Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Greetings! The second preview of Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2016: Mission-Critical Applications, Deeper Insights, Hyperscale Cloud is now available for download. Enjoy!

With Microsoft SQL Server 2016, a variety of new features and enhancements to the data platform deliver breakthrough performance, advanced security, and richer, integrated reporting and analytics capabilities. In this Preview 2 ebook, we introduce three new security features: Always Encrypted, Row-Level Security, and dynamic data masking; discuss enhancements that enable you to better manage performance and storage: TempDB configuration, query store, and Stretch Database; review several improvements to Reporting Services; and also describe AlwaysOn Availability Groups, tabular enhancements, and R integration. This book is a preview edition because it’s not complete; the final edition will be available Spring of 2016.

Read more about the eBook here.  Download the eBooks below:

• DOWNLOAD: “Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2016: Mission-Critical Applications, Deeper Insights, Hyperscale Cloud, Preview 2”
• Desktop PDF:
  http://aka.ms/IntroSQLSvr2016PE_dsktp_pdf
• Mobile PDF:
  http://aka.ms/IntroSQLSvr2016PE_mobile_pdf

We’re happy to announce the release of our newest free ebook, Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals, Technical Overview (ISBN 9780735696976), by Ed Bott.

Overview

Get a head start evaluating Windows 10—with technical insights from award-winning journalist and Windows expert Ed Bott. This guide introduces new features and capabilities, providing a practical, high-level overview for IT professionals ready to begin deployment planning now.

This edition was written after the release of Windows 10 version 1511 in November 2015 and includes all of its enterprise-focused features.

The goal of this book is to help you sort out what’s new in Windows 10, with a special emphasis on features that are different from the Windows versions you and your organi­zation are using today, starting with an overview of the operating system, describing the many changes to the user experience, and diving deep into deployment and management tools where it’s necessary.

Read more about the eBook here.  Download the eBook below:

• DOWNLOAD: Free MS Press eBook, “Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals, Technical Overview”
  http://aka.ms/introwin10/PDF

Hands-On with Microsoft Azure Marketplace

Join us for an informative hands-on workshop to learn about Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace.

The benefits of the Cloud are well known to many IT professionals. But knowing what, when and how to develop or deploy to the Cloud can seem challenging.

This one day, focused training session, will provide you with a valuable onboarding experience to Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud for modern business. You will learn how to search and deploy your own solutions from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace providing benefits such as:

• Growing ecosystem of 3,000+ offers
• Easy discovery and evaluation of customer offerings all in a single location
• Streamlined configuration, deployment and management
• Integrated platform experience

Lunch will be served and we will provide parking validation. Space at this event is limited so register today! We hope to see you there!

Date:
Thursday, March 3, 2016

Location:
Microsoft Technology Center
3 Park Plaza – Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614
Directions

Times:
9:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Lunch & Parking Validation Provided

Presented in Partnership With:

• Barracuda
• Chef
• DataStax
• Hanu
• Hortonworks

Register:
https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x82499d962

And now, a brief word from Azure Active Directory Engineering:

Hi!  We are the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Customer Partner Engineering Team.

Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinar briefings on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics!

The same session is offered at three times in February:

Getting Ready for Azure AD Option 1 Tuesday February 16 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Getting Ready for Azure AD Option 2 Tuesday February 16 – 11:00am  GMT-8	Getting Ready for Azure AD Option 3 Tuesday February 16 – 7:00pm  GMT-8
Manage Your Enterprise Applications with Azure AD Option 1 Wednesday February 17 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Manage Your Enterprise Applications with Azure AD Option 2 Wednesday February 17 – 11:00am  GMT-8	Manage Your Enterprise Applications with Azure AD Option 3 Wednesday February 17 – 7:00pm  GMT-8
Secure Your Identities with Azure AD Multi Factor Authentication Option 1 Thursday  February 18 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Secure Your Identities with Azure AD Multi Factor Authentication Option 2 Thursday  February 18 – 11:00am  GMT-8	Secure Your Identities with Azure AD Multi Factor Authentication Option 3 Thursday  February 18 – 7:00pm  GMT-8
Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD Option 1 Friday February 19 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD Option 1 Friday February 19 – 11:00am  GMT-8	Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD Option 1 Monday February 22 – 7:00pm  GMT-8
Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Applications via Azure AD App Proxy Tuesday February 23 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Applications via Azure AD App Proxy Tuesday February 23 – 11:00am  GMT-8	Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Applications via Azure AD App Proxy Tuesday February 23 – 7:00pm  GMT-8
Azure AD Reporting, License Management and Securing Social Media Accounts Wednesday February 24 – 7:00am  GMT-8	Azure AD Reporting, License Management and Securing Social Media Accounts Wednesday February 24 – 11:00pm  GMT-8	Azure AD Reporting, License Management and Securing Social Media Accounts Wednesday February 24 – 7:00pm  GMT-8

Each one-hour briefing is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So come with your questions!

Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! If you have any questions about the free webinar offer, please let us know by emailing us.

For registration and more information visit:

• TRAINING: Microsoft Azure Active Directory: "Talk to the Experts!" Webinars [FREE]
  https://info.microsoft.com/AADP-Webinar-CLE_AADP-Main-Landing-Page.html

In a recent survey of 40,000 public companies, Gartner found that amongst large public companies, Microsoft “dominates” in adoption of cloud email services.

That’s their word, not mine.  In fact, it’s in the title of their survey report.  As summarized by Computer Weekly:

According to the analyst house’s report, Microsoft Dominates Cloud Email in Large Public Companies but Shares the Rest With Google, 13% of publicly listed companies use either Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Work.

Of this 13%, Gartner’s research shows that 8.5% of public companies use Office 365 while 4.7% use Google’s cloud-based productivity offering.

…

Read more about it from the Computer Weekly article:

• NEWS: “Microsoft Office 365 is beating Google Apps in enterprise adoption – Gartner research”
  http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500272206/Microsoft-Office-365-is-beating-Google-Apps-in-enterprise-adoption-terms-Gartner-research-reveals
• GARTNER: “Microsoft Dominates Cloud Email in Large Public Companies but Shares the Rest With Google” – January 12, 2016 (FEE-BASED RESEARCH)
  https://www.gartner.com/doc/3185017?ref=SiteSearch&sthkw=microsoft%20dominates&fnl=search&srcId=1-3478922254

We entered into an agreement to acquire Swiftkey, the developers of the most popular 3rd party soft keyboards for mobile devices.  This will be integrated with our Wordflow technologies.

“Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SwiftKey, whose highly rated, highly engaging software keyboard and SDK powers more than 300 million Android and iOS devices.” 

“In this cloud-first, mobile-first world, SwiftKey’s technology aligns with our vision for more personal computing experiences that anticipate our needs versus responding to our commands, and directly supports our ambition to reinvent productivity by leveraging the intelligent cloud.”

The acquisition is stated to be completed in the next coming months.

Read more on the acquisition here:

• NEWS: Microsoft acquires SwiftKey in support of re-inventing productivity ambition
  http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/02/03/microsoft-acquires-swiftkey-in-support-of-re-inventing-productivity-ambition/

Now for something completely different: 
An underwater datacenter… from Microsoft.

Project Natick is a Microsoft research project to manufacture and operate an underwater datacenter. The initial experimental prototype vessel, christened the Leona Philpot after a popular Xbox game character, was operated on the seafloor approximately one kilometer off the Pacific coast of the United States from August to November of 2015. Project Natick reflects Microsoft’s ongoing quest for cloud datacenter solutions that offer rapid provisioning, lower costs, high responsiveness, and are more environmentally sustainable.

Read more about Project Natick:

• Project Natick: A research project to determine the feasibility of subsea datacenters
  http://www.projectnatick.com/

UPDATE 2/1/16:
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a subscription service that works for both Exchange Online as well as Exchange Server On-Prem or hybrid.  I was recently notified by Chandler Bootchk, our regional Office 365 Technology Specialist, that ATP is actually a very useful service for organizations that are entirely on-prem, as well as those in our cloud at any degree.  Thanks Chan.

ORIGINAL POST:
Back in April 2015, we announced the availability of Advanced Threat Protection for Office 365, a per-user add-on service for Exchange.

Here’s a video that talks about that technology and what it delivers for customers that are seeking a higher level of protection for those that might receive malware or dangerous hyperlinks in their inboxes. (And have the propensity to <ahem> click on them)

It is subscribed to per-user, and doesn’t require that your whole organization be subscribed.  It’s usually intended for executives of individual that are traditionally a high value target for malware writers & hackers.

(For the technical folks, this is similar to Proofpoint – except engineered as an additional service available for Exchange mail organizations.)

Microsoft is hosting a 3-day online conference for IT Professionals called, “TechNet Virtual Conference”.

Day 3: “Infrastructure, on-premises and in the cloud”
March 3, 2016 | 9:00am – 4:30pm PST

With nearly continuous updates to our cloud infrastructure and major innovations just around the corner, it can be tough to find the time to keep up. Day three will look at some of the Microsoft infrastructure technology you should be trying out for yourself. Regardless of how much you think you know, there are many opportunities to learn from Microsoft experts who are creating the future!

Datacenter Infrastructure Fundamentals
With Windows Server 2016, Microsoft brings to market new innovations across virtualization, storage and networking that will enable you to transform and modernize your datacenter. From unique security capabilities with Shielded Virtual Machines, hyperconverged storage with Storage Spaces Direct, and comprehensive software-defined networking, you’ll get up to speed on the key infrastructure enhancements in this release.

Nano Server
As customers adopt modern applications and next-generation cloud technologies, they need an OS that delivers speed, agility and lower resource consumption. Nano Server is a deeply refactored version of Windows Server with a small footprint and remotely managed installation, optimized for the cloud and a DevOps workflow. It is designed for fewer patch and update events, faster restarts, better resource utilization and tighter security. This session will explore everything you need to know about Nano Server!

Containers
There’s no denying that virtualization has dramatically changed the datacenter. Virtualization, however, is not without its limitations, and it’s not ideal for all use cases. Containerization takes virtualization to the next level. In many ways, containerization is an evolution of virtualization, and some would argue that the lines between the two are blurry and semantic. This session will help you understand Windows Server and Hyper-V Containers, in addition to how we’re integrating the Container ecosystem through partnerships with platforms such as Docker.

Operations Management Suite
The Microsoft Operations Management Suite is the IT management solution for the cloud era; a single solution built to manage your entire enterprise environment regardless of location, operating system, hypervisors, or cloud provider choices. The Operations Management Suite oversees the Windows and Linux workloads across your datacenter, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenStack, and VMware environments, incorporating cloud-scale resources to unlock newer, faster ways to solve and prevent problems. In this session, you’ll learn how the Operations Management Suite delivers a unified IT management solution that enables you gain deep visibility, automate, protect and secure your key workloads – no matter where they are.

Azure Fundamentals
Are you new to Microsoft Azure? If you’re an experienced IT Pro and you want to know more about Microsoft Azure, this session will help get you up to speed on the fundamental elements of the Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure platform that is Microsoft Azure. Topics covered will include Compute, Storage and Networking.

Microsoft Azure Stack
Microsoft Azure Stack brings proven innovation from Microsoft’s hyper-scale public cloud into your datacenter, providing agility and productivity for application owners, flexibility and control for IT, and assurance that corporate assets are protected. Founded on Azure technologies, Microsoft Azure Stack delivers proven, software-defined infrastructure for existing and next-generation applications. With advanced compute, networking, storage and security solutions, you can unlock new levels of flexibility and performance using industry-standard hardware, on top of which you can deliver Azure-based IaaS and PaaS services in your datacenter. These services can be customized to meet the needs of your users, delivering the same self-service experience as Azure to empower your developers through write-once/deploy-anywhere freedom.

Read more at the TechNet Virtual Conference site:

• SITE: Microsoft TechNet Virtual Conference
  https://www.technetvc.com/
• SAVE THE DATE: Add Day 3 to your calendar
  http://technetvc.azurewebsites.net/ics/TechNet_VC_Virtual_Event_Day3.ics

Microsoft is hosting a 3-day online conference for IT Professionals called, “TechNet Virtual Conference.

Day 2: “Windows 10 & Mobility”
March 2, 2016 | 9:00am – 4:30pm PST

Day two will explore the latest developments in Windows 10 and provide IT Pros with the skills they need

to plan out scaled deployments. We’ll focus on the key areas described here.

• IT Pro: Identity and Security
  The modern business world is fraught with IT security challenges: How do you stay cost-effective and protect your business information? How do you enable people to
• work where they need to? How do you prevent the types of attacks you read about almost daily? This session will teach you how to move users away from easily phished, guessed or shared passwords with Windows Hello and Microsoft Passport, protect credentials from common attack vectors such as pass-the-hash, and protect your company’s information from accidental data leakage.
• IT Pro: Management for continuous innovation
  The way your business works today has undoubtedly evolved, requiring the flexibility to configure and protect your identities, devices, applications and data. The techniques you already know are valid, but there are more flexible, cost-effective ways to make it happen. This session will explore new configuration management tools such as provisioning packages and mobile device management, uncovering fresh ways to enhance your day-to-day productivity.
• IT Pro: Productivity
  Learn how to ensure your critical line-of-business apps keep working, whether they’re Win 32 or web-based applications. Discover new ways to manage and control apps with the Windows Store for Business. We’ll also explore key technologies including Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer, Edge, Office, and Bridges.+
• Managing Windows 10 with Enterprise Mobility Suite
  Where does Windows 10 fit into your wider mobility management strategy? With more users connecting their own devices to your services, it’s important to have an all-up strategy that ensures your business is both productive and secure. This session will help you understand the role that Enterprise Mobility Suite can play in your enterprise and how it works with Windows 10.

Read more at the TechNet Virtual Conference site:

• SITE: Microsoft TechNet Virtual Conference
  https://www.technetvc.com/
• SAVE THE DATE: Add Day 2 to your calendar
  http://technetvc.azurewebsites.net/ics/TechNet_VC_Virtual_Event_Day2.ics