Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Most of the MDOP tools now have an end of life date of April 14, 2026.  They were previously supposed to be end-of-lifed in 2021 but the date has been pushed out.  Note: The one exception to this is MED-V, which will continue to have an EOL date of April 13, 2021.

Taken from the announcement:

To simplify planning for IT, we have standardized the support lifecycle for the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) and are announcing a single end of support date for all the tools in the MDOP portfolio*. The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack is a suite of products that help to improve compatibility, simplify device management, reduce support costs, improve asset management, and improve policy control. Available as a subscription for Software Assurance customers, Windows Enterprise E3/E5 customers, and Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3/E5 customers.

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For more information and detail, please read the announcement here:

• BLOG: New extended support dates for MDOP tools https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/New-extended-support-dates-for-MDOP-tools/ba-p/837312

<taken from announcement below>

PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity. Inspired by the Windows 95 era PowerToys project, this reboot provides power users with utilities to squeeze more efficiency out of the Windows 10 shell and customize it for individual workflows. Check out this great overview of the Windows 95 PowerToys.

The first preview release of PowerToys contains two utilities with all the code for the project on GitHub. The repo also contains the information and tools you need to understand how the PowerToys’ utilities work together and how to create your own utilities.

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The first 2 PowerToys are:

1. Windows key shortcut guide
2. FancyZones

For more details, read the complete announcement here:

• Announcing the first preview and code release of PowerToys
  http://aka.ms/powertoys

WSLconf is a community-organized event from the founder of Pengwin on all things Windows Subsystem for Linux and WSL-related. Two days of hands-on workshops, hackathons, presentations, and networking events for developers on WSL.

WSLconf 1 is being held on the campus of Microsoft Headquarters.

Featuring Presentations By

• The creators of Pengwin
• The WSL Team at Microsoft
• The Ubuntu on WSL Team at Canonical

Date:
March 10-11, 2020

Location:
Microsoft Reactor
Building 20
Microsoft Main Campus
3709 NE 39th Street
Redmond, WA

Cost:
The event will be FREE.

Registration:
Registration has not begun yet.  Sign up for official updates here:

(<ks> The Reactor is not huge so if you want to attend this, I strongly suggest signing up for updates & registering as soon as possible.  It’s gonna fill quickly.)

• WSLconf Event Page:
  https://www.wslconf.dev/

If you’re familiar with FSLogix, there’s good news:  The technology’s now available for appropriately licensed customers – along with a number of other improvements we’ve made for performance & user experience.

Microsoft 365 is designed to help organizations digitally transform workplace collaboration. Many customers that I work with use virtualization, and they’re always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the user experience. To help, we acquired FSLogix last November, and today I’m pleased to announce four new capabilities to further improve the user experience in virtualized environments:

• FSLogix technology, which improves the performance of Office 365 ProPlus in multi-user virtual environments, is now available at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 customers.
• Windows Server 2019 will add support for OneDrive Files On-Demand in the coming months.
• Office 365 ProPlus, our flagship Office experience, will be supported on Windows Server 2019.
• And we’ve added new capabilities to Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams in Office 365 ProPlus to improve the user experience in a virtualized environment.

…

Read more about these improvements and their required licensing here:

• BLOG: Improving the Office app experience in virtual environments
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/07/01/improving-office-app-experience-virtual-environments/

Big news for customers looking to understand their existing server & application footprint & the relationships between those resources for potential migration to Azure.

Today, I am pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Movere, an innovative technology provider in the cloud migration space.

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Movere’s innovative discovery and assessment capabilities will complement Azure Migrate and our integrated partner solutions, making migration an easier process for our customers. We believe that successful cloud migrations enable business transformation, and this acquisition underscores our investments to make that happen.

Read more here:

• Microsoft Announcement:
  Microsoft acquires Movere to help customers unlock cloud innovation with seamless migration tools
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-acquires-movere-to-help-customers-unlock-cloud-innovation-with-seamless-migration-tools/
• Movere Announcement:
  Movere is joining forces with Microsoft – a blog by CEO Kristin Ireland
  https://www.movere.io/msftacquisition/

.NET Conf is a FREE, 3 day virtual developer event co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft. This year .NET Core 3.0 will launch at .NET Conf 2019! Come celebrate and learn about the new release. You won’t want to miss this one.

Subscribe to notifications to keep up with .NET Conf news!

.NET Conf provides a wide selection of live sessions streaming here that feature speakers from the community and .NET product teams. It’s a chance to learn, ask questions live, and get inspired for your next software project.

You will learn to build for web, mobile, desktop, games, services, libraries and more for a variety of platforms and devices all with .NET. We have sessions for everyone, no matter if you are just beginning or are a seasoned engineer. We’ll have presentations on .NET Core and ASP.NET Core, C#, F#, Azure, Visual Studio, Xamarin, and much more.

Learn more at the web site:

• EVENT: “.NET Conf” – Online, Sept 23-25, 2019
  https://www.dotnetconf.net/
  

Two recent changes to Microsoft’s Windows support policies will help customers plan upgrade strategies and stay up to date.

1. As of September 6, 2018, March releases of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education will be supported for 18 months and September releases for 30 months.
2. Windows 7 End of Support happens January 14, 2020. But for customers who need more time to prepare for their upgrades, paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates are now available to through January 2023.

This Gartner report (Microsoft Extends Support Policy, Improves Tools and Reinforces the Need for Windows Enterprise, published 17 October 2018 by analysts Stephen Kleynhans and Michael Silver) addresses these recent changes and gives suggestions for how I&O leaders can incorporate them into their management and upgrade schedules and strategies.

Download the complimentary report to learn more.

• GARTNER: “Microsoft Extends Support Policy, Improves Tools and Reinforces the Need for Windows Enterprise”
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-modern-desktop-gartner-report-whitepaper.html?LCID=EN-US

Today we’re announcing that Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021. This post provides details on the retirement plan, a brief explanation of why we’re making this announcement now, and a summary of what we’re doing to help customers migrate to Teams.

What is the Skype for Business Retirement plan?
Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021, and after that date the service will no longer be accessible. Between now and then, current Skype for Business Online customers will experience no change in service, and they’ll be able to continue to add new users as needed. However, starting September 1, 2019, we will onboard all new Office 365 customers directly to Teams for chat, meetings, and calling. Please note that the Skype Consumer service and Skype for Business Server will both be unaffected by this announcement.

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Read the full announcement here:

• Skype for Business Online to Be Retired in 2021 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Skype-for-Business-Online-to-Be-Retired-in-2021/ba-p/777833

Microsoft just announced the acquisition of BlueTalon to assist with privacy & governance of data.

BlueTalon’s “Policy Engine” is a solution for identifying, controlling access to, & protecting data associated with users stored in Hadoop, SQL & NoSQL databases and big-data environments while providing control the column, row, cell or partial-cell level.

Today we are excited to announce the acquisition of BlueTalon, a leading provider of Unified Data Access Control solutions for modern data platforms. BlueTalon works with leading Fortune 100 companies to eliminate data security blind spots and gain visibility and control of data. BlueTalon provides a customer-proven, data-centric solution for data access management and auditing across the diverse systems resident in modern data estates.

Read more here:

• Microsoft acquires BlueTalon, simplifying data privacy and governance across modern data estates
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/07/29/microsoft-acquires-bluetalon-simplifying-data-privacy-and-governance-across-modern-data-estates/
• SITE: BlueTalon
  https://bluetalon.com