Kurt Shintaku's Blog

We’re shipping the final stable release of the new Microsoft Edge, based on Chromium, on January 15th, 2020.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
The new Microsoft Edge is a dramatic leap forward in browser technology for both enterprise & consumer users.

1. CHROME PLUG IN SUPPORT
   Nearly all Chrome plug ins work in the new Edge straight from the Chrome store.  You literally visit the store from Edge, select a Chrome plug in, click install, and you’re done.
2. CHROME COMPATIBILITY
   Edge is compatible with virtually every web site that is Chrome compatible by leveraging the Chromium HTML engine.  If Chrome can access it, so can Edge.
3. LEGACY IE COMPATIBILITY
   For Enterprise customers, the new Edge is 100% compatible with sites that require Internet Explorer. Edge can switch seamlessly to the Internet Explorer HTML engine for compatibility.
4. LIGHTER & LESS TRACKING
   180 services, including all the tracking services from Chromium, has been removed from new Edge.
5. ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT
   New Edge has all the Enterprise manageability, group policies, & security controls IT is familiar with in IE/legacy Edge
6. SPEED & POWER OPTIMIZATION
   New Edge inherits the speed/performance of predecessors & now has Edge’s power optimization, so it won’t kill your laptop’s battery.
7. SECURITY THROUGH HARDWARE ISOLATION
   New Edge security supports Hardware-based isolation of browsing sessions of unknown sites to protect users from malware. (bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft…)
8. NO MORE NOTIFICATION REQUESTS
   New Edge has a feature to BLOCK all website requests to "send notifications". (kurtsh.com/2019/10/28/how…)
9. PRIVACY & TRACKING PREVENTION
   New Edge actively shields user’s privacy with "Edge Tracking Prevention" – blocking even Google. (bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft…)
10. BLOCK MALWARE SITES
    New Edge inherits SmartScreen technology to proactively prevent users from visiting known bad/malware web sites.
11. STYLUS & DIGITAL INKING
    New Edge inherits all of the digital ink support from past Edge releases, providing tablet & stylus users the best experience available.
12. ACCESSIBILITY BUILT-IN
    New Edge maintains all the Accessibility focus from previous releases and is contributing accessibility improvements to the open source community by submitting them as additions to Chromium’s code base.

…so download the new Edge & give it a try! Releasing this January 15, 2020. Get the beta here:

• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Edge Insider/Beta Channel
  http://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com

And for you IT professionals, we’re creating a Security Baseline for enterprise deployment of the new Microsoft Edge. Review & submit feedback here:

• BLOG: Security Baseline Draft for Edge 79
  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/12/18/security-baseline-draft-edge-79/

Interested in Edge’s progress?  Check out the Edge Development blog here:

• BLOG: Microsoft Edge Development
  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/

Did you miss Microsoft Ignite this year?

It isn’t too late to save. Purchase the print or eBook format of any of the bestsellers from the show and save 40%* discount using code IGNITE2019 at checkout through the end of 2019.

Receive free ground shipping in the U.S. on every order. eBooks are delivered in three formats—PDF, EPUB, and MOBI—to read on your preferred device.

Check out some of our bestsellers below:

• OFFER: 40% off Microsoft Press bestsellers from Microsoft Ignite 2019
  https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/promotions/save-40-on-favorites-from-microsoft-ignite-2019-142133

Microsoft Community Training supports personalized learning for a large-scale mobile-based community. It is affordable, easy to manage and provides robust security and privacy protection.

Learning made easy
Clean and visual interfaces provide an intuitive and engaging learning experience for learners of all backgrounds.

Anytime, anywhere learning
Supports learning in low bandwidth networks and even offline. Learners can access courses anytime, anywhere from their choice of device.

Enable your grassroots
User management and monitoring tools for your managers, ground staff and facilitators to reach out to your distributed communities and drive adoption and engagement of your learning programs.

Make it your own
Personalize the look and feel of your learning portal. Configure content and users as per your needs. Integrate with your existing systems.

Assess and Measure
Out-of-the-box reports and exhaustive instrumentation. Create rich custom reporting to track progress and measure outcomes.

HOW MUCH IS IT?
There is actually no cost for the Community Training technology.  It’s available exclusively as a hosted solution for Azure users and so the only cost is the use of Azure infrastructure – which is essentially an App Service & a Database. 

This cost will scale depending on the number of users you have & the kind of performance you’d like – so you’re never paying for anything you don’t need. For example, for 1000 users, pricing is roughly ~$180/mo for a basic configuration.  More on pricing is available here & here.

INTERESTED?
For more information, visit:

• PRODUCT PAGE:
  https://communitytraining.microsoft.com/
• DOCUMENTATION:
  https://docs.microsoftcommunitytraining.com/

SharePoint powers content collaboration, intranets, and employee engagement across Microsoft 365—including Office, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and more—and is deeply integrated with the security and compliance of Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud. Over 400,000 organizations now have SharePoint in Microsoft 365. With over 100 million monthly commercial active users, customers are turning to SharePoint for their mission critical content and processes, from financial contracts and global infrastructure projects, to building plans and employee benefits.

Today, we’re honored that for the third year in a row Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in the Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant for 2019. Once again, Microsoft placed highest in Ability to Execute.

Gartner defines these essential characteristics for modern content services platforms:

• Cloud scale—The ability to scale to meet the demands of the workforce. Provision of seamless connectivity to a broad ecosystem of suppliers, partners, and customers while delivering continuous innovation is essential.
• Protection—The provision of deeply embedded, flexible, and intelligent information governance, security, and privacy controls. This is essential to operate in a world of ever-increasing threats and regulatory demands.
• Fast time to value—The ability to deliver business value quickly, through the provision of prebuilt applications and citizen-developer-based tools, for example.
• User-centricity—A consumerized user experience with embedded mobility and consistency across devices. A focus on the overall user experience is of paramount importance for driving adoption and realizing the expected benefits of this technology.
• Intelligence—Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, including machine learning and deep neural networks, have enabled innovations for classification, productivity, and automation scenarios. Such capabilities should be embedded in all key areas of the platform—from security to collaboration—to align with the evolving expectations of the market.

…

For more on the announcement and to download the Gartner Report, visit:

• BLOG: Microsoft again recognized as a Leader in the 2019 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant Report
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/12/12/microsoft-again-leader-2019-gartner-content-services-platforms-magic-quadrant-report/
• DOWNLOAD: 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms
  https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-content-services-platforms-2019/

Preview new features in Azure Synapse Analytics: Accelerate your analytics journey with a limitless analytics service.

Sign up to:

• Try out new preview features in Azure Synapse Analytics
• Test preview features in a production environment.
• Provide feedback directly to the Azure Synapse Analytics engineering team.

Features of interest include:

• SQL analytics (on-demand & provisioned compute)
• Apache Spark integration (big data processing)
• Data Ingestion
• Synapse studio (unified experience)

Tell us a little about yourself and your analytics interests. If you’re selected to participate in the preview, we’ll contact you about next steps.

To learn more about Azure Synapse Analytics, sign up for the virtual event, Accelerate Time-to-Insight with Azure Synapse Analytics. Watch a hands-on demo and participate in a live Q&A with Azure engineering and analytics experts.

• PREVIEW: New features in Azure Synapse Analytics
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/synapse-analytics/request-for-preview/

Ever wonder how much cloud storage space costs for Microsoft Intune software distribution?

The short answer is:

1. There’s no limit on the amount of storage; storage comes with the purchase of a Microsoft Intune license.
2. There is a 8GB maximum file size limit on any individual desktop file uploaded.

Taken from the Microsoft Intune documentation:

All apps that you create by using the software installer installation type (for example, a line-of-business app) are packaged and uploaded to Intune cloud storage. A trial subscription of Intune includes 2 gigabytes (GB) of cloud-based storage that is used to store managed apps and updates. A full subscription does not limit the total amount of storage space.

For more information, read the following:

• Add apps to Microsoft Intune: Cloud storage space
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/apps/apps-add#cloud-storage-space
• Intune Standalone – Win32 app management
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/apps/apps-win32-app-management

One of our Modern Workplace Specialists put the following diagrams together illustrating what suite each Microsoft 365 entitlement comes from and I thought it was worthwhile to share:

The first file is a hyperlinked PDF that shows all the components of:

• Office 365 E3 & E5
• Enterprise Mobility & Security E3 & E5
• Windows 10 E3 & E5

The second document is a PowerPoint that has the same content but editable.

Download the files here:

• Microsoft 365 Enterprise on a Page (PDF) – Last updated: July, 2019.
• Microsoft 365 Enterprise License Map (PowerPoint) – Last updated: July, 2019.

Discover why Forrester has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in enterprise business intelligence (BI) platforms.

In this report, you’ll get expert guidance in evaluating vendor-managed BI platforms and a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor. Learn how Microsoft stacks up and explore the differentiated features in the current enterprise BI market:

• Augmented BI, such as machine learning and natural language querying.
• Platform extensibility and customization capabilities.
• Features necessary to work with big data.
• Built-in data preparation tools.
• Deployment options, including cloud, on-premises, and mobile.

Get the report here:

• DOWNLOAD: The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise BI Platforms (Vendor-Managed), Q3 2019
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-Forrester-Wave-Enterprise-BI-platforms-website.html?LCID=EN-US

https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-Forrester-Wave-Enterprise-BI-platforms-website.html?LCID=EN-US

Starting today, Microsoft Teams is available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions. Users can download the native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats here. We are constantly improving based on community feedback, so please download and submit feedback based on your experience.

The Microsoft Teams client is the first Microsoft 365 app that is coming to Linux desktops, and will support all of Teams’ core capabilities. Teams is the hub for teamwork that brings together chat, video meetings, calling, and collaboration on Office 365 documents and business processes within a single, integrated experience.

For more on the Preview announcement, visit:

• PREVIEW: Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Microsoft-Teams-is-now-available-on-Linux/ba-p/1056267

Recently, I was asked how it was that Extended Support Updates (ESU)were licensed.  This is answered in the FAQ for ESU.

Can customers license just the virtual machine? For example, if a customer is running a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 virtual machine on Windows Server 2012 or another host, do they need Extended Security Updates for the full server? What if the host is running Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2, but none of the virtual machines are?

Customers cannot license individual Windows Server virtual machines. They must license the full physical server. Licensing requirements for Extended Security Updates on-premises align to the licensing requirements for the underlying Software Assurance coverage or subscription. Customers will only need to know their Windows Server license position for a given server, to know how many Extended Security Update licenses they need.

Customers who have covered all the underlying cores of the physical server with Windows Server Datacenter licenses should buy Extended Security Updates for the number of physical cores, irrespective of the number of VMs running on that physical server.

Customers who have covered all the underlying cores of the physical server with Windows Server Standard licenses should buy Extended Security Updates for the number of physical cores, but will only be licensed to run and update two virtual machines on the server. Customers who wish to run and update more than two virtual machines on a server licensed with Windows Server Standard must re-license all of the physical cores on the server with both Windows Server Standard and Extended Security Updates for each additional pair of virtual machines.

…

For more details on this, please read the FAQ:

• Extended Security Updates frequently asked questions
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/extended-security-updates
• Extended Security Updates Datasheet
  https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/3/F/A3F0908A-0FD8-494C-82BC-E75F313F3FAD/Extended_Security_Updates_for_Windows_Server_2008_and_SQL_Server_2008_End_of_Service.pdf