Archive
Microsoft and AzureCon delivers! Love it! – #Azure, #AzureCon, #EnvokeIT, #IoT, #SaaS, #PaaS
I really love the way that Microsoft and Azure delivers! It’s so amazing with all the PaaS and SaaS offerings they now have on top of the traditional IaaS delivery. There is no other cloud provider out there that delivers anything near it! I’m amazed and so happy to be a part of this journey!
If you didn’t have the time to look at AzureCon you have a lot of great videos and topics to go through!!
Here is a short overview of the many great things released and presented:
- General Availability of 3 new Azure regions in India
- Announcing new N-series of Virtual Machines with GPU capabilities
- Announcing Azure IoT Suite available to purchase
- Announcing Azure Container Service
- Announcing Azure Security Center
Watching the Videos
All of the talks presented at AzureCon (including the 60 breakout talks) are now available to watch online. You can browse and watch all of the sessions here.
Announcing General Availability of 3 new Azure regions in India
Yesterday we announced the general availability of our new India regions: Mumbai (West), Chennai (South) and Pune (Central). They are now available for you to deploy solutions into.
This brings our worldwide presence of Azure regions up to 24 regions, more than AWS and Google combined. Over 125 customers and partners have been participating in the private preview of our new India regions. We are seeing tremendous interest from industry sectors like Public Sector, Banking Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare whose cloud adoption has been restricted by data residency requirements. You can all now deploy your solutions too.
Announcing N-series of Virtual Machines with GPU Support
This week we announced our new N-series family of Azure Virtual Machines that enable GPU capabilities. Featuring NVidia’s best of breed Tesla GPUs, these Virtual Machines will help you run a variety of workloads ranging from remote visualization to machine learning to analytics.
The N-series VMs feature NVidia’s flagship GPU, the K80 which is well supported by NVidia’s CUDA development community. N-series will also have VM configurations featuring the latest M60 which was recently announced by NVidia. With support for M60, Azure becomes the first hyperscale cloud provider to bring the capabilities of NVidia’s Quadro High End Graphics Support to the cloud. In addition, N-series combines GPU capabilities with the superfast RDMA interconnect so you can run multi-machine, multi-GPU workloads such as Deep Learning and Skype Translator Training.
Announcing Azure Security Center
This week we announced the new Azure Security Center—a new Azure service that gives you visibility and control of the security of your Azure resources, and helps you stay ahead of threats and attacks. Azure is the first cloud platform to provide unified security management with capabilities that help you prevent, detect, and respond to threats.
The Azure Security Center provides a unified view of your security state, so your team and/or your organization’s security specialists can get the information they need to evaluate risk across the workloads they run in the cloud. Based on customizable policy, the service can provide recommendations. For example, the policy might be that all web applications should be protected by a web application firewall. If so, the Azure Security Center will automatically detect when web apps you host in Azure don’t have a web application firewall configured, and provide a quick and direct workflow to get a firewall from one of our partners deployed and configured: Read more…
Microsoft Ignite 2015 summary – #MSIgnite, #EnvokeIT, #Azure, #Office365, #OneDrive, #EMM, #PaaS, #IaaS
Hi all,
We at EnvokeIT participated and collaborated at Microsoft Ignite 2015 in Chicago. And it was one of the most intense events I’ve visited in years with a lot of happening in the business and Microsoft really showed that they are the leading innovator in many areas!
I hope that you enjoy my report and that it gives you a condensed overview of what happened and please contact us at EnvokeIT if you want assistance within any area below! And thank you Microsoft for such a great event and also all you bloggers out there that I’ve linked to in this material.
I must say that this event was positive and a bit scary at the same time. Microsoft is for sure pushing as visionairies and innovators in a lot of areas, and I think that competitors will have a hard time competing in the coming years.
These are the areas where A LOT have been released already and where Microsoft according to my oppinion will increase its market share significantly:
- Cloud and Mobile services, and with this I don’t mean IaaS service for just running a VM in their public Azure cloud or building a hybrid cloud with connectivity to on-premise datacenters. They are delivering so many capabilities now as PaaS and SaaS services. Just look at the sections below, it’s everything from Enterprise Mobillity Management (EMM), Business Intelligence, Database, Storage, Web Apps/services, Service Availability services (DR, Monitoring/Reporting, Backup etc.), Development, Source Control, Visual Studio Online etc. It’s amazing!!
- Open Source/Linux support – It’s so cool how much Microsoft have shifted to become an adopter to support more open source technologies and way of thinking than just a couple of years ago! Just have a look at all the Linux support they have in Azure, the Linux support they now have in System Center, Docker support to deliver more DevOps capabilities and all the other services in Azure. It’s amazing and so fun! So now both Microsoft have opened their eyes and realized that they can’t ignore this anymore just like Citrix has with their addition of XenDesktop for Linux with SuSE and RedHat support!
The first day kicked off and was a bombarding of product announcements aimed at helping IT pros secure and manage the new Universal Windows Platform.
CEO Satya Nadella presided over a three-hour keynote, which focused on how Microsoft’s new wave of software and cloud services will enable IT and business transformations that are in line with the ways people now work. Nadella talked up Microsoft’s focus on “productivity and platforms” and how it’s tied with the shift to cloud and mobility. He also highlighted the need for better automation of systems and processes, and better management of the vast amounts of data originating from new sources such as sensors and other Internet-of-Things-type nodes.
As mentioned there where a lot of updates and below I’ve tried to gather these and I hope it gives you a good insight on the infromation we received and also guidance on how you can get more information about the topics.
Included below are links to detailed overviews of each of the demos (from Microsoft blog post) – including information about how to use them, where to learn more, and what you’ll need to get started.
- The New Outlook App: A Modern Standard for Secure E-mail
- Enhanced Data Protection with Windows 10
- Windows 10 Device Guard
- Azure RemoteApp
- Document Tracking & Secure Collaboration with Azure RMS
- SaaS Management with Cloud App Discovery
- Detecting Anomalous Sign-Ins with EMS
- Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics
- Deploying Azure in Your Datacenter
- The Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)
- Power BI in SCCM
The following picture is a sketch of the keynote and is also quite good at summarizing the message of Mobile and Cloud first!
vNiklas also created a great powershell script that automates the downloading of all MS Ignite content with PowerShell and Bits from Channel 9 that you can find here!
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) – MDM, MAM, MCSM/MIM etc…
Microsoft’s next chapter in Enterprise Mobility, great blog post on where Microsoft is going etc. http://blogs.technet.com/b/enterprisemobility/archive/2015/05/04/ignite-microsofts-next-chapter- in-enterprise-mobility.aspx …
Windows 10 Continuum – this is cool, think about docking your smartphone to your external screen, keyboard and mouse! That’s try mobility of youre device, this looks really cool and something that I’d like to try out once released!
Have a look at the feature demo at Ignite in the video below.
What’s New and Upcoming with Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager | Microsoft Ignite 2015
This session outlines the latest enhancements in enterprise mobility management using Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager. See the newest Microsoft Intune improvements for managing mobile productivity without compromising compliance, and learn about the futures of Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager, including new Windows 10 management scenarios.
Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager, including new Windows 10 management scenarios.
In the Cloud – Enterprise Mobility Management table of content:
- Enterprise Mobility Vision
- The Evolution of Enterprise Mobility
- Moving Forward in a Mobile-first, Cloud-first World
- Mastering Mobility: A How-to Guide
- Today: Integration into Broader Systems
- Tomorrow: Mobile Productivity
- Empowering SCCM Admins
- Our Plan to be Your Long Term Vendor of Choice
- Extra: The “Master of Mobility” Video Series
Office 2016 public preview available!
Over the last 12 months, we’ve transformed Office from a suite of desktop applications to a complete, cross-platform, cross-device solution for getting work done. We’ve expanded the Office footprint to iPad and Android tablets. We’ve upgraded Office experiences on the Mac, the iPhone and on the web. We’ve even added new apps to the Office family with Sway and Office Lens. All designed to keep your work moving, everywhere. But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten where we came from. While you’ve seen us focus on tuning Office for different platforms over the last year, make no mistake, Office on Windows desktop is central to our strategy.
In March we introduced an IT Pro and Developer Preview for the 2016 release of our Office desktop apps on Windows, and now—as a next step—we’re ready to take feedback from a broader audience. Today we’re expanding the Office 2016 Preview, making it available to Office users everywhere in preparation for general availability in Fall 2015.
Office 2016 previewers will get an early look at the next release of Office on Windows desktop, but more importantly they’ll help to shape and improve the future of Office. Visit the Office 2016 Preview site to learn more about the Preview program and if it’s right for you.
New in Office 2016
Since March, we’ve shared some glimpses of what’s to come in Office 2016. Today, we’d like to give a more holistic view of what customers at home and work can expect in the next release. In Office 2016, we’re updating the Office suite for the modern workplace, with smart tools for individuals, teams, and businesses.
Ten websites that teach coding and a bunch of other things – via @caleweissman
This is a great summary blog post with many good references to where you can start learning to code!
Seemingly every day there’s a new article or blog post imploring you to learn how to code. “Those who code have the power to transform their dreams into reality.” “Coding will help you keep [your job], or help you make a case for a raise.” “You should learn to program because it’s easy, it’s fun, it will increase your skill set, and… it will fundamentally change your perspective on the world.” What’s more, “If you want to start a technology company, you should learn to code.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Year’s resolution was to learn how to code. Douglas Rushkoff, who calls coding “the new literacy of the digital age,” wrote an entire book about it. And didn’t Marc Andreessen say that “software is eating the world?” As a result, companies from Codecademy to edx and many others have popped up to meet this rising demand.
As a person who’s grown up in the digital age, I have often heard the cry, “digital literacy or die.” Conventional wisdom – at least today – is that in the way you know how to read and write English, “you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web… It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.” If you buy that then you’ll want to start now.
But where should you go? I’ve been dabbling in the black arts, although I am by no means a ninja coder, and am ready to report back. The courses below offer everything from HTML to Python and beyond. HTML and CSS are good, because they’re the basic building blocks of Web design, and in my opinion, Python is useful, because it’s the most universal in many respects. Others say Java is better to learn, because its so prominent on the Web. I would rebut that you can learn Java from Python. Potayto. Potahto.
In any case, each program below emphasizes different pedagogical techniques and philosophies, and they are all mass market in the sense that anyone is welcome. No previous experience is necessary.
MIT Courseware Online
MIT has long been a pioneer of online courseware. One course is their Intro to Computer Science & Programming class, thought by many to be the best, most encompassing intro computing course offered. Taught by tenured MIT faculty, the online course is structured via taped lectures, written assignments, and self-assessment quizzes.
The course itself is quite rigorous as it was an intro course for MIT students. This isn’t a sort of online class you can do some parts and not the other. It requires a certain amount of pre-existing math knowhow to be truly successful. The course description says it only requires high school algebra as a prerequisite but I don’t buy this. I remember being pretty stumped by the second assignment, and I passed AP Calc with flying colors. This doesn’t mean the math is terribly high-level, but that it probably requires a certain amount of mathematical aptitude beyond algebra unless you want to spend the entire course scouring forums for help. As with any MIT course, there is an expectation that you not only know how to do a function, but why that function is performed and from where it stemmed. After attempting to follow this courseware for two sessions, I was officially stumped and dropped it.
edX
MIT and Harvard partnered up to create edX. It is a conglomeration of all of their available open courseware, along with a new department for the two institutions to perform research about the future of online courses and new pedagogical technologies. For MIT courseware, you can watch the lectures anytime, read the assignments, and self-assess. EdX has you follow the course in real time and complete the assignments and exams to receive a physical certificate from the program. It currently offers numerous classes in more subjects than just coding and far beyond the purview of Computers Science….
Continue reading here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 