dive sessions:

  • Community keynote sessions with respected industry figures showcasing what others are doing with Microsoft Azure
  • Deep technical sessions spanning Azure 101, Apps & Architecture, Data & Machine Learning and Cloud Infrastructure & DevOps delivered by Microsoft UK experts
  • The opportunity to ask your questions to all of our experts though live Q&A
  • A live mystery Microsoft Azure challenge and a competition to win a drone

(I’ll be entering that so you don’t need to bother!)

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Whats New in SharePoint 2016

So, not much in me trying to trump the mighty Bill Baer and Seth Patton in telling you whats on the horizon for 2016, given their session from Ignite is recorded.  This is the session you need to watch:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/FND2203

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