Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Need Microsoft official books in both print & eBook reader format (MOBI, ePUB, PDF)?  Look no further than the Microsoft Press catalog on O’Reilly.

• Microsoft Press at O’Reilly
  http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com

I’ve gotten asked this 3 times now in the past 48 hours:

“What’s with the felt on the back of the black touch/type covers for Surface?”

In case you haven’t noticed, the black versions of both the Type Cover and the Touch Cover have a backside made of a Polartec felt-like material.

I asked the question internally here at Microsoft and received a variety of responses.

• The Polartec material is easy to clean and provides a better grip for the keyboard’s base than just the plastic.
• The Polartec backside acts as a cleaner for the glass on your Surface.  Flip it over and use it to rub off smudges & fingerprints.  It does a great job.
• The black plastic that would normally be there instead of the Polartec ‘felt’ can get marked up from standard use & susceptible to easily visible scuff marks due to the way scuffs appear on the black.  Other colors don’t have this issue because of their vivid light reflection but against black, the smudges/ discoloration can really show.

If I get an official response, I’ll post it here but right now, it looks like these are the reasons.

I was doing some personal documentation and found this photo that was taken of me & others when I received an award called “Circle of Excellence” here at Microsoft. 

There are 4 key executives in this photo, two of which are obvious.  The other two are Orlando Ayala (FAR LEFT: former President of Worldwide Sales, now head of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential program) & Kevin Johnson (FAR RIGHT: former VP of North American Sales, now CEO of Juniper Networks)

Available for Exchange Server 2010 & 2013:

We’re excited to announce the availability of the Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant at http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2013. The Exchange Deployment Assistant is a web-based tool that helps you deploy Exchange 2013 in your on-premises organization, configure a hybrid deployment between your on-premises organization and Office 365, or migrate to Office 365. It asks you a small set of simple questions and then, based on your answers, creates a customized checklist with instructions to deploy or configure Exchange 2013. Instead of trying to find what you need in the Exchange library, the Deployment Assistant gives you exactly the right information you need to complete your task.

The first scenarios available show you how to deploy Exchange 2013 in an organization with no previous installations of Exchange and show you how to configure a hybrid deployment between your on-premises Exchange 2013 organization and Office 365. We’re working hard on additional scenarios, such as upgrading from Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010. These additional scenarios will be added in the coming months.

The Deployment Assistant for Exchange 2013 is supported on most major browsers and has a completely redesigned interface that’s no longer dependent on Silverlight technology. Here’s a screenshot from the Deployment Assistant after the initial set of questions were answered and the customized checklist was generated.

Of course, we can’t forget about Exchange 2010! If you still need to deploy Exchange 2010, you can access the Deployment Assistant for Exchange Server 2010 at http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010.

Reposted from:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/03/04/exchange-server-2013-deployment-assistant-available.aspx

If you need guidance on setting up Lync 2013 or Exchange 2013, my co-worker, Microsoft Consultant & MTC Architect Dean Suzuki, has been blogging the build out of a complete Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 deployment on his blog.

Also as he gets customer questions, he’s been answering them and writing the response to the blog. Please send my any recurring Lync and/or Exchange questions/issues that you have to the comments on his blog.

Here are some of the articles that he’s written on Lync 2013 alone:

• Configuring TMG for accessing Office 365 Lync
• Lync 2013 on a Mac
• Finding Latest Versions of Lync and Exchange hotfixes
• Building a Lync 2013 Lab (Step 1 – Installing SQL Backend)
• Building a Lync 2013 Lab (Step 2 – Installing Lync 2013 Enterprise Edition Front End)
• Lync Skill Based Search and Basic Troubleshooting
• Building A Lync 2013 Standard Edition Server
• Building an Office Web Apps Server
• Lync 2013 Best Practices Analyzer
• Lync 2013 Logging Tool
• Integrating Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 (Part 1)
• Integrating Lync 2013 with Exchange 2013 Unified Messaging (Part 2)
• Integrating Lync 2013 with Exchange 2013 Outlook Web App (OWA) (Part 3)
• Integrating Polycom Endpoints with Lync
• Lync 2013 Monitoring
• Building a Lync 2013 Persistent Chat Server
• Basic Persistent Chat Administration
• Adding a Second Lync Front End Server to a Pool (Step 3)
• Lync 2013 Site Resiliency (Step 4)
• Building a Lync Edge Infrastructure

Check out his blog here:

• BLOG: Dean Suzuki’s Blog Site
  http://deansuzuki.net

As we shared at SharePoint Conference, we’re working on native SkyDrive Pro apps for Windows 8 and iOS, both will be coming in summer of 2013. There, too, is a Windows desktop client that ships with Office 2013–and soon this "folder sync" technology will ship as a free, standalone installable client. In addition, the capabilities already come natively in Windows Phone (more on that below in the Office Hub section of this post).

You can use the SkyDrive Pro app for Windows 8 and iOS to:

• View documents in your SkyDrive Pro folder
• Select specific content to take offline when you travel
• Upload new content
• Create new folders and organize

For more information about our SharePoint Mobile offerings, visit the SharePoint Blog:

• POST: Out and about: New SharePoint mobile offerings
  http://blogs.office.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2013/03/06/out-and-about-new-sharepoint-mobile-offerings.aspx

As announced in our press release, Office 365 will be launching a series of commercials to help people understand how they can benefit from the power of Office and the connectivity of the cloud.

• Office 365: Keep your teams productive – anywhere
• Office 365: Your teams can work where and how they need to
• Office 365: Your team can work where and how they need to
• Office 365:  Keep your remote teams up and running

Wow.  Check out the speakers for this gig.  Mark Russinovich, Paul Thurrott, Wes Miller… just to name a few.

March 12, 2013 – One day in the cloud that could change the trajectory of your career

The transition to the cloud presents new and increased opportunities for technology professionals around the world. As the IT industry continues to evolve, skilled employees have never been more in demand by hiring managers.

Want to be a leader in Cloud technologies? Need training and tools you can use now? Join us for Certified Career Day on March 12 at 8:30AM PDT, for an interactive LIVE panel discussion with IT industry experts who will discuss how the Cloud is redefining IT recruitment. Then stay for in-depth discussions on Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012 to learn how you need to prepare to get ahead of this inevitable shift in cloud-based technologies.

• REGISTER: Certified Career Day–March 12, 8:30AM PDT
  http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/CertifiedCareerDay/default.aspx 

Wanna boil down all the measurements you might get from your cloud operation into some intelligent optimization?

I am excited to announce that we are welcoming cloud monitoring startup MetricsHub  – a participant in the Microsoft Accelerator, powered by TechStars – to Windows Azure.  As an innovator in Active Cloud Monitoring, a technology that automates cloud performance management, MetricsHub helps customers more efficiently manage their cloud services at a lower cost.

Cloud solutions are compelling for a variety of reasons – scale, flexibility and value – particularly for companies looking to do more with less.  However, it’s difficult to understand, monitor and correlate all the application data points that tell you how and when you need to scale your application.  Then to get real value out of those data points you need to automate how your application and cloud platform intelligently respond.  That’s where MetricsHub’s technology comes in.  Their approach to automating performance optimization, with little effort on the part of customers, addresses these issues.  It also ensures customers are only paying for what they need and maximizing the services they’re using.

All Windows Azure customers can get started today – with the announcement of a pre-release, no charge, version of MetricsHub’s Active Cloud Monitoring – available now through the Windows Azure Store.  We think it’s going to save customers time, money and headaches.  You can learn more at the MetricsHub site.

• Microsoft Acquires MetricsHub
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/03/04/microsoft-acquires-metricshub.aspx
• MetricsHub is joining forces with Microsoft!
  http://blog.metricshub.com/2013/03/04/future-of-metricshub/

Here are seven simple reasons why Office 365 makes sense for Enterprise customers with Volume Licensing agreements with Microsoft – EVEN IF they aren’t interested in moving their existing files & mail data to the cloud or taking full advantage of the Online Services below:

1. SOCIAL NETWORKING
   Get immediate access to Yammer’s social media benefits for all your users, complete with enterprise security and controls.
2. OFFICE LICENSING FOR 5 DEVICES
   Install Office on up to 5 devices at no additional cost, increasing productivity and reducing costs / compliance issues.
3. SIDE-BY-SIDE USE WITH OFFICE 2003/07/10
   Ability to run the new version of Office side by side with earlier versions, eliminating the need for lengthy and costly compatibility testing.
4. REDUCE DEPLOYMENT COSTS
   Simplify Office deployment by delivering ‘click to run’ capabilities – either through the cloud or behind your firewall, on premises.
5. SECURE FILE SHARING
   Reduce risk, cost and network traffic by sharing documents easily and securely, both inside & outside your company, with Skydrive Pro & 7GB/user storage.
6. RAPID PROVISIONING
   Accelerate collaboration by using SharePoint Online to augment existing on premises collaboration tools. SharePoint Online can be instantly accessible for new projects or new team collaboration needs that can’t wait for the delays involved in setting up traditional collaboration capacity.
7. ENTERPRISE CAL
   Get immediate access to full enterprise functionality on premises or in the cloud (for CORE CAL users stepping up to E3).