Call For Speakers – Cloud Camp, October 17th

My employers, MicroWarehouse, are running a community event in the Dublin Convention Centre on October 17th. Cloud Camp is a tech event, with four tracks covering:

  • Azure Infrastructure: Virtual machines, storage, networking, etc
  • Azure Platform: Web Apps, Containers, etc
  • Productivity & Security: Office 365, EMS, etc
  • Windows Server 2019 & Hybrid: Windows Admin Center, virtualization, clustering, storage, networking, private cloud, etc

UPDATE: We have enough submissions on Office, Intune, and M365 overviews. We need more on Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS. But we really want sessions on Windows Admin Center, Windows Server 2019, and data protection using Azure Information Protection & Client App Security.

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Samuel Beckett bridge and Dublin Convention Center – Daniel Dudek, https://www.flickr.com/photos/dansapples/9563009141

We’re looking for speakers from around Europe to fill the slots. Expenses are being covered:

  • Flights
  • 2 nights accommodation – the nights before and after the event
  • Tickets to the event

If you’re interested in speaking then please submit your bio and session proposal(s) here.

Speaking at Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany in May

Lots of air miles this year! I will be travelling to Hanau, Germany, to present at the CDC Germany conference, which is running May 15-16.

About The Conference

If you are not familiar with this conference, it’s a professionally run Microsoft-centric event with expert speakers from around Europe (and further) talking about on-premises and cloud technologies, and aimed at attendees from the DACH (German-speaking) region. The speakers are mostly MVPs, who are known for their expertise in their chosen areas, and are veteran speakers/trainers. For example:

  • Dider van Hoye & Carsten Rachfahl are both Cloud & Datacenter Management (Hyper-V) MVPs known for their knowledge of virtualization, storage, and networking.
  • Martina Grom is a well known Office 365 MVP
  • Thomas Maurer, also a Hyper-V MVP, has been doing lots on containers and Azure Stack (on-premises Azure)
  • Dr. Benny Tritsch, MVP, is the best RDS person I know
  • Jan Kappen (MVP), along with Carsten, is the best at Storage Spaces Direct (Hyper-V hyper-converged infrastructure) there is in Europe.
  • Tudor Damian (Hyper-V MVP) is the go-to guy for Linux on Hyper-V – that’s why Microsoft have him at their booths!
  • Florian Klaffenbach, ex MVP but now working at Microsoft, knows more about connecting to Azure than anyone else I know.

And that’s just a small sample of the speakers.

The Content

The cloud & on-premises content is balanced to reflect the attendees. There’s plenty of on-premises content because that’s where people are, but there’s also lots of cloud content because migrations & deployments are happening or have happened.

My Session

I will be presenting a session called “Azure PaaS For The IT Pro”

Does the phrase “platform-as-a-service” scare you? Do you want to hit back or scroll to the next session in your browser? If so, then this session is for you! Aidan Finn, an IT pro, has been learning about Azure’s platform for developers. If you come to this session, you’ll learn what these services are, why your business or customers might like them, why you might like them, and why PaaS isn’t the end of the IT pro.

Why You Should Go

Why should you go to this conference? To be honest, you’d be dumb not to! Microsoft doesn’t run big conferences in Europe anymore, and there’s never been a greater need to learn … and re-learn. My career is defined by relearning and adapting to the changing environment. Cloud changes at an incredible pace, and now we see the semi-annual channel bringing this rate of change to on-premises. Those who refuse to learn and adapt will become redundant to needs – a threat to their employers, even! Those who want to excel and boost their careers – they will decide that learning is important … and where else are you going to find a collection of expert speakers & trainers than an event like Cloud & Datacenter Germany?

Register Here

Microsoft Ignite 2017 Keynote Notes

I’m live blogging from Microsoft Ignite in Orlando. Hit refresh to read more.

Before the Keynote

The score so far:

  • Orlando: 10
  • Chicago: Minus 5 trillion

This place is huge and the crowds are huge. But getting here was easy. My hotel is a good bit up “I-Drive” in Orlando, but it took less than 10 minutes to get here, from walking out the hotel door to walking into one of the conference buildings. I got in at 08:25, but the main keynote hall was already full and we were being redirected. I ended up on the “community hall” to watch the keynote on some big screens. Sounds like a downer, but I’m sitting at a table and I can easily type on my laptop.

We’re counting down to Julia White, the “host” of Ignite, before Satya Nadella takes command. That’ll be two hours of intelligent edge, mobile user experience, and his new book (I guess).

Roll the music … a video plays to show us highlights from the last year. Microsoft tech changing business, enabling someone to write again, saving a baby’s life. They really do this type of media well, but they need to share it on TV, not just at conferences.

Julia White

The “host” of Ignite takes the stage and talks about how hurricane Irma could have ended all this. Donation stations, kit assembly stations, and blood donation stations are throughout the conference centre.

We are “change agents” apparently – this week’s buzz phrase? There’s real-time translation in 12 subtitled languages, powered by MS AI.

Satya Nadella

The CEO takes the stage. He thanks the local community for helping with ensuring the conference could run. He offers words of support for the Texas and Florida communities.

The Ignite conference has a diverse range of attendees. Generations of Microsoft customers, with diverse roles from end user devices to back end. Envision is also on here, and this includes the business/C-level customers. “Digital Transformation”. 1 Drink. Continuous change and renewal is the theme of the two conferences.

Technology shouldn’t degrade humanity. Big chrome robots won’t crush your skinless skull after AI machine learning/deep learning launches nukes at us.

It’s hard to keep up with this. It’s lots of words, but it’s fluff. I’ll pause until the salad is finished and the meat is served.

 

Quantum Computing

Think about the limitations of a classic computer. It would try/fail/try to solve a maze – a brute force system. Instead of doing 1 or 0, a quantum computer does 1 and 0 simultaneously. It can try every path in the maze at the same time. Sounds easy, but it’s not. It starts with a world-class team, lead by Craig Mundie. Physics, computer science, and math must be put together.

Dr. Michael Freedman (maths), Dr. Charie Marcus and Dr. Leo Kouwaenhovern (physics) and Dr. Krysa Svore (computer science) come on stage for The Early Early Show with Satya Nadella. Seriously, these people are smart. I haven’t a clue – that’s not a complaint, they’re just incredibly intelligent.

 

Speaking At European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference 2017

I will be speaking at this year’s European SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Conference, which is being held in the National Conference Center in Dublin between 13-16 November. I’ll be talking about Azure Site Recovery (ASR):

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It’s a huge event with lots of tracks, content and speakers from around the world.

 

For those of you in Ireland, this is a rare opportunity to attend a Microsoft-focused conference of such a scale here in Ireland.

Webinar Recording: Defending Today’s Threats With Tomorrow’s Security By Microsoft

MicroWarehouse has posted the recording of our last webinar, which explained why the security solutions of the 1990s that some companies are still relying on, are being easily defeated by attackers today.

The post explains what is happening now, based on 2015 survey information from multiple sources. And I explain how a number of cloud-based security services from Microsoft can protect both your on-premises and cloud infrastructures from these modern attack methods, that your firewall and anti-malware scanning will let pass right through or never see.

In fact, I just saw a support request on a security issue that 2 of the solutions in this webinar would have prevented.

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We have also shared the slides and a hand-out with some follow-up reading/watching.

Webinar: Defending Today’s Threats With Tomorrow’s Security By Microsoft

I am presenting another webinar on July 21st at 2PM Irish/UK time, 3PM CET, 9AM Eastern, hosted by my employer, MicroWarehouse. The focus of this webinar will be security solutions … and I’m not talking old style stuff like AV scanning or proxy/firewalls. No, I’m talking about modern security solutions that are designed to deal with the sorts of threats that your yellow box scanners and Cisco/SonicWall firewalls are letting right through to trash your business.

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You can register here.

Microsoft News – 19 October 2015

It turns out that Microsoft has been doing some things that are not Surface-related. Here’s a summary of what’s been happening in the last while …

Hyper-V

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Windows Server

Windows Client

Azure

Office 356

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News – 30 September 2015

Microsoft announced a lot of stuff at AzureCon last night so there’s lots of “launch” posts to describe the features. I also found a glut of 2012 R2 Hyper-V related KB articles & hotfixes from the last month or so.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Azure

Office 365

EMS

Microsoft News – 28 September 2015

Wow, the year is flying by fast. There’s a bunch of stuff to read here. Microsoft has stepped up the amount of information being released on WS2016 Hyper-V (and related) features. EMS is growing in terms of features and functionality. And Azure IaaS continues to release lots of new features.

Hyper-V

Windows Client

Azure

System Center

Office 365

EMS

Security

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News – 7 September 2015

Here’s the recent news from the last few weeks in the Microsoft IT Pro world:

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Windows

System Center

Azure

Office 365

Intune

Events

  • Meet AzureCon: A virtual event on Azure on September 29th, starting at 9am Pacific time, 5pm UK/Irish time.